success in the first few week of the campaign, toppled the taliban almost as quickly as the taliban topples the afghan government this year. at that point if we'd kept to our narrow war aims of pursuing al qaeda and denying sanctuary in afghanistan to al qaeda, we could have ended the war, incorporated a small element of the taliban into the afghan government which would have been per afghan tradition, but we chose not to do that and so here we are 20 years later in a much worse position and perhaps more importantly a much worse position for the afghans. >> days after they sign add deal with the taliban then president trump spoke to mullah on the phone. here's what he had to say. >> i spoke to the leader of the