stayed. do you think we are less safe now than we were before we went in to afghanistan 20 years ago? >> well, yeah, i think that's hard to measure, but we're certainly less safe than we were when we had a group of, let's say, 5,000 american service people in afghanistan standing up as the backbone behind some 250,000 afghan troops, who were keeping at bay the taliban and other terror groups. that made us a great deal safer. we have tens of thousands of troops in germany, south korea, japan. why are they there? not just as favors to those countries but because we believe that keeps us and the world safer. and the idea that we would keep several thousand troops in afghanistan, as long as necessary, to keep us more safe is, of course, the appropriate policy to take. these political slogans come in the way. end endless wars. the war is not ended when only one party pulls out and the