Public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Our next two guests both served in the military and in afghanistan. Danny davis retired Lieutenant Colonel is not with defense priority and is a military expert. And former Lieutenant Colonel dakota wood senior fellow for Defense Programs joining us to talk about the oneyear anniversary for the completion of the u. S. Withdrawal from afghanistan. Let me start with you, colonel davis at ascii about this question before the withdrawal happened what was your view on the accelerated timeline of withdrawal from afghanistan . Guest i was for president trumps decision to end the war and set a timeline for the withdrawal to happen. I was absolutely disappointed that toward the end of president trumps term that they didnt take any proactive action. The timeline that had been set in place and the lack of action that the pentagon had taken to implement those changes, dr. President trump was distracted. They didnt take the action necessary to have the means necessary. When it did come to, when biden came into office they were not prepared for it. Biden waited a long time to make his decision and added six more months to it. I think that was one of the biggest problems. I was for the decision, i was for biden following through with that i just wish they did it on the original schedule. It was always supposed to be conditions based. It was not in the Afghan Government involved. Supposedly they are governing the country so having this discussion with the taliban are they going to go take over it was condition based. The taliban never met those conditions so at a strategic level it is always good for the u. S. To have ability to know what is going on on the ground. A much more realist perspective, if things are not going our way and we cant change things do we need to change m mark the Biden Administration was not obligated to follow through. They could have withdrawn sooner, if they wanted to stay there 10 years they could have done that as well. The execution is always the difficult part. You can have great ideas to stay or to go but how it was carried out was atrocious. If you are going to do that, you need to set in place and the military follows orders. One is the force cap . They were not allowed to have sufficient number of people for an orderly withdrawal of u. S. Citizens. Host do either of you think the Biden Administration came in with the timeline in mind. . Guest i dont they were that organized. Getting out as quickly as possible if you are serious about doing that you talk to the people you have in the region managing this effort. Military leaders, they discarded every rational plan that the pentagon brought forward about how to do this in a very measured way. There were also warnings that the government will collapse and the taliban will take over. They wanted to get out, the biden team did it and it was horrible. Guest if there was a timeline other than these timelines. I think despite what President Biden might have campaigned on i dont think it was second or third tier general dongle line. Really they waited all the way until almost may to make the call. That shouldve been something from the time biden won. That should have been front and center because there was a timeline on there. I think they just punted on that and didnt worry about it until it was too late. Host the oneyear anniversary of the withdrawal from afghanistan we are joined by two veterans Lieutenant Colonel danny davis and former marine Lieutenant Colonel dakota wood. We welcome your calls and comments. 202 7488001 for republicans. Democrats 202 7488000. And her independent and for independents 202 7488002. On that topic you were both in afghanistan. Guest Central Command planned to go in and due to tours. Host tell us about your experience. Guest my first tour was in 2005. I was a liaison officer. I was responsible for tracking all the significant activity between the two commands. I had a front row seat, literally, on the Strategic Site about everything that was happening here on a daily basis. In the second one, i had probably the best seat of anybody on the ground in afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. It was designed to bring equipment to the troops. I traveled all around on the ground from patrol to division commands. I really had a good seat. Host where did it start to go wrong in afghanistan . Guest unequivocally it happened when president bush changed it from a military mission to a nationbuilding mission and obama settled doubled down on that. Now theyre trying to achieve the and attainable with military forces. Host same set of questions from your Vantage Point at what point do you think the u. S. Made strategically some of the wrong moves . Guest 2 in order to get at al qaeda and you ship to nationbuilding that is when it went off the rails. Counterinsurgency, working with allies in the region it was a culture. Good people on the ground but no culture of maintenance, power grids, Higher Education and we tried to create that within a span of just a few years. I think the hurdle was too high. You were not going to accomplish it in under a century. There was a rosy picture about we were about to turn the corner every year. Host about the Service Member lives lost a year ago, where do you think, was the an Impossible Mission for the military . Guest are you talking about the evacuation . 120 4000 people were evacuated and a span of two weeks. That there is testimony to the adaptability. 