WTH withdrawal? Rep. Adam Kinzinger on the truth about the endless war

Episode #98 | April 15, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: the hell is going on, let's remind everybody who's listening that we love our listeners, please share with your friends, don't forget to subscribe, don't forget to review us, don't forget to reach out with ideas. We really enjoy hearing from you. And now to the business at hand. Marc, what the hell?

Marc Thiessen: What the hell is we are getting out of Afghanistan.

Danielle Pletka: Again.

Marc Thiessen: Again. President Biden has announced that by September 11th, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he has set that as the deadline for complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has explicitly said that our withdrawal will not be conditions-based because that is an avenue for endless war. And so, it doesn't matter what the Taliban does. It doesn't matter if they invite Al-Qaeda back in. It doesn't matter if they march on Kabul and overthrow the government. It doesn't matter if they start creating a safe haven for the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, 2001. We're getting out come hell or high water, and we're going to do it on the anniversary of their great victory when they hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the building that I was in when it happened. And they're going to have a second victory to bookend their first victory. What the hell, Dany?

Danielle Pletka: So, before we get to our interview, I want us to take on what I imagine to myself some of our listeners and some of our adversaries are saying to themselves right now. "Marc Thiessen and Dany Pletka never met a war they didn't like. We've been in Afghanistan for 20 years. Look what's going on. We went in, we got Osama bin Laden, but no, that wasn't enough. No, we have to stay there. We have to stay there trying to fix the country, trying to give them a better government, losing our troops there. What's wrong with you people?"

Marc Thiessen: That's a fair question.

2 Danielle Pletka: So, speaking for that member of the peanut gallery, let's take that on for a sec.

Marc Thiessen: Absolutely. So first, number one. The mission in Afghanistan was never to create a Jeffersonian democracy, to rebuild the nation, to do any of those things. The mission in Afghanistan has been and continues to be to stop them from using it as a safe haven to carry out another attack, like we did on September 11th. And by that standard, which is the only standard that we should have set for the effort, it's been a resounding success. In fact, one of the greatest American geopolitical successes of the last two centuries. They have not been able to use Afghanistan as a safe haven to carry out another attack on the American homeland. Not because they stopped trying. It's not because they gave up.

Marc Thiessen: It's not because they've gone away though. Though it's tempting to think that because we haven't been hit for 20 years. But it's because the United States has been engaged in Afghanistan, in , in Syria, across Africa, in Yemen, and other places where the terrorists have reared their ugly head and try to create a safe haven. And the reality is that in Afghanistan, we do not have 300,000 troops. We do not have 30,000 troops. We have fewer than 3,000 troops in Afghanistan. We have more troops in Japan, Germany, South Korea, Kuwait, Italy, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Spain, than we have in Afghanistan today.

Danielle Pletka: Yeah. That's not put together. That's each country.

Marc Thiessen: Yes. Individually. We have 3,000 troops in Spain. We have 3,500 troops in the UAE, 5,000 troops in Bahrain, 8,000 troops in Qatar, 9,000 troops in the United Kingdom, 12,000 troops in Italy, 35,000 troops in Germany. And here's the irony, Dany. In the same day that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan, they announced that they are increasing the number of troops in Germany, reversing the Trump administration's decision to withdraw about 12,000 troops from that country. Now we can debate whether that was a good idea or not. But the reality is they're withdrawing all US forces from a country where there's an active terrorist threat, but surging forces into a country where our troops had been stationed since 1945 to prevent a Soviet tank invasion over the Fulda Gap, a threat that no longer exists. The Soviet Union doesn't exist, Taliban and Al-Qaeda do. Where do we need our troops? We need them in the place where the danger to the American homeland is.

Marc Thiessen: We're not engaged in nation building in Afghanistan. We are not even engaged for the most part in combat, except for some discreet special operations against terrorist targets. We are in a train and equip mission that is helping the Afghan security forces take out terrorists, do most of the fighting for us. We provide them with force enablers, air support, mission planning, and those sorts of things. And that is a very, very low price to pay for the security that that presence has given us. So, I just do not understand the desire to get to zero. I understand the desire to not have a major military presence of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops across the world. I don't understand why it's so hard to maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan for the bang for the buck that they give us to protect the American homeland. It should be a two-minute decision and the first minute is for coffee.

