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 They could have withdrawn sooner, if they wanted to stay there 10 years they could have done that as well.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 thi