Of bidens fiasco and the american heroes that fought to the end. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Host jerry, what is your expertise . Ms. Dunleavy i was an Investigative Reporter for a decade. I went on to coauthor this excellent book with my friend james. I recently was hired by the House Foreign Affairs committee to help with the leading there afghanistan withdrawal investigation. Just yesterday we had an incredible roundtable with the goldstar families of the 13 servicemembers killed august 26, 2021. The only caveat i will give as i am just here as the coauthor. I am not talking on behalf of the committee. Host we covered that on cspan, that hearing, and if anybody is interested you can look at that on cspan. Org or our app. James, you are a former u. S. Army captain and served in afghanistan. Tell us what you did and where you served. Mr. Hasson i served in coast province. Two provinces on the border from 2014 to 2015. I have a lot of family members still serving actively and several, including, in the special forces community including close friends, in the special forces community. Host you are not there during the withdrawal. Mr. Hasson i was already out. Host how long did you stay in afghanistan . Mr. Hasson nine months. Host lets talk about the book called kabul. Do you chronicle the entire war or is this just about the withdrawal . Mr. Dunleavy i wish we could have done a book that went through the 20 years of war. It would have had to be 10,000 pages long but there were 20 years of war, 20 years of death, 20 years of mistakes. But this book focuses on the withdrawal from afghanistan because, at the end of the day, the way this ended with tens of thousands of afghan allies left behind, well over 1000 americans left behind, us cutting the legs out from under the Afghan Military when we did our rapid retrograde, the abandonment of bagram, and then this isis k terrorist attack that killed close to 200 afghans. And then the taliban taking over again after 20 years of work. It did not have to end this way. Host President Trump kind of defense the afghanistan withdrawal defends the afghanistan withdrawal saying the agreement with the taliban was all to blame for how the withdrawal played out. What are your thoughts . Mr. Dunleavy the Biden Administration does not have a defense. It is really indefensible the way this all ended. What they point to is the delhi agreement struck between the u. S. Doha agreement struck between the u. S. And the taliban. We think it was a flawed agreement to say the least. However, there were conditions and the taliban did not meet any of them. One of them was the continued alliance the taliban has with al qaeda. They were allied with them before 9 11, they continued their alliance for 20 years, and it continues today, despite President Bidens claims during the withdrawal that al qaeda was gone from afghanistan. This was not true. The alliance was never broken. Because the taliban was not following the terms of the delhi doha agreement, this was a choice that President Biden made to pick the 20s anniversary of 9 11 to withdraw in the middle of afghan fighting season. These are choices President Biden made. He was not painted into a corner. Host james, do you guys agree the United States should have pulled out and your beef is how it pulled out . Or you think troops should have remained in afghanistan . Mr. Hasson great question because i think it is a difficult one. As jerry mentioned, a lot of the things we were doing in terms of nationbuilding, trying to create democracy, we are just not working. There is a great case to be made that if we kept a couple thousand troops there, we couldve prevented what happened. But as we outlined in the prologue of kabul is that it does not matter what side of the debate you come down on. Personally having served there and see everything up close i leaned closer to lets get out. That said, no matter what side of the debate you come down on things did not have to happen the way they did. The withdrawal and the americans left behind, the americans killed, wounded, all of that can be laid as we lay out in kabul can be laid squarely at the feet of the Biden Administration. Host if you would like to call in and ask a question, you can do so. Our lines are by party affiliation. Republicans 202 7488001, democrats 202 7488000, independents 202 7488002. We also have a line if you are an Afghanistan War veteran. You can call on our line 202 7488003. That is also the line used to send us a text. Lets hear from President Biden and then i will get your reaction. This is from august 31, 2021. He announces that withdrawal from afghanistan. [video clip] pres. Biden i take responsibility for the decision. Some say we should have started sooner and could this have been done in a more orderly manner . I respectfully disagree. Imagine if we had begun evacuations in june or july, bringing thousands of american troops and evacuating more than 120,000 in the middle of a civil war. There still would have been a rush to the airport. A breakdown of confidence and control of the government. And it still would have been difficult and dangerous. The bottom line is there is no evacuation from the end of the war that you can run without the complexities, challenges, and threats we faced. None. There are those who say we should have stayed indefinitely. They ask, why dont we just keep doing what we were doing . Why do we have to change anything . The fact is everything had changed. My predecessor had made a deal with the taliban. When i came into office we faced a deadline, may 1. The taliban onslaught was coming. We faced one of two choices follow the agreement of the Previous Administration and extend