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3 Danielle Pletka: That's a good line.

Marc Thiessen: Another Rumsfeldism. You love them when you're not connected to Donald Rumsfeld.

Danielle Pletka: That's so true. I'm starting to believe you haven't had an independent thought since you worked for him.

Marc Thiessen: You've learned so much.

Danielle Pletka: Here's a compliment and here's a comment. First, part of our problem is that what you just said in the space of two minutes, without the first minute for coffee, is more leadership than we've had from a President of the United States in the last 13 years.

Marc Thiessen: I'm announcing my candidacy right here on this podcast.

Danielle Pletka: Dude, you got my vote let me tell you. Because if the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, whether he's a Republican or Democrat, doesn't take the time to explain to the American people what it is that we are doing in a country, we should not be surprised that the American people have no freaking idea because they've got better things to think about than what's going on in Kabul. So that's number one. Number two, I think we have a labeling problem. We are not fighting a war in Afghanistan. We are maintaining a holding operation, if you want to really call it that. We are training Afghan troops, and we are equipping Afghan troops. But we are also engaged in a separate mission that is not part of the military mission, which is to help to establish a more stable Afghan government.

Marc Thiessen: That's where you lose people, Dany.

Danielle Pletka: I'm not worried about the losing people part of this. Not because I'm not worried about losing people but let me explain. I'm not worried about the losing people part of this, because I think the two missions are very separate and I think we could continue one of the missions without the other. The other is in some ways going on and is part of what we do in all sorts of places where we don't have a military presence, where we are trying to support better governance, where we are trying to support women's rights, where we're trying to support religious freedom with AID, with the UN, with our allied countries. And that's a separate operation. And that separate operation is not dependent, 100% at least, on our military being there.

Danielle Pletka: But all of our leaders have conflated the two and basically said, "We can't leave. We can't take our soldiers out until we solve that problem number two, until there's democratic governance." And the bottom line is it's going to be a really long time before there's democratic governance in Afghanistan. And that is not mission critical here.

Marc Thiessen: That's not our goal.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

4 Danielle Pletka: What is mission critical here is keeping our guys there in order to continue to train and equip and to support the Afghan armed forces that are doing all of the fighting. And I'm sorry, that was sort of a long explication, but I really do think it's important to separate those two things out. And we haven't had a president, Republican or Democrat, who has been able to do that.

Marc Thiessen: I agree with you a 100%, Dany. And look, I'll give you another Rumsfeldism, because you like them so much, which is that we don't need to have a Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan. What we need simply is a government that doesn't wake up in the morning and think that America's what's wrong with the world and want to kill us. And so that's the goal in Afghanistan is to not allow the Taliban to come back and a government that does wake up every morning and think America's what's wrong with the world, that we're the great Satan and do want to come and kill us, or at least harbor people who do. Over time, if Afghanistan evolves into a stable democracy, that's great. But what I care about is that they're nominally allied with us, that they want to share the same mission of whacking the terrorists and the Islamic radicals who want to come and get us here at home. And a small US troop presence in that country is a very, very small price to pay to allow that to happen.

Marc Thiessen: I want to also point out another thing, which is people are talking about, the sacrifices and everything that we make in Afghanistan. And there have been enormous sacrifices at the height of a war, in terms of lives and treasure and family and people who came back with terrible injuries and all the rest of that. That's not what's happening right now. According to Stars and Stripes, last year just four Americans were killed in action in Afghanistan. And that was in a single operation actually, after the Peace Accord was initially supposed to be signed. If you want to contrast that, July 30th, 2020 eight Marines and a sailor were killed in a single amphibious assault vehicle accident off the coast of Southern California.

