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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back Craig Woodlock with us. Of course,

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Speaker 1: his latest book is called The Afghanistan Papers. Of course,

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Speaker 1: your a colleague, Bob Woodward has made some headlines this

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Speaker 1: week with his book Peril Craig. That's right. Bob usually

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Speaker 1: makes a big splash. I mean, he's in his seventies,

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Speaker 1: but he's still going strong. He gets the stories nobody

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Speaker 1: else can. He's a good reporter, isn't he. He's a

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Speaker 1: great reporter. I've had the fortune to work with him

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Speaker 1: on a few subjects, and boys, he's really thorough. He

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Speaker 1: triple checks everything, and he's got a real talent for

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Speaker 1: getting people to talk. What an amazing story that is.

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Speaker 1: Now back to Afghanistan. Of course, were we as Americans

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Speaker 1: duped by US officials? I think we were. As the

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Speaker 1: war started to worsen and the Taliban started to get

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Speaker 1: stronger again, we were told by the General's month after month,

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Speaker 1: year after year that we were making progress in the war,

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Speaker 1: and they would say that the Taliban couldn't possibly win,

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Speaker 1: and that you know, victory was around the corner. So

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Speaker 1: you know, certainly this message that was being delivered to Americans. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know didn't add up. We were duped and I

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Speaker 1: think everybody could see the results last month when the

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Speaker 1: Taliban took over. I mean, there was no question who

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Speaker 1: won the war and it wasn't our side, No, it

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Speaker 1: was not. And I'll always remember that sad story of

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Speaker 1: the former football player Pat Tillman who left the NFL

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Speaker 1: to become an army ranger and was killed by friendly fire.

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Speaker 1: Well and George, that's another example early on in the

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Speaker 1: war where the truth was withheld from the American people.

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Speaker 1: The army at first made it out like he was

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Speaker 1: heroically killed by the enemy, and only later, after subsequent investigations,

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Speaker 1: did the public learn that he was in fact killed

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Speaker 1: by friendly fire. And this was, you know, something that

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Speaker 1: the US Army didn't didn't want to own up to that.

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Speaker 1: You know, they wanted the narrative that Tillman and had

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Speaker 1: been killed heroically by the Taliban when you know that

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Speaker 1: wasn't the case at all. That's just one example we

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Speaker 1: see this time and again, whether it's individual events in

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan or the broader message or the course of the war.

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Speaker 1: You know, the US military just wasn't straight with US

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Speaker 1: about what was happening after US officials saw what they

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Speaker 1: could do with Afghanistan and with US accepting it, is

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Speaker 1: that when they decided to go back into Iraq. I

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Speaker 1: think they decided to go into Iraq very quickly after

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Speaker 1: September eleventh. They thought we had defeated the Taliban, that

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Speaker 1: the Taliban was vanquished within three to four months, and

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Speaker 1: so the planning to invade Iraq started to really accelerate

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Speaker 1: just as earliest. December two thousand and one. The best

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Speaker 1: example of this from my book, I obtained a memo

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Speaker 1: that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld had written just one

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Speaker 1: year into the war. He talked about in this memo

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Speaker 1: how he went to the Oval Office to meet with

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Speaker 1: President Bush and he told the President, I've got two

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Speaker 1: generals in town who I think you should meet with.

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Speaker 1: One is General Tommy Franks, who is the commander of

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Speaker 1: all US military operations in the Middle East, including Iraq

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Speaker 1: and the other ones General Dan McNeill. And Bush replied, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Tommy Franks, I want to meet with him, because you know,

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Speaker 1: we want to go over the war plans for Iraq.

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Speaker 1: But who's General McNeill? And run soldiers finded, well, McNeil's

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Speaker 1: the commander in Afghanistan. Here's your top general in Afghanistan.

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Speaker 1: And Bush replied, oh, well, I don't need to meet

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Speaker 1: with him. So that's an example of how Bush had

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Speaker 1: really just stopped paying attention to what was going on

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Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. He forgot the name of his top general there,

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Speaker 1: and he was just entirely focused on a Rock. How

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Speaker 1: much of a problem was the late Defense Secretary Donald

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Speaker 1: Rumsfeld in this situation. Well, you know, in terms of

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Speaker 1: his management of the war in Afghanistan, you know, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't very good in retrospect. I think people recall his

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Speaker 1: role in a Raw and persuading the American people that

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Speaker 1: we needed to go to Rock to go after weapons

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Speaker 1: of mass destruction. But you know, like Bush, he stopped