24, 20 eightyearolds that we put on the ground many times they were deployed. One of the remarkable things they did, the horror is why did we put them in that situation . It was because the Biden Administration capped the number of trips to several hundred general mckenzie requested 2500 or more. You can see what was coming at you, multiple runways. To put u. S. Service members, men and women in that situation it field from a security perspective. It was just a ridiculous notion that these tragic deaths were almost inevitable. Host and your views on the biggest mistake in that final week . Guest i think on the operational level what the troops stood was amazing under the circumstances because we had a plan in place to get out by august 31 with the expectation and understanding that there would be an Afghan Government and an Afghan Military still existing. Two weeks before even the timeline it just went into complete chaos. I think troops did a magnificent job under the circumstances. But i am with the Senior Leaders who did not see this coming. Just days before the whole government collapsed you had the joint chief of staff say i think the government is going to continue to provide security for its people. I think all the signs were there. They should have seen it coming they should have taken more proactive measures to account for this. Guest i agree with that completely. Such low levels of numbers we had crossed the line in 18 months. It was airpower the contractors were not going to stay there if the u. S. Was not providing security. It was a gut punch to the morale. We far and away lost more lives than any other country supporting the efforts of the Afghan Military was really doing some good work. Everybody knew that the Afghan Government was corrupt but at least it was something we could work with. It was keeping things in check. The whole system collapsed and i think the biden team was kind of bedding that it would betting that they would pull out. General mckenzie and everybody said this will last weeks, if not days. In my view the new when the agreement was signed. They should have been involved with the decisionmaking. I think it was vital they werent. They knew there wasnt and date coming. They had every opportunity in 20 years to get their house in order. They didnt do that so the fact that we went through those numbers and tell people we were going to i think the majority of the responsibility for the collapse because they didnt get the job done when they had the chance and all the loaves we gave to their support, all the money we gave, years of time that we give them to do that. I dont take the responsibility that the american withdrawal precipitated it. I think it was 20 years was exposed by the withdrawal. Host we are talking about the oneyear withdrawal from afghanistan we have the line for afghanistan veterans 202 7488002. Caller good morning. I served in vietnam from 69 to 71. I also served in afghanistan in 05 down in kandahar. What really upsets me is that they compare the departure with the vietnam and its not comparable. I dont remember any soldiers being lost during the exit from vietnam. I think the public needs to know we left a lot of equipment back in vietnam as wealth or be had vietnamese train on that equipment and went vietnam failed it was the same reason the afghans failed they could not support their country. Host ok. Lets talk about the equipment. A big deal was made about that. How much beer did we actually leave . Guest these are just realities of war. Whether its vehicles or aircraft, over 20 years you bring in a lot of stuff. And if you are helping the Afghan Forces to modernize thats going to happen. If you decide to pull out in sixmonth youre not going to take 20 years worth of gear with you. That is one of the realities that occur on the ground. Whatever advances they had youre not going to get rid of all that stuff. You cant go and gather up cessnas and machine guns and all that. It tells us that when we do decide to get involved in another region you really have to think about what you are trying to do. The ship from defeating military threat to nationbuilding i think the inaccurate reporting that occurred over the 20 year building set up his condition. So 20 years youre not going to withdraw that in six months. With all the money we spent training the troops there it was pretty widely reported that the troops were not ready, many of the afghan troops were not capable of fending off the taliban. Guest if you want to train them to fix a tank, plane or radar system you have to have some basic level of education to be able to do that. All of our training efforts were hand signals and pictographs and those sorts of things. You couldnt get them into a classroom to study a manual. I bring that up as a metaphor for this larger problem that youre not going to transform our country in a few years. Host were either of you surprised at how quickly the afghan army dissipated . When i was there in 2011i remember it was reported on that even at that time you had the Afghan Military making private deals with the taliban in certain areas. Thats part of the culture there that has gone for centuries. That really is what happened. I think the effect the taliban had before we did withdraw that is exactly what was going on over the country. They were making deals especially in kandahar for wholesale, surrendering basically of the Afghan Military that is what they think was a big part. They may deals just to stay alive. Guest that was going on but there were also some afghan units that just performed term are likely. It was never clearly one or the other it was a mixture of both. The government was corrupt, its a country that doesnt