Marc Thiessen: So, the deaths in Afghanistan are comparable to the kinds of deaths that we're having almost anywhere that American troops are stationed. We are not undergoing massive casualties. We're not suffering the kind of casualties that we had earlier in the war. So, the idea that we cannot sustain a 2,500-troop presence in Afghanistan in order to prevent the Taliban from coming back into power, inviting Al-Qaeda back in, creating options for the Islamic State to come in and set up safe havens as well. It's just so shortsighted. I literally don't understand it.

Danielle Pletka: Well, I want to get to our conversation. But I always think it's an interesting day when I start it with lead editorial, "Biden takes the easy way out of Afghanistan. The likely result is disaster." In my inbox, I have a press release from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, slamming the President's decision on Afghanistan. When Mitch McConnell and the Washington Post agree, maybe it's a moment that the Biden administration ought to open its ears and end its politicking over our national security. We've got a great guest to talk about this today. Served in Afghanistan. He served in Iraq in the Air Force, and he is a member of Congress representing . Adam Kinzinger was elected actually in 2010 from the 11th district. He is the kind of guy that we often call a great American. He joined the Air Force in 2003, earned his pilot's wings, piloted a Stratotanker, flew missions in South America and , Iraq,

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5 Afghanistan. He switched to surveillance aircraft, and then for reasons that are best known to himself, he decided to get into politics.

Marc Thiessen: To enter enemy territory.

Danielle Pletka: Exactly, so here's our interview.

Marc Thiessen: Well, Congressman, welcome to the podcast.

Rep. Kinzinger: Nice, good to be with you.

Marc Thiessen: Excellent. Well, so you are a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. You served combat tours in both countries. It seems like we're repeating history again. took charge of the Iraq withdrawal on the advice of Lloyd Austin, who said that ISIS wasn't really a serious threat, and that turned out to be a mistake. Now he's president. Lloyd Austin is Secretary of Defense, and they seem to be repeating history in Afghanistan. As a veteran of both wars, first, tell me how you feel as a veteran, and then also as a congressman.

Rep. Kinzinger: It's sadness, surreal. I mean, Iraq was so predictable. We didn't know it would be called ISIS eventually, but we knew that there would be a resurrection of terrorism and we had to go back and fight it. We're back again with a bigger footprint than we even had there, that we could have maintained. This'll be the same thing.

Rep. Kinzinger: I think what's more tragic about Afghanistan is there's an active war going on there that is borne by the Afghan people. The Afghan people, something like over 85%, want the US and NATO to stay. They don't see us as an occupying power, we're there as a partner. All these people that talk about this endless war, I don't think they understand warfare, because it's not a war. It is a peacekeeping operation. This is a train and advise operation. We have these going on still, for instance, in Kosovo.

Rep. Kinzinger: But this eagerness to just end it for end its sake, I just don't get it, except that political promises sometimes overrule even what America's role in the world and foreign policy mean. I get that people are tired of it. What are you tired of? You're probably tired of just hearing about it on the news. Fine, I understand that. But the reality is once you leave, the Afghan government will fall apart, and we will have to go back. Or we're just going to have to accept that terrorists can have a safe haven everywhere, not to mention exploiting the critical minerals of Afghanistan and all the other things that come along.

Danielle Pletka: On the one hand, as you rightly describe, this has really morphed into something of a peacekeeping operation. But that said, the Taliban remain in the country. The Taliban do continue to support Al-Qaeda, notwithstanding the efforts of previous administrations to find a way to negotiate our way out. For those people, and you can guess how much sympathy Marc and I have for the endless war crowd, but let's just argue from their perspective for a second. It will have been 20 years since 9/11. We have been in Afghanistan all those years. We've been with our NATO allies operating yes, at up tempo and low tempo, but we

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6 really haven't delivered a stable and peaceful Afghanistan that we can leave. Understanding that, shouldn't we just be washing our hands of the place and saying "Aloha?"

Rep. Kinzinger: Yeah, I think it's a compelling argument until people look at the reality that Afghanistan is struggling, and they're going to probably struggle for a lot longer. But let's think about one thing that hasn't happened in 20 years, we have not had an attack on US soil that was planned and born out of Afghanistan. Sometimes it's the success of, whether it's airport screening, right, or whether it's counter- terrorism operations, or whether it's community policing, you can never quantify activities that didn't happen because of those actions.