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Speaker 1: paying attention to Afghanistan. He was in the early years,

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Speaker 1: he was very, very reluctant to send many troops to

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan or use the military in any way to stabilize

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Speaker 1: the country because correctly, he was worried that we might

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Speaker 1: get bogged down like in Vietnam. But in those early years,

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Speaker 1: when the Taliban was the weakest, that's when we probably

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Speaker 1: could have done the most to stabilize the country, and

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Speaker 1: as the years went on the Taliban got stronger, it

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Speaker 1: was clear it become too late. We tried to overcome

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Speaker 1: that under President Obama by sending a surge force of

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Speaker 1: one hundred thousand troops into Afghanistan. But I think the

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Speaker 1: seeds of defeat had been planted early on when we

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Speaker 1: found out that Bin Laden was hiding away in Tora Bora,

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Speaker 1: that mountain region of Afghanistan. Why didn't we just knuke

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Speaker 1: that mountain and take it down. Well, one, we tend

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Speaker 1: to not i'd use nukes because that sets off all

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Speaker 1: sorts of issues. But we certainly could have gone in

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Speaker 1: with more troops. And this is something that's still debated

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Speaker 1: to this day. Why did the US military leadership, why

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Speaker 1: was it reluctant to send more troops. At the time,

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Speaker 1: the generals in charge said they were worried about US

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Speaker 1: troops getting bogged down in Afghanistan and alienating the Afghans

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Speaker 1: and being seen as an occupying force. But in hindsight,

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Speaker 1: this was obviously a huge blunder that we didn't commit

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Speaker 1: the forces that troops on the ground were asking for

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Speaker 1: to go into Tora Bora and selof bin Laden's escape,

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Speaker 1: and as everybody knows, it took ten more years before

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Speaker 1: we could find him again in Pakistan. Absolutely so, now

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Speaker 1: the Taliban is back. Who's isis, Craig, Well, what are they?

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Speaker 1: ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State and the affiliate

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Speaker 1: or chapter they have in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is sometimes

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Speaker 1: called isis k or for Corusson, which is sort of

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Speaker 1: a classical Arabic name for that part of the world.

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Speaker 1: But isis is actually at odds with the Taliban. They're

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Speaker 1: they're hostile to each other because, believe it or not,

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Speaker 1: ISIS thinks the Taliban's too moderate, that the Taliban isn't

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Speaker 1: strict enough, so they've actually been fighting each other for

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Speaker 1: a number of years. The United States on some occasions

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Speaker 1: has actually helped the Taliban fight Isis. The other big

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Speaker 1: difference between the two is the Taliban's ideology or worldview

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Speaker 1: is really just focus on Afghanistan in Pakistan, they aren't

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Speaker 1: focused on what goes on in the rest of the world,

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Speaker 1: whereas ISIS really has this much bigger worldview and ideology

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Speaker 1: where they'd like to see an Islamic state, which is

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Speaker 1: part of their name throughout South Asia and the Middle East.

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Speaker 1: Is al Qaida gone? Are they still around? They're still

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Speaker 1: around a little bit there. You know. For the last

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Speaker 1: ten years, the US military has assessed that there's fewer

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Speaker 1: than a hundred Al Qaeda fighters or sympathizers in all

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Speaker 1: of Afghanistan at any given time. So that's compared to

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Speaker 1: say sixty or seventy or eighty thousand fighters for the Taliban.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a very small presence. We really again, al

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Speaker 1: Qaida had been kicked out of Afghanistan or killed or

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Speaker 1: destroyed not long after we went in in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and one. The big worry now is with a Taliban

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Speaker 1: in charge of the whole country and having controlled the

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Speaker 1: entire territory, would this allow al Qaeda to come back in?

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Speaker 1: Would they offer them a refuge again? And this is

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Speaker 1: of course, is a question nobody knows the answer to.

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Speaker 1: Why did they offer them a refuge in the beginning?