or extend and have more time for people to get out. Or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war. To those asking for a third decade of war in afghanistan i ask, what is the Vital National interest . In my view, we only have one to make sure afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland. Remember why we went to afghanistan in the first place. Because we were attacked by Osama Bin Laden and al qaeda on september 11, 2001. They were based in afghanistan. We delivered justice to bin laden on may 2, 2011, over a decade ago. Al qaeda was decimated. Host that was the president from two years ago. Jerry, your reaction. Mr. Dunleavy President Bidens whole argument is that everything that happened in 2021 was inevitable. That the chaos and death we saw was inevitable and there was nothing he could have done to change it. As we lay out in kabul, that is simply not true. I will give you one example. All of President Bidens advisors and military commanders were telling him about the importance of holding onto bagram air brace. Bagram airbase. Because of his decisions bagram was closed. Everybody told President Biden that bagram is a safer place to do an evacuation from than a small airport in the middle of kabul. If we had maintained bagram, it would have meant a safer evacuation, a more orderly one. We would have had far fewer americans left behind, far fewer afghan allies left behind. We could have kept the taliban onslaught at bay to likely stop them from taking kabul, which would have made everything safer, and the isis k terrorist who killed those 13 americans august 26, the Biden Administration has not admitted his identity. I think potentially because he was in prison at bagram when we abandoned bagram. And he was one of them. When the taliban took over they took over august 15. The first thing they did was open those doors and freed the thousands of terrorists, including the one that killed those americans. Host but does it work to hang on to bagram in the middle of the taliban takeover . How many troops would you have needed . Mr. Dunleavy great question and absolutely it would have worked. You need at least a few thousand troops. Ideally 3500 but at minimum 2200. Host even when the whole country was being taken over by the taliban . Mr. Dunleavy if we rewind, when we decided to abandon bagram the whole country had not been taken over yet. Bagram is defensible. It was built by the soviets when they were in afghanistan in the 1980s and has dozens of runways. It is close to kabul. The reason why that is an easy evacuation is number one, we would have more assets in the air to be able to prevent the taliban thunder run, if you want to call it that, to kabul. We would have been able to evacuate more people quickly instead of using a single strip airfield in the middle of a dense urban environment with high ground on all sides. Just add one thing quickly, every military commander who talked to President Biden and we know this for a fact pleaded with him to keep bagram open. He did not because he wanted a certain trip cap number, 600, which meant there were four diplomats to every soldier at that point. You cannot keep bog room open with only 600 soldiers. That is the long and short of it. Host there is a lot of viewers that want to talk to you. We will start with carl in hannibal, new york. Democrat. Caller i dont know where to begin. Number one, shouldve, couldve, wouldve. Trillions of dollars wasted in afghanistan and you know what . You are monday morning quarterbacking. You know what should have been done. President biden did the wrong thing. President biden made the hard choice and he left afghanistan. Maybe he did not do it the way you wanted it done but it had to be done and he pulled the trigger. That is number one. My second point is this. You started off this program without President Biden is trying to reduce drug prices to help everyday americans. And then you have to counterbalance it with this tripe . You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You really need to do better. Host lets have a response. Monday morning quarterbacking. Mr. Dunleavy this is not monday morning quarterbacking. Everything that happened here President Biden was warned in real time by people on the ground and his military commanders. The House Foreign Affairs committee had testimony from command Sergeant Major jake smith last month. He was the command Sergeant Major who, at the time in 2021, was overseeing the u. S. Closure of military bases across afghanistan. He was tasked with closing bagram. He testified in early 2021 the state Department Officials from the embassy in kabul came to visit him at bagram to do a site survey about where to do an evacuation. He told them in no Uncertain Terms you cannot do this evacuation through kabul airport. You have got to hold bagram. It is safer. It is more orderly. It is extremely defensible and of course, as i mentioned earlier, the prisoners at bagram still would have been behind bars rather than trying to kill americans. President biden knew this and was being warned about this and he moved forward with it anyway. That goes for pretty much every decision he made. He was told that a rapid troop withdrawal from afghanistan in the middle of afghan fighting season, a choice that he made, that that would be a disastrous idea and likely bring about the rapid collapse of the Afghan Military and Afghan Government. These are things he knew in real time. This is not james and i monday morning quarterbacking. This is us pointing out that the facts were known in President Biden ignored them. Mr. Hasson if i could add to that quickly. One thing that we took pains to do in kabul was stick directly to the facts and