Rep. Kinzinger: But what you can do is look at the past and say, "Yep, Taliban still exists." They have not changed their aims. They've, in fact, made the decision to stop negotiating now, because of this announcement. We look at what happened when the US surged in Afghanistan, and President Obama said in the same breath that we'd be out in 18 months. You know how that works. So, the problem is you can be a victim of your own success, and I think that's where we are now. Again, you think about the 50 or sometimes 60, 70, 100 Afghan soldiers that are killed almost daily fighting the Taliban and taking on this war, and they are emboldened by a small footprint of the US.

Rep. Kinzinger: Here's the other thing that's really tragic in all this. Our NATO allies are far more lean-ahead on this than we are. When has that ever happened before, when NATO has actually been the one pulling us? And the other thing is this, at a time when we are talking about the challenges in Iran, we're talking about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, we're talking about an increasingly aggressive China, what message does this send around the world? It sends a message of US retreat.

Rep. Kinzinger: The Taliban have always said, "America has the weapons," or "America has the toys, we have the time." We're proving that out. And if now the response, for instance, to Russian provocations in Ukraine is US stiffly worded messages, maybe a couple of sanctions, but no military action for instance, then what does that tell China, who is the ultimate aim in what we need to be taking on? It's a bad message all around. Once again, the United States engages in a war, gets people on their side, and leaves them out to dry. It's really a sad commentary. I have been shocked that this decision was made, since I found out about it yesterday, and I just can't understand it. Joe Biden, with the stroke of a pen, will have accomplished every wish of Rand Paul and President Trump.

Marc Thiessen: The other thing is the choice of the date of September 11th, 20 years after the war. He looks at that and thinks, "That makes sense. I need to bookend the war at 20 years." That turns 9/11 into a victory for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Our day of retreat is the day that we were attacked 20 years earlier.

Rep. Kinzinger: My wife, she's a comms expert, and we were talking about this yesterday after I had the call with the administration. I was like, "What was this about?" Same thing with her, at what filter does it go through where you say, "Hey, a great time to be out of Afghanistan is the 20th anniversary of 3,000 dead Americans from something that was planned out of Afghanistan." I get it if you want to leave. The

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7 decision, I'm going to totally disagree with it, but it's especially insulting to make the 20th anniversary of 9/11 the date. There's no point to it. I guarantee you, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are celebrating in their caves today, and they're going to be having an extra celebration with extra cake on 9/11. It's really incredible.

Danielle Pletka: I think one of the most interesting things about this is you just slammed Joe Biden, and in the same breath, you slammed and Rand Paul. This is not a partisan problem. Donald Trump desperately wanted us to get out from Afghanistan with exactly the same mindless rationale that Joe Biden is exhibiting.

Danielle Pletka: Now, you actually spent more time in service in Iraq. I think it's important for us to remind people what happened, because we've seen this movie. We know how it ends. In 2011, things had basically eased up in Iraq where you fought, where a lot of American soldiers sacrificed their lives. Without re-litigating Iraq one way or the other, things were pretty smooth in 2011 when Barack Obama decided to withdraw, and handed off to his then vice president the responsibility for overseeing that. What happened, and is there any chance that Afghanistan could be different?

Rep. Kinzinger: I guess there is a chance. It's interesting, because if you look back at President Obama's speech, he said, "We're leaving behind a stable and free Iraq." Right? Something like that. I remember, my time came during the surge, so I went in '08 at really the height of the surge, and then '09 when we were seeing that it was clearly successful. My experiences in those two years were vastly different. In fact, that's the reason I ran for Congress was because President Obama had won and said, "We're getting out of Iraq." And I'm like, "It's going to be an epic mistake."

Rep. Kinzinger: Well, here's where we are in Afghanistan. Is there a chance it could be different? Possibly. I mean, the devil is going to be in the details, of what is a withdrawal? What does State Department security forces look like? All those kinds of detailed questions. But the reality is when you talk about things like women's rights, and you talk about all these things that are very important, you cannot have any of that without security. Nothing. Security is the very bottom of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, maybe right around food and water. The second you deprive security anywhere, people go to base emotions. So, women's rights won't matter anymore, the right to vote won't matter anymore. The generation of people, basically my age and younger in the civil society in Afghanistan that are trying to change everything there, they'll be run out of town and we'll be back to where we were.