have a culture doing all the things we expected them to do. White spots, dark spots when the u. S. Announced withdrawal everyone is going to see to their own interest. That is why a lot of these deals occurred. You would we make this into a representative democratic your european disorder country. I think that is when things went wrong. The larger question is did the u. S. Have security interest in being present in the region and we cant forget about that aspect either. I think one of the biggest examples of that is the two major elections that afghan has had it was rigged with all kinds of corruption and instead of Holding People accountable the u. S. Put a bandaid on it and came up with the ceo version. They created this new thing that didnt even exist in the constitution without talking about the millions of votes that were corrupt on either side of that. They just said haber going to do whatever it takes. There was no plan in place it was doing what we can to get by but that is all we ever did. Host lets hear from pearl in california. Caller yes, good morning. First i want to thank both of these offers officers for their candor. As a voluntary vietnam that i would have proud to have served under either of these gentlemen. One thing to make very clear is joe biden, the whole Biden Administration, they had complete control over the timeline. A lot of things were going to happen here and they botched it. So if you want to know when received by an up on the stage and sing hes going to do this, you know, i dont have too much faith in this administration to do anything correct. Basically i am terrified of the leadership we have. Host ok, earl. Guest we were there for 20 years so is started under george w. Then went to obama. You had a number of offramp opportunities of people saying we want to bring this to an end we are losing people in countries, there is a lot of money being spent every year and yet there was a driving rationale in the background. A security interest do we arm pakistan . What is our wrongdoing iran doing . You didnt want to see it returned to terrorists. It was always heady you do that . Talking about the mistakes made in execution trying to do things with the military force that is really not structured to do that. I do think there were missed opportunities. I think the honesty that should have been reported was not there. Everyone is going to put the best face on things and yet you are dealing with soldiers and marines and airmen from our country that has no basis in cultural literacy or languages or tribal politics or any of those things. So be were asking them to do things that it is not structured to do. We were not realistic about what was accomplishable in that timeframe. Host lets hear from javier in virginia. Caller good morning. I appreciate listening to these gentlemen especially how the military obeys orders. I have an afghan gentleman living in my basement. He is the first afghan man i have spoken to in my life. The conversation, i asked him what he thought about the withdrawal and his thoughts are there is no way to have done it with other planning but no matter what happen he is got the americans left because he emigrated as a refugee and he says all them Many Americans expect was a waste because it all went into the hands of the corrupt people. As the officer mentioned the corruption, this gentleman said all the money went to jihad. Think accounts, property that belonged to the men who were supposed to represent the people. Im just glad its over. Im not going to criticize how it went or how it didnt go. You have people saying it went great, i dont think anybody responsible could do it any differently. Host do you think the u. S. Should have held the former leaders that did leave more accountable . I think everybody should have been held accountable from the beginning. We should have said hey this is not acceptable. We are sending american money and american troops to fight for your country and we have standards that go with it. I dont think there is anything wrong with that. I will this is armor on independent country, obviously is not your we did in some ways but in the kiwis we didnt do anything. A lot of that has been in the reports. They talked about that kind of failure and is obese at the standard for the failure all the way through and i dont think we ever held anybody accountable. Host let me ask about an article you wrote a couple of years ago the headlight of the pieces the men of endless wars we hear this term on the debate. Were you getting at about the method of endless wars. Guest i think the topic was being overplayed. Its at this high intensity combat, were just wasting lives for not affect whatsoever. You want to be present, you want to have trading partners and allies that are not on your competitors side you want to know what is going on and you cant do that remotely. You cant use satellite sensors or video feed. You have to be on the ground. This point that we have not lost anybody in 18 months in afghanistan so what or was going on in that sense . It wasnt taking a lot of u. S. Lives for very anytime we have u. S. Members anywhere in the world there is a risk. It is a commitment of money and resources. That is one of the costs of being a global power that has economic and political intelligence around the world. I was saying it is not an and less war we are engaged in many places around the globe where u. S. National security and economics and diplomatic interests. How you do that really matters. The fact that we are engaged in so many places cannot be dismissed. Host it shows our plan to