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Speaker 1: Could they just not get them out? Well? I think

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Speaker 1: they were friendly with them. They al Qaeda had some

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Speaker 1: of its leaders, including Bin Lauden, had helped the Mujahadeen

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Speaker 1: the Holy Warriors as we did too, that's right, then

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Speaker 1: helped us fight the Soviets, So the Taliban leaders were

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Speaker 1: friendly with al Qaida. They saw them as allies in

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Speaker 1: that regard. At the same time, I think it is

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Speaker 1: important to point out that, you know, there were no

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Speaker 1: Afghans involved in the nine to eleven attacks. It was

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Speaker 1: actually mostly Saudias, and this was an al Qaeda operation,

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Speaker 1: and there's no indication that the Taliban knew about it.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to separate them entirely from al Qaeda

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Speaker 1: because certainly they're sympathetic to each other, and the Taliban

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Speaker 1: had offered al Qaeda refuge, and you know, there's no

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Speaker 1: sign yet that they would swear them off. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's the big worry. Can Al Qaida come back and China,

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Speaker 1: of course, is going to walk right in the door

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Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, aren't they? Well, so far, the signs are

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Speaker 1: that the Taliban is pretty friendly with China. I think

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Speaker 1: they see them as a source of income, a source

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Speaker 1: of aid. They're a neighbor and part of Afghanistan. But

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Speaker 1: what's interesting is the Talban doesn't seem to mind too

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Speaker 1: much China's brutal human rights record with Muslims and some

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Speaker 1: of its provinces that seems to be something that the

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Speaker 1: Talban is sort of dismissing, and they would rather have

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Speaker 1: support from some outside power. They know they're not going

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Speaker 1: to get it from the United States, so they're turning

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Speaker 1: to China, and frankly they're going to turn to Russia too.

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Speaker 1: What did the Soviet Union at the time want with Afghanistan?

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Speaker 1: Why did they even go in there? They wanted to

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Speaker 1: install a communist government, one that would essentially they could

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Speaker 1: control as a puppet, And they were concerned that Afghanistan

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Speaker 1: was wiggling loose from its fear of influence, so to speak,

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Speaker 1: so they went in in nineteen seventy five after a

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Speaker 1: coup to try and install their own strongmen in Afghanistan.

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Speaker 1: I had written I had read a poem by Rudgert

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Speaker 1: Kipling after we had evacuated Afghanistan, and it was that

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Speaker 1: short little poem about a British soldier lying on the

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Speaker 1: fields of Afghanistan. And in the poem, and I'm paraphrasing it,

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Speaker 1: Kipling writes, when the women come to tear out your

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Speaker 1: body parts, roll to your rifle and go to your God.

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Speaker 1: And but that little poem told me that every nation

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Speaker 1: has tried to occupy Afghanistan, and none has been successful.

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Speaker 1: That's right. I think this is something again the United

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Speaker 1: States failed to learn the lessons of history, even though

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Speaker 1: they were staring us right in the face. That I mean,

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Speaker 1: the fact that we kept US troops here for twenty years.

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Speaker 1: Even Afghans who were inclined to support the United States,

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Speaker 1: they still would see US as occupying forces. You know,

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Speaker 1: they saw us as the foreign infidels in some regards,

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Speaker 1: and so, you know, try as we might to get

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Speaker 1: the Afghan people on our side and to support the

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Speaker 1: Afghan government, there's still a tremendous amount of resentment because

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Speaker 1: you know, this war have been continuing for twenty years.

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Speaker 1: The Afghan people suffered terribly under this. Now, certainly the

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Speaker 1: Taliban bears the biggest portion of the blame for that,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of Afghans just resented having foreign troops

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Speaker 1: there for twenty years because you know, before US, of course,

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Speaker 1: the Soviets had been there. So really they see the

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Speaker 1: past thirty years as a big, long, unbroken string of

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Speaker 1: foreign occupation in war, and I think understandably they're just

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Speaker 1: tired of all that. On an ABCD or what grade

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Speaker 1: would you give George Bush for his handling of Afghanistan. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'd give him an A for the first few months,

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Speaker 1: then a C, and then an F in the end.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he failed to stabilize the country. He won

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Speaker 1: the war at first, but then he'd stopped paying attention

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Speaker 1: and shifted his attention to Iraq, and that let the

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Speaker 1: whole thing slip through our grass. How about Barack Obama,

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Speaker 1: what would you give him? Well, not much better. I

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Speaker 1: mean he had promised, also like Bush, that we would

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Speaker 1: prevail in Afghanistan. He sent far more forces, spent far

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Speaker 1: more money in Afghanistan, trying to build it up, trying

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Speaker 1: to create this Afghan army and police force. But you know,

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Speaker 1: in retrospect that was a failure too, because we have

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Speaker 1: nothing to show for it. Donald Trump, same thing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: he wasn't responsible as long as Bush or Obama for

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Speaker 1: the war, but he also promised victory. He tried to

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Speaker 1: negotiate with the Taliban to negotiate a peaceful end, but

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Speaker 1: again in the end, that didn't work either. I mean,