Rep. Kinzinger: This isn't Vietnam. This isn't 500,000 troops, where 100 are dying a day. We look back at Vietnam and say how we executed that and how we left was a massive mistake. This is 2,500 troops, right? This is 5,000 NATO partner troops. This is nothing like Vietnam. To do this, I don't get. But I think the details in terms of can Afghanistan be different, the devil will be in the details. I have a hard time seeing, though, how the withdrawal of troops is going to do anything to make a better future for Afghanistan.

Rep. Kinzinger: The other ultimate thing about this too, at a time when we're going into negotiating with Iran, the Iran nuclear deal, and we now have said, "Look, the

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8 Taliban aren't abiding by the deal they agreed to." Big shock, right? "So, we're just going to leave." What is that going to do when we go to the table with Iran? What's that going to do when we go to the table with Russia and Ukraine? What's that going to do when we go to the table with China? What's that going to do when we're trying to talk about China coming into climate change issues? All they're going to say is "The US is desperate for agreements." That's exactly what happened in Iran, and that's what's happening here in Afghanistan. We all know it. Everybody sees through it, and you can put whatever spin you want on it, but it doesn't matter.

Marc Thiessen: Congressman, to play devil's advocate, there's a lot of people out there who will listen to what you just said about women's rights in Afghanistan, and they'll say, "Yeah, we wish there were women's rights in Afghanistan and all the rest of it, but we don't need Americans dying for women's rights in Afghanistan. The reason we send our troops around the world is to protect the American homeland and protect American interests. Why do we still need to be in Afghanistan 20 years after 9/11? Why should my son or my daughter risk their lives in the mountains of Afghanistan? Not for women's rights, because I'm not willing to get my son or daughter up for women's rights. I'm willing to take that risk if it means that they might not carry out another attack on the homeland." Why is that a real threat?

Rep. Kinzinger: Yeah, I think that's an important point. I think that is the ultimate reason for the US to ever engage anywhere, in self-interest, right? With the rare exception, if you have something like Rwanda, a massive genocide that's preventable, something like that. We need to stand for human rights, but US military engagement should be limited, generally, to what's in our self-interest. Here's why Afghanistan is in our self-interest, because we were attacked, quite honestly. We have learned that using a small footprint of American military, like the campaign against ISIS, like we have in Afghanistan, can actually pay off in massive dividends

Rep. Kinzinger: But I also think we have to get existential for a moment and think back to, at the end of World War II, you actually had a generation of war fatigue. That was real war fatigue. The economy was revolutionized, many, many men and women died on behalf of the United States. And at that time, you could have brought everybody home from Europe, said Europe deals with something, but we stayed engaged. And ultimately three generations later through our example and through our posture, we destroyed the Soviet Union and brought freedom to millions. And this is where I believe that the US mission in the world is to be that example of self-governance, to use our power judiciously, but also in a revolutionary way to change the world we live in because it benefits us both in not being attacked here at home, both in creating allies that you can't recruit enemies out of.

Rep. Kinzinger: ll make it really quick, where you saw what a kid from University of Illinois did through USAID, revolutionize this entire village and their economy by just teaching them some ag principles. And you'll never recruit an enemy of the United States out of that. Where freedom reigns, you don't find enemies. And so, plus the fact that you look at US engagement in the world, this is how I would always counter people like Rand Paul, who's not a serious person, is to say,

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9 "Look, bring all the boys home, who cares what happens to the rest of the world." Our entire manufacturing economy was built because of our engagement in the world, because in Japan and in Europe, all the manufacturing was destroyed. We were the country that inherited that, that's why you had this massive middle-class and manufacturing growth in the US.