be put over the horizon in terms of our president such as it is in afghanistan is working. Is that a workable plan . No its not. Guest is difficult conducting air operations where the nearest airbases hundreds and hundreds of miles away taking multiple tankers to refuel going in and out. The fact al qaeda has set up shop in the heart of afghanistan in kabul that tells you this was an overnight stop. This al qaeda has reconstituted their headquarters proved that went on for a year. You could have 24 7 drawn coverage with a limited window of opportunity, right . The intel that went into this strike was developed over months. So this that they talked about the worry we are getting out of your country, be able to respond to any emerging threat it is a facetious argument. I have a very different view on that. I think it absolutely demonstrates that we do have the capacity to take out a direct threat to the United States whatever they occur in the world. We took out involvement in pakistan will be had no troops on the ground. And others on here, bin laden back in 1997i think her 1998 we had him in our crosshairs and it was a political decision not to pull the trigger. We have the capacity all over the place to take out direct threats to the United States. When i was in afghanistan, when we had 140,000 troops there was still things out of our control. We took tactical action that we call terrorists there were no direct threat to the United States. We have a really robust post 9 11 world and ability to take them out. If we had john that we can do that i almost wish we had. Host lets hear from the democrats line in connecticut. Caller thank you for taking my call. Im calling in reference to the withdrawal from afghanistan. The transfer of power from one president to the other was not like a usual transfer of power. It was the amount of time so we have to take that into consideration. The transfer of power and the pullout, the information that was relayed from one president to the other, i want to hear the comments on that. Guest i think the underlying structures in the intelligence community, military establishment, state Department Personnel all of those things stay in place. It is the key principle advisors to the president and the appointed officials that change hands. And there are all these meetings echo on where the Outgoing Team and incoming Team Exchange notes. You would hope they would have some kind of expertise in the area to which they will be assigned so you can have a very disruptive transfer that occurred when trump came into office, obamas team was going out and it also occur when trump was going out. These things happen but we have a couple hundred of years at making these transitions so all of the underlying infrastructure stays in place. When the political agenda is vastly different and you want to accelerate or speed up or slow down an action that might be taken, is an action taken on executive order as opposed to a law, it is easier to put the on or off switch to make these quick changes. There is a lot involved in this transition from one administration to another. It can be genetically different between those administrations. I pretty much agree with the way he said it. There was a pot of issues with the transfer of power this time, as there normally is, it is the underlying institutions which were already there. President biden, i mean, his people were not worried about this all transfer of power. They were worried about transitioning and. Is not like people didnt now. They had plenty of time to make a decision. There was no bubble. Host next is rate in North Carolina ray in North Carolina. Caller thank you. I tell you only in america are we so bamboozled by the military. You blame everyone but yourselves for everything you do. The withdrawal from afghanistan, that was a military operation. Yeah, you had 20 years to figure it out. The military does nothing anymore. You an even quicker on food, you dont clean your close, you do nothing. We spend more than the rest of the world. 1. 4 trillion that we spend that magically disappears to do nothing. This is a decade thing. Every 20 years every 10 years. Every 10 years, especially every 20 years there is a massive military spending. It is built into the cycle. Now we have the ukraine we are sending tens or hundreds of billion dollars or is the American Public just so, so forgiving of the military doing nothing . They blame it all on biden. Host we will let you both respond. I am not sure at all about pointing out military failures. There certainly have been allowed to go around. But at the same time there is also a lot of good things to talk about. The way the troops conducted this mission, even us through the very end the troops in hout while i was there they were just doing magnificent work on the technical level despite the mission being given to them that was unobtainable. You have to look at the whole thing combined so its not just the military is flawless because part of this country and just like all of us there is good things about things. Host when you talk to colleagues that served what is there take away from their service there and how we left . Guest every once in a while something earth shattering does happen like world war ii or the soviet union pushing across europe to spread global communism. When china decides to really push out and seize territory in our region that is so critically important, there are them occasions where the military is needed. We keep a Standing Military force for a Great Variety of reasons. So few countries have nuclear weapons, we have guaranteed