Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getting Show. And I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Mr Trump did not create the mess
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. But I also think you're gonna end up
Speaker 1: owning its tragic outcome. We got this brilliant ambassador Khalizad,
Speaker 1: who knows more about Afghanistan and anyone in the US
Speaker 1: government negotiating and gutter with the Taliban. But Mr Trump
Speaker 1: has said publicly essentially we're out politically by so what
Speaker 1: is there to negotiate. The Taliban are also winning, are
Speaker 1: now control more terrain than they have some two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. The Afghan government is fractured and competent, corrupt.
Speaker 1: Their military is semi dysfunctional. No belligerent ever negotiates away
Speaker 1: something that won in the battlefield. The situation looks tragic.
Speaker 1: The outcome will come soon after we withdraw. That's General
Speaker 1: Barry McCafferty. You was on MSNBC last night. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: making the argument and why we gotta stay in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Washington Post today, the editorial board pieces Trump risks turning
Speaker 1: a chance for success in Afghanistan into a shameful failure.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's a failure right now based on
Speaker 1: what General McCafferty just said. Tallyband has more property than
Speaker 1: they had in the last eighteen years. The government is
Speaker 1: completely a mess. So we've spent I don't know how
Speaker 1: many trillion dollars on this project and all these years
Speaker 1: and thousands of lives, and and this is where we are.
Speaker 1: Why would I think it's gonna get any better anyway?
Speaker 1: I need to hear from another expert. Yeah, with all
Speaker 1: due respect to General McCafferty, My clients a military analysts
Speaker 1: for CBS News and others throughout the year, retire major
Speaker 1: as well artilleryman Mike clients, how are you, sir? Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: so great to be back with you. So why don't
Speaker 1: we start with the general's description of the situation, his prescription,
Speaker 1: which is we have to stay the course your reaction.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a kind of a classic ec Swamp
Speaker 1: frankly description to what's going on there. But you know,
Speaker 1: staying there is the definition of insanity doing the same
Speaker 1: thing over and over and think we're gonna get a
Speaker 1: different result. The president cut the troops in half, the
Speaker 1: Taliban took more uh land while they were there. Um,
Speaker 1: this gets back to we've got to decide as a nation,
Speaker 1: if we want to go to war like this endlessly
Speaker 1: and um and do something about it. This this president
Speaker 1: is at least willing to stick um, you know, a
Speaker 1: stake in the ground, and his heel's gonna take a
Speaker 1: very big political hit. And when when we see this
Speaker 1: turn into what will be Vietnam nineteen seventy five, No question,
Speaker 1: the Taliban is going to kick out the current government
Speaker 1: there and they're gonna return Sharia lawn, bring the whole
Speaker 1: situation back to But after eighteen years, there's not again.
Speaker 1: We want to spend another dollar, you want to spend
Speaker 1: another life there? I'm not sure that's a good option. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the political hit, the politics of it is is a
Speaker 1: different story. I I don't I don't know how people
Speaker 1: are going to react to that. I would I would
Speaker 1: assume after all this time, the cume doesn't think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, look what's happened. Um, My heart breaks for
Speaker 1: people who live there. God, I think of some little
Speaker 1: girl who's going to have to live in that country.
Speaker 1: That's awful. But we can't fix it unless we really
Speaker 1: dedicated a tremendous amount of manpower, lives and money to it.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to do that establish police state
Speaker 1: because there are people living in those tragic conditions all
Speaker 1: over the world. Right, we had these ebbs and flows
Speaker 1: over the past eighteen years. You know. The Obama administration
Speaker 1: comes in said it was the Good War. Surgis troops
Speaker 1: there to over a hundred and thirty thousand, We gained
Speaker 1: control of most of the outlying provinces, and it went
Speaker 1: well from a military perspective. But then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, he wants out of there too. He put
Speaker 1: conditions just like this president did. They were based on
Speaker 1: a calendar. He said that that was going to make
Speaker 1: the couple of government more responsive. That that didn't do
Speaker 1: anything that The bottom line is it's still a country
Speaker 1: with a very low rate of education. Um, the literacy
Speaker 1: rates remains very high. We've tried to impart Western values
Speaker 1: which we think we can export, but we can't, and
Speaker 1: we've not exported, um the capitalism that we should have.
Speaker 1: The Chinese have come in. They own a lot of
Speaker 1: the land mass in Afghanistan because they're stripping it out
Speaker 1: for rare earth minerals as well. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: again the Taliban when they when they were in power,
Speaker 1: allowed al Qaeda free reign there. I think the only
Speaker 1: difference now is we'll have this throughout this very thin
Speaker 1: needle that says, um, if you bring al Qaida anybody back,
Speaker 1: then that violates the deal and we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: into Afghanistan. All that means they're gonna use strategic weapons
Speaker 1: to go after people. I'm certainly no genius just reading
Speaker 1: these stories in the newspaper and following the news. I've
Speaker 1: been saying that now for like fifteen years. We tell
Speaker 1: the Taliban we're leaving, You're you're gonna take the country.