Rep. Kinzinger: Our involvement in the world is not just a morally good thing too, but it also helps us to write rules and receive things economically that benefit us. I can get spiritual about it, but the reality is involvement in Afghanistan, it's not 100,000 troops, we are invited, we're wanted there, keeps us safe, and also keeps us in a moral position to make future decisions.

Danielle Pletka: Let's talk for a second about where we've gone wrong. So, we know now looking back what the mistakes were, or at least some of the mistakes were in the 1990s, that allowed Al-Qaeda to build out and to plan massive operations against us and ultimately to successfully attack us. And that's why we went into Afghanistan was because of 9/11. That's why, more tangentially, we went into Iraq. Since that time, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have basically remained in Afghanistan. ISIS has grown and then been pushed back in Iraq; it's spread to Syria. We now see both ISIS and Al-Qaeda and related groups spreading like wildfire across Africa, Yemen. This is a big and a growing problem. Haven't we made strategic mistakes in Afghanistan? I mean, I understand that winning may not be achievable.

Marc Thiessen: Losing is.

Rep. Kinzinger: Yeah, it is.

Danielle Pletka: Yes. And also pursuing the same strategy and expecting a different outcome seems to me to be a failure, that's what Fred Kagan talks about when he talks about Afghanistan. Doesn't the military own some share of this? And how do we look at these challenges going forward?

Rep. Kinzinger: I think certainly the military owns some share of this. I mean, think about even very basic things like the Air Force, I'm an Air Force guy. We've burned the life out of F-16s, flying six-hour CAPs over Afghanistan, over and over again. Why don't we have fighter units that also have a light attack mission that they have attached? They can go fly cheaper aircraft, do it without burning the life of the F- 16 and be more effective. Because that is a basic example of how the military gets stuck in its bureaucratic inertia, the F-35 is an example of that. I like the F-35, we need it, but you can see the inertia with that. And that happens when it comes to combat operations. We know the whole infamous Operation Anaconda, where the army never communicated to the Air Force certain targets and vice versa, and that's when Osama bin Laden escaped.

Rep. Kinzinger: I think if we can do Afghanistan over again, maybe you go in with a different mission set up, we are going to kick the Taliban out of power and roll. But whatever those decisions are that we need to learn from are important. But I think also, an important point that's missed is in the last 20 years, you've seen, obviously during the Arab Spring, through the growth of these different groups similar to Al Qaeda, and people assume it's because the US involvement has kind

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10 of like struck the hornet's nest and spread over now. The reality is, just like political instability in the United States, a lot of this is related to the growth of information and the growth of the internet communication. It used to be in the past, Al-Qaeda in the mid-nineties, could recruit by meeting somebody in person and they're joining. Now they can go online and recruit somebody they've never met.

Rep. Kinzinger: So, I think a lot of this growth of extremism is not necessarily related to US policy. It's people with this goal from the beginning of time, now have the ability to recruit and broaden their horizons to do it. They have the same technology that the United States has. And so, the fight against extremism is a military fight, but it's also in the mind, it's empowering moderate Muslims, it's denying an opportunity like in Syria for a fertile breeding ground of recruiting jihadists, because they can go into the refugee camps and say, "The US did this to you." And so, it's a complicated problem that I think will be with us forever, but we have to think of it differently than we have over the last 20 years.

Danielle Pletka: Okay. Just a quick follow-up, though. Right, we do have to think about it differently. They've evolved. Have we evolved? Are we evolving? Or are we just waiting for another attack to galvanize us into action?

Rep. Kinzinger: I don't think we have evolved as fast as they have. We, of course our tactics, our technology, stuff like that has evolved. We have different drones, different weapons, right? But what hasn't is the understanding that it's multifaceted, right? It's more than just military, it's diplomatic to an extent, it's information, it's economics, right? It's taking moderate Muslims and empowering them to say, "Go actually, in your religion and fight against this kind of stuff." I don't think we've evolved properly. And quite honestly, when we disregard the human tragedy in Syria and stuff like that, we just create a worse problem.

Rep. Kinzinger: And by the way, the other quick thing, when you walk away like Donald Trump did, from obligations and you say that the caliphate has been defeated when it hasn't, that is exactly what these groups need. Or you leave Afghanistan, that's exactly what these groups need. Because they say, "Look, our prophecies say that we will defeat the great United States, we just defeated them." And you will see a surge of recruitment.