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Speaker 1: none of these presidents can claim that the strategies they

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Speaker 1: endorsed to the American people worked in the end in

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Speaker 1: any fashion. And how about Joe Biden what would he get. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to be careful about handing out

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Speaker 1: great I think with Biden will have to see, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, he promised to leave Afghanistan so far whether

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Speaker 1: you know, it was certainly a mess the way it happened,

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Speaker 1: but he kept his promise. But we're going to have

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Speaker 1: to wait and see what the consequences are in the

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Speaker 1: coming years. With the Taliban being in charge, I think

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Speaker 1: what they should have done was evacuate first before they

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Speaker 1: took the troops out. That would have been the smart

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Speaker 1: thing to do. But like you said, I don't think

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Speaker 1: they anticipated the country collapsing overnight. They clearly didn't. That said,

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Speaker 1: I think they were concerned that if they started to

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Speaker 1: evacuate Afghans who had helped us during the war, this

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Speaker 1: would trigger a panic. So it was between a rock

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Speaker 1: and a hard place. If they trigger that panic, then

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Speaker 1: things might get bad. But because they didn't evacuate people

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Speaker 1: early enough, you know, it just looked even worse. So

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Speaker 1: they just didn't have a clear cut plan for what happened. Craig,

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Speaker 1: what lessons have we learned if we have learned anything

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Speaker 1: about this situation. I think the biggest lesson for the

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Speaker 1: documents I'd tamed for my book was Believe it or Not.

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Speaker 1: The mission was never really spelled out. There wasn't a

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Speaker 1: clear objective or goal of what we were trying to

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Speaker 1: accomplish an Afghanistan. At first, there was when we thought

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Speaker 1: we were going to Afghanistan to eliminate al Qaeda, but

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Speaker 1: as we discussed George, that happened within a few months.

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Speaker 1: But then the mission got really blurry and mission creep

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Speaker 1: set in and it was unclear what we were trying

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Speaker 1: to do there and at what point could we leave.

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Speaker 1: We never really spelled out under Bush, Obama or Trump

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Speaker 1: what we had to actually do in order to leave.

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Speaker 1: It was all sort of vague. That we were building

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Speaker 1: up the Afghan government, that we were fighting the Taliban,

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Speaker 1: that we were trying to improve rights for women and children,

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Speaker 1: that we're trying to fight narcotics because Afghanistan produces more

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Speaker 1: opium than any other country in the world, So we

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Speaker 1: were kind of all over the map, and that, more

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Speaker 1: than anything, is why we were there for twenty years.

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Speaker 1: Just tragic though the whole situation isn't it's it's really

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Speaker 1: hard to see any lasting good coming out of the

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Speaker 1: longest war in American history, and what message has this

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Speaker 1: whole situation sent to our allies or countries that may

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Speaker 1: need us to defend them. Certainly, our NATO allies were

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Speaker 1: unhappy with how the evacuation happened under Biden. They felt

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Speaker 1: like they weren't consulted very much, and yet they were

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Speaker 1: dependent on the United States to a large degree for

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Speaker 1: security and cobble and particularly at the airport so they

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Speaker 1: could get their citizens out. So I think they felt

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Speaker 1: like the evacuation the withdrawal was not handled well. Long

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Speaker 1: term though, I think what this really underscuares is, you know,

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Speaker 1: the United State as is an unrivaled military power. We're

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Speaker 1: the only country that can project this kind of military

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Speaker 1: force anywhere in the world, and our European and Canadian

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Speaker 1: allies really depend on us for this, and they don't

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Speaker 1: how much elsewhere to turn in a situation, a crisis

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Speaker 1: like this that happens anywhere. What happened to the Afghan fighters?

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Speaker 1: They just ran away? Where'd they go? Well, the Afghan

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Speaker 1: they didn't go very far. They switched sides and the

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Speaker 1: Afghan way of war because they've been invaded so much

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Speaker 1: and had civil war for so many years. So many factions.

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Speaker 1: They're pretty good at putting their finger to the wind

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Speaker 1: to see which way it's blowing. Who's going to come

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Speaker 1: out the victor, and it the last several months. When

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Speaker 1: they saw that the Taliban was ascended, they're like, well,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to fight to the deaths here. We

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Speaker 1: want to be on the winning side. So they switched

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Speaker 1: over to the Taliban when the Taliban said, look, you

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Speaker 1: can come join us and we won't kill you, or

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Speaker 1: you can go down fighting. And for many Afghan soldiers

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Speaker 1: that was easy choice. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast am dot com for more