Speaker 1: But if you let al Qaida set up shop again,
Speaker 1: we're gonna bomb the crap audio and I think they would,
Speaker 1: they would. We're gonna end up in the same spot
Speaker 1: a decade and a half later. Right now, You're you're
Speaker 1: seeing also reports that al Qaeda has increased its ranks
Speaker 1: by four or five hundred in Afghanistan. Um, you're also
Speaker 1: seeing the same resurge and of isis in in Um
Speaker 1: in Syria and and a rock. I can't tell if
Speaker 1: it's just the media just concerning to troll the president
Speaker 1: because he obviously says that we've defeated them. We have,
Speaker 1: and it's not possible to defeat the ideologies. Um, it's
Speaker 1: going to take a lot longer than that. But the
Speaker 1: bottom line is, Um, whether the Taliban goes after al
Speaker 1: Qaeda inside Afghanistan when they finally take over, remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. My clients CBS military analysts on the line.
Speaker 1: You know, in the spirit of fairness, I criticized Barack
Speaker 1: Obama fairly harshly for setting time because it's just in
Speaker 1: this situation, you can't have that umbrella over a negotiation, or,
Speaker 1: as General McCafferty pointed out, why would you negotiate if
Speaker 1: you if you have the upper hands. So I don't
Speaker 1: like that. I get it politically speaking, Uh, it's always
Speaker 1: an election cycle, but I just don't think it's very smart.
Speaker 1: But no, we're gonna have to call it something. Um,
Speaker 1: it's going to be victory or defeat. Um. We go
Speaker 1: into this with our eyes wide open. We were taking
Speaker 1: down the Taliban government and taking out Alqaida after nine eleven.
Speaker 1: It was great intentions. The Bush administration was all in,
Speaker 1: everything was good, and then our focus shifted to Iraq
Speaker 1: and frankly, we've been you know, kind of wandering since then.
Speaker 1: And the military is not going to stand up and
Speaker 1: say we're not doing this anymore. That's just not what
Speaker 1: they're that's in their in their DNA. Interesting. So there's
Speaker 1: this horrifying attack at a wedding in Kable, Afghanistan, over
Speaker 1: the weekend, and it was isis killed seasty five people
Speaker 1: or something like that, and the Tally band said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's beyond the pale. So we're we're we're are the Taliban,
Speaker 1: and iis, how do they fit into Afghanistan? So they
Speaker 1: perceived them to be a threat to the Taliban. That's
Speaker 1: how've been perceived isis to be a threat to what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do. And let's let the Taliban. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: you'll see what they'll They'll be more focused on getting
Speaker 1: control of couple. And then the civil war takes breens,
Speaker 1: which is really what's happening. That we're in the brink
Speaker 1: of a civil war there in inside of Afghanistan. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's only been going on for what nine thousand years anyway, um,
Speaker 1: and so it's all kind of it's just as a
Speaker 1: matter of who is going to take control and who
Speaker 1: out the power and what they're gonna do when they
Speaker 1: get it. Um. You know, whether maybe this is why
Speaker 1: the president wants he does. He definitely wants to pick
Speaker 1: it up as an election accomplishment and which is why
Speaker 1: he wants out both for election. You know, if I
Speaker 1: were the president, Mike, I have a number of access
Speaker 1: to grind and causes that I would babble about, but
Speaker 1: one of them would be helping Americans understand we can't
Speaker 1: solve everything. There are some problems that just have to
Speaker 1: be managed. It's like a chronic health condition. You just
Speaker 1: do your best. And I think we we as a country,
Speaker 1: feel like we can fix everything, and we just can't.
Speaker 1: And and and we've we've we need to pivot back
Speaker 1: to that Cold War mentality where we contain Russia. That
Speaker 1: was the big thing to contain, and now we've got
Speaker 1: to do the same kind of containment in the Middle
Speaker 1: East and in Afghanistan in a smaller scale. And the
Speaker 1: problem is where we you don't have the military design
Speaker 1: to do that. We were into the strategic weapons, We're
Speaker 1: gonna hit you from five miles away, and you'll ever
Speaker 1: see that, you ever see it coming. All those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. We still built a military around occupying and
Speaker 1: working with our allies on the ground, knowing full well
Speaker 1: that we're not going to change anything. We're not going
Speaker 1: to change in lines no matter what we bring to
Speaker 1: the table. Next time we talk buying Greenland with my clients,
Speaker 1: military analyst, Giant airfielder, Mike, it's always enlightening. Thanks a million,
Speaker 1: got it. My only final note on this is the
Speaker 1: annoyance of the media. I just do not believe that
Speaker 1: NBC in the Washington Post would be arguing against leaving
Speaker 1: Afghanistan if Barack Obama were doing exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: I just don't believe it. People, smart, people of good
Speaker 1: conscience can be on both sides of this argument, no doubt, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe that's what's happening with the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: And Barack Obama was saying it's been long enough, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get out, they'd be cheering it, guarantee. That's really maddening. Yep,
Speaker 1: what's coming up? For the record, we're saying the same
Speaker 1: stuff when old Barry was the president. Yeah, I was,
Speaker 1: we are now I've been forgetting out the whole time.
Speaker 1: What's coming up your news? Marshall, California's new deadly use
Speaker 1: of forest law stirring up a national debate Jill Biden's
Speaker 1: rather odd endorsement of husband Joe and turning hostility into inspiration.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I could use that. I'd be a
Speaker 1: cool pivot. What if I can do that? Stay tuned,
Speaker 1: are Strong and Getty