Marc Thiessen: So, we talked a little bit about the Iraq precedent that Biden is repeating history of just less than a decade ago in terms of the mistake here. But there's another precedent you can go back to in Afghanistan, which is in the 1980s. So, we got involved in Afghanistan and then in the 70s and 80s, because we were training Afghan fighters to fight the Soviet Union. And we succeeded in our mission and we drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and then we decided, well, what happens in Afghanistan really doesn't matter all that much to us, and so we sort of forgot about it. And the Taliban took over, terror and Islamic radicalism festered, and 20 years later or so, that came to hit us in New York and Washington. Are we destined to continue not learning the same lesson for now a third time in Afghanistan, is that where we're headed?

Rep. Kinzinger: I think sadly yeah. And again, you look at Afghanistan, there's a younger generation that is very committed to Western values, can that overcome, "What

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11 does the Afghan military and government do when we leave?" Those are all open questions. But I think if all that collapses, we certainly are. And again, as a country, we really have a choice. We can take the Rand Paul idea and say, Every product that we consume should be made in the United States. We should have no global trade, that sounds great when you're in front of a populist crowd, it's just not realistic. And if the world catches on fire, we don't care as long as we're fine. That will fail, but you have that choice, or you have to make the decision. We are a superpower. We are the superpower. We can either engage in the world or not, and if we choose to engage, there are certain burdens that come with that.

Rep. Kinzinger: The burdens of having to stay in Afghanistan, for instance, the burdens of a certain amount of world order that is reliant upon us. Or we just accept that somebody else is going to step up to that, Russia or China or whoever else, and we have to live by their rules. And so, it's always been a frustration for me with Republicans. I've been a Republican since I was a kid, but when I got elected, I thought we were the party that held strong to this kind of idea of American strength around the world. And instead, I see very malleable Republicans that change based on the winds.

Rep. Kinzinger: Ted Cruz opposes the strike in Syria because he says we're going to be Al- Qaeda's air force, and then he turns around and attacks Barack Obama for not acting in Syria. It's like this have it all stuff when we need some consistency. But that's a real thing that, it's hard to have the conversation on a 30-second soundbite, but what do we want to be as America? Do we want to be just a player in the world? Do we want to be the player in the world? And think of the sacrifices if we're just a player.

Danielle Pletka: I proposed Senator Cruz, he threw his support behind President Biden's decision to surrender, as one of our friends called it.

Rep. Kinzinger: He's so very bipartisan, of course he did.

Danielle Pletka: But this, and this is my exit question which you touched on, Donald Trump liked to call people like us globalists. But the reality is that whether it's the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, or apparently Biden quarter of the Democratic Party, or it's Senator Cruz or, at times, Senator Paul, Senator Mike Lee, and others, the reality is that it seems like the constituency for America doing less in the world is growing. And the constituency for American leadership in the world is shrinking. As you think about the politics of this, and you think about not just your party, but your colleagues on the House side, but also on the Senate side, where do you see this going?

Rep. Kinzinger: Well, I think it's going to take some tragedy to wake us up again. I mean, if you think about Iraq... It was funny, I was actually the first member of Congress, I think I even beat McCain to the punch, to call for bombing ISIS. And even before they were called ISIS, we thought it was just Al-Qaeda resurgent, which it basically was, I was the first member of Congress to call that. And I had so many colleagues that said I just wanted to start a war. I got the cool nickname I like, Adam Bombzinger, but then, all of a sudden, six months later, all my colleagues are attacking Obama for not attacking ISIS earlier, because what happened? We started to see heads cut off, we saw the tragedy of ISIS and we changed. I'm

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12 afraid that that's going to be what it has to take again. And the tragedy in Afghanistan, the self-inflicted wound of this is there's no massive marches down the street of people calling for an Afghanistan withdrawal.

Rep. Kinzinger: If you take a poll, probably most people will say, "Yeah, we should leave Afghanistan." But it would be