their security. I know thats kind of big picture to your point but the point is you have these military professionals who are serving their country and they always on the ready to be called and deployed. It is always a political decision. The military does something, the go where ever they want to go and do these things it is funded by congress. It is funded by elected representatives and people put into office. If not he wanted this to occur cut off funding and bring everybody home. Its not that we have this entity in the military they have served interest. I think my colleagues that we talk to and served with appreciate that. They appreciate the impact of the United States can have. Also keeping at bay bad actors around the world and is just a remarkable thing to see them in action. One of the marines that was killed in kabul, we saw her picture. She was cradling an afghan baby, this is america humanitarian emotion forward, the best of what we can bring to bear at the same time help provide security to leave a disastrous situation. Host he is senior fellow Defense Program former army Lieutenant Colonel for 21 years deployed in afghanistan he is with the defense priority is senior fellow and a literary expert we have a little over 20 minutes look for your calls and comments. Remember the line for afghan vets is 202 7488002. Caller good morning. I served in afghanistan. Once during operations and once as a contractor in kabul as an advisor to the street of defense. Less of a question but to put things in context, as a trainer advisor i had to go through the equipment lists of the things that we were buying and supplying. Marching band supplies, ceremonial savers and eggs of the like. Again this is the larger point that we were trying to build a military in, on likeness and what not what was needed and that is why things folded. On my last they there i set up a meeting with the National Agency and members of the ministry of defense and lt. Col. Person, my mentor he mentoree is giggling the whole time and i had never seen the guy kirk a smile in the many months that i had been there. I pull him out of the room and i say whats the matter . He told me, the last time i had this meeting the soviets were sitting on the other set of the table. So i would like to hear your comments on that. Host ok, brad. Thank you for your call. Guest when i was first going into afghanistan and all the way through, i heard so much ridicule of the soviet experience there. We learned lessons from them and restudied of what, i think it was called a bear went over the mountain. A bout of Lessons Learned just like we didnt seem to learn any of them. It took us 20 years to get to the same position and we didnt do a very good job of how we ended it. But the irony was not lost on me either. Host leon democrats line, go ahead. Caller good morning, as a former lt. Col. I want to commend you for your service but i also want to look at the timeline because we had, like 20 your wars. Vietnam was different. Here we are now with this 20 year war and vietnam and talk about and close for and close word. It took close to 100 years before we got to 1776. 86 years after that we have the civil war. Not 20 years is not going to turn around the country. The United States military can go and get in any country it wants by force but the rest of the country apparatus needs to come in and train these guys. The same people who are in charge now with the taliban was probably in charge back then. We changed nothing. When the roman army went inland a state 300 years. I think we got a timeline set on the United States military which is we have enough sustaining power for 20 years and we come out. We are not in that business. When they said we are nationbuilding that we need to stay out of these countries because i really believe that once we go into a country we need to stay there 100 years and change the culture. Because right now, the people that is minding this government is not 20 years old. Interesting point there. Guest americans are eternally optimistic. Seeing a problem, and wanting to fix it right away and move onto to the next issue. We take the perspective and we apply it to problems, the problems that cant be solved in short periods of time. We just want to do good. Diplomacy, economic relationships who come down to people. So he wants to be the president that comes in office and be blamed for losing afghanistan or losing vietnam . They dont want to do that. They know this is requiring political capital, a lot of bad News Headlines if somebody gets killed. So how do you swear that circle . How do you do what you want to do, reducing threats to the United States, taking away some kind of region that could be used by terrorist groups to build up to abilities . Is there a gathering aspect to it . What is the perception of the u. S. . Bush had to go into afghanistan because he would have been summarily ran out of washington, d. C. Following 9 11 if we had not gone to get al qaeda and the perpetrators of 9 11. But then it comes how long do you stay and what do you droid try to do while you are there . There is this very optimistic, rosy color view that america has of itself and what we can do for good. You would like to think that you can take a country where the kids are not being educated or women have the opportunities for a life spent as measured in just a few decades, all of these things can we help them make a better life . We are going against centuries of tradition and culture so we dont often appreciate that but we think we can overcome it in weeks or months. So our expectations are very