let the men and women who were there at the gates, on the ground, or in the decision rooms speak for themselves. If you read the book, you are not going to see any opinion ating from us about what went down. To be frank, we also criticized secretary pompeo and the Trump Administration for the doha agreement. Our goal is to tell the story without fanfare or favor. If this had been a Different Administration and the same things that happened, we would have told the same story. Host paul is in arizona, democrat line. Caller morning. I like the guy before that called in. I hear a lot of ifs and buts. 021, troop levels were down to 500 troops in country. How do you expect to hold Bagram Air Force base with 2500 troops . And possible. That is why they deserted. Trump drew down the troops, not biden. He was left when he entered with 2500 troops in country and you expect him to hold bagram . Host james . Mr. Hasson i appreciate the thought and the question. One thing i will say in response is that, as i mentioned a few minutes ago, 2200 was the minimum that the pentago told d the Biden White House they needed to hold bagram. It is not an ideal number but it is a manageable number. 2200 is not 600. At the end of the day, you know, absolutely. If President Trump had withdrawn down to 600 i did not agree withdrawing as quickly as they did. But there were 2500 there at the time. That was enough to hold bagram and every military commander urged President Biden to hold onto bagram. He had the ability to do so but he did not because he wanted an artificial troop cap at 600. That is what they had and the result speak for themselves. Host ed is an afghanistan vet in florida. Arent you under evacuation orders . Caller not yet. [laughs] host stay safe. Caller thank you. Host go ahead. Caller i support what your two are saying. I traveled up to bagram on a regular basis and saying that bagram was the safest place in afghanistan at the time we were there. [indiscernible] answering the question about 2500, evidently, he does not understand military tactics and we have air superiority. I would support with the men said. Bagram is probably the most secure area. The Sergeant Major hit it on the head. Thank you. Host jerry, your response . Mr. Dunleavy i hope you stay safe in florida. Thanks for what you did over there. Really appreciate that. I think your insights are spot on. Bagram would have been the right place to do an evacuation from. Everybody told that to President Biden. He knew that and he chose differently. The closure of bagram meant the United States presence in afghanistan was shrunk down to an embassy and airport in kabul. We saw with the impact of that was. The rapid u. S. Troop withdrawal without any plan to continue to support the Afghan Military, which we had built around u. S. Support. The u. S. Troop withdrawal meant pulling contractors, troops, logistics, advisors. Everything was gone in rapid fashion. The closure of bagram meant that the u. S. s ability to project power was gone. Our ability to do a safe evacuation was gone. To protect those prisons full of terrorists that we had spent years capturing and throwing in jail, that ability was gone too. Host joyce is an independent in louisville, kentucky. Caller good morning. First time caller. Will be 78yearsold on sunday. You people are crazy. This is just a slap something on biden. Did you see the color of the people that got killed that day . None of those people were black. Black people are not going to put up with this mess you are talking about doing in the army. All of you socalled caucasians want to do is to go around the world and control the world. Host i want to show a clip from secretary lloyd austin in front of the Senate Armed Services committee september 2021 where he talks about the end of the u. S. War in afghanistan. [video clip] sec extending beyond august would have imperiled our people and our mission. The taliban made clear their cooperation with end on the first of september. As you know we face great and growing threats from isis. Staying longer than we did wouldve made it more dangerous for our people. It would not have significantly changed a number of evacuees we could get out. As we consider these tactical issues today, we must also ask ourselves equally tough questions about war itself. Think about the lessons we have learned the past 20 years. Did we have the right strategy . Did we have too many strategies . Did we put too much faith in our ability to build effective afghan institutions, and army, air force, police force, and Government Administration . We help build the state but we cannot forge a nation. The fact that the afghan army that we and our partners trained melted away, as communicators without firing a shot, took us all by surprise and it would be dishonest the claim otherwise. We need to consider some uncomfortable truths. That we do not fully comprehend the corruption and poor leadership in senior ranks. We did not grasp the effects of frequent and unexplained rotations by president of his commanders. We do not anticipate the effect caused by the deals that the taliban commanders struck with local leaders. Andy doha agreement is self had a demoralizing effect on Afghan Soldiers. Finally, we felt to grasp there is only so much for which and for whom many of the Afghan Forces provided the Afghan Military with the equipment and aircraft and skills to use it. Over the years they often fought bravely. Tens of thousands of Afghan Soldiers and police died but in the end we cannot provide them with the will to win, at least not all of them. As a veteran of that war, and personally reckoning with all of it. Host that was defense secretary austin about two years ago in front of