lofty and they run up against the brutal reality of actually doing that. Host danny davis, you had a piece just recently this month the headline of which is David Pretorius is wrong the aft in world was never winnable. You were responding to an article he wrote. A mistake he made was the lack of commitment. We never got the approach or within the individual administration. That ties in with the question that just came in here. It all gets down interest. If it is in americas interest and we have to stay someplace, we can stay 50 years, we can stay 100 years of that is what is required. It was necessary for our security. After about the summer of 2002 it was not necessary for american security. All the years we stayed after was basically to say we are trying to help. All of those are fine and good as far as they go but they are not necessary for American National security. To try to accomplish that with military means is an absolute utility to the highest degree because you are not going to. When other generals so we should have maintained the status quo he is basically saying we will stay there forever even though there is not objective for the United States and need. Thats what i was saying, this should have ended a long time ago. If we continue to stay, there would have been no value. The american casualties in the last 18 months because wasnt because the taliban was unsuccessful. There was a deal that the taliban would have stopped targeting americans. Had that henry stayed the world would have gotten hot and we would have had to send more troops because 2500 would not have been enough. That was always my biggest problem with this, american men and women were dying for something that wasnt even an interest to america. Host karl from south carolina, independent line. Caller yes, sir. I want to thank your guests for sharing everything. There is one big mess from the beginning. When we went to iraq to take out , i forgot his name not it was so long ago. Then we end up over in afghanistan, a total mess. It never worked, it never will. There were so many people, so many guys. I was in the horse and i just hate to see guys that volunteer and released it we stood wasted. A picture was shown that will tell you everything you need to know. When you look at that c17 taking off and all you see out there is men running behind the plane i dont see any women, i dont see any children, just men. Nobody in the United States would ever run from anything without taking the women and children first. It shows you there was nothing we could do. We were not going to win. It was a catastrophe. Twentysomething years, come on. Host with those images it was to remind people, those of the engine does images from the 1975 departure. Guest its the execution, how do you actually do this and there are parallels to vietnam. Corrupt government a system that wasnt going to stay on its on without being on the United States was it winnable . Are we going to stay there for 100 years . As we look at afghanistan, to get us back to the point it is the essential necessity for truthfulness and overseeing recording from the fields every commander wants to say i got this, boss. We are seeing glimmers of success i just need a little bit more time to fix some of these problems because nobody wants to go in and say it is completely unattainable. It is not the military way to do that. Host it also sounds like a clear definition of what our National Interests are. Guest absolutely. And you can cost american use or desire to help a democracy get started. Iraq remember it was the purple ink on the finger when they voted and they had to get their finger to show they voted. Expansion of freemarket enterprise, democracies, education and opportunities for all. We want the rest of the world to be like that and we have a hard time accepting that there are many regions of the world that part like that and wont be like that for centuries. Host the withdrawal reminds us of the price tag of american lives. Guest the deployment of these young men and women across all the services is a political decision. And what a testimony to the service of these young folks that they actually salute and try to deal with things for which they are not wellequipped. It is just a remarkable story about the honor and ability of the service. The voter, elected officials, numbers of congress if its not going to work out we need to get them out as soon as possible. If we think its working out they need to be sourced appropriately to do that job. Host catherine is in st. Joseph. Good morning, republican line. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Colonel davis answered my question which was going to be do you both think it was necessary that we go in to help these people . And colonel davis, you know, he explained it pretty well. Once we got in there and he saw that we couldnt really do anything we should have got out. But 20 years, 20 years in a country even if you took a young child and trained them, 20 years we will could have trained them quite well so i just cant figure why and how we didnt stay in a country that long and put that much money into people who, they didnt want our help. My comment this morning as we really need to look at the United States of america and our democracy. I think that is where our focus should be now is getting our democracy back here. I grew up, i am 72 years old, we had more communists in this country the and we do in other countries. And i think that is where our emphasis should be now is trying to help our country. Host we will let you go there. I wouldnt say the Afghan People didnt want our help because i saw many of them throughout my tour and still have friends to this day in afghanistan. They definitely wanted our help. I think many, one of the core foundations is the government the Afghan Government was so corrupt and predatory against its people and it never earned the support and trust of its people. Even with the pakistan sanctuary and a lot of the mistakes we made if the Afghan Government, even culturally acceptable levels of corrupt i think they could have earned the trust. If they could have earned the trust of the people they could have turned the force of the taliban. Host duties in the u. S. There are cultural norms of corruption. It helped get things done. But with all this money, that is even by their own standards way outside the norm. Host the caller mentioned disappointing things we are hearing is the return to sharia law. Its horrible. Guest you talk about a peaceful city in kabul is because everybody is walking in fear of getting on the wrong side. It is a horrible situation. The television are in charge of it. Many people would love to leave the country. All of these stories are great in your gun americans get on the ground, they want to help feed and educate. It is a culture and the political structures are supportive of that. There is only so much that you can actually do. We shouldnt be trying to fix the problems of the world. As the Trump Administration was wanting to suit what is in the United States interest . Engage in trade or military action, it is all good in the long term but we need to use that argument in these larger sorts of debates on how to go about it. We had teams going over to sit down and talk about the evolution of modern art theory. Or you have a tent in the middle of a village talking about abstract paintings and the sorts of things. Why are we spending money doing these ridiculous notions . And this town would have had a reliable electrical power we paid to how giant generators brought in to take care of a region but with the culture of maintenance or terrorist actions to blow things up. We have to temper our expectations and stop leading with our hearts of so much and be smart about the sorts of things. Host few more minutes with our guests. Caller good morning, thank you cspan. You are doing an awesome job. I appreciate the platform. We all do, thank you. Over my lifetime these things seem to be more Financial Economic Business Ventures funded by the dollars of american citizens the government does not understand or respect the sociology of these countries we wage war against. The structures do not have the same National Interest as our American National interests. It is really our corporate goal about our government, republicans, democrats, and dependents all of our citizens we should expect except responsibilities. Our goals are determined by the natural interest. The National Interest is determined by the lobbyist. The lobbyist represent business corporations in the countries we war with. Manipulation of the media is used. Now the Global Citizen with the advent of the internet, americans need to learn to think for ourselves. Host ok, danny davis you want to go first . National interest ought to drive our policies. If the military is used or if there is better means to do it some things are just beyond our ability to do. They can be done in a timeframe that is neutral and that we can afford. I think we need to start applying that more broadly to a lot more places because there are plenty of places we have allies. The troops in baghdad help they are not helping baghdad stay in power. That should drive all the things that we do anywhere. Not how it may benefit and group somewhere else. Guest i would like to talk about the National Interest. Often times when we talk about that we talk about security interests. Someone is going to attack but the large part of National Interest, we want to how good paying jobs here at home, we want to have a vibrant economy and a lot of that has to do with trade. Can you get access to materials . Do you have access to foreign markets . So we have to be engaged in the world. Part of that is securing situation which is supported by military forces. So there could be an economic interest to help you kind of a region and check. If it has to do with the longterm economic liability, that is not to say business interests might not be how in something because they want to make profit. That happens in peacetime as well. Look at what goes on with china for china is involved on a scale that is almost unimaginable thea scale unimaginable. And yet a billion person market is hard to ignore for wanting to sell 10 issues and tshirts. It is a complex world, you have interests in competition with each other and there are various mechanisms of power, one of which is the military. Anytime we decide to deploy military forces we are trying to decide what we want to do, is accomplishable especially at the expense of american lives and be circumspect and Popular Support to that. Host this has been a quick but enlightening our, we appreciate you both, Lieutenant Colonel dakota wou washington journal, everyday we take your calls live on the air on the days news and policy issues that impact you. Thursday morning, Virginia Tech engineering professor mark edwards who was among the first to identify toxic levels of lead in sledge michigan in flint michigan. Then Arms Control Association talks about nuclear disarmament. Ants the findings of a survey of views on political engagement, and the position in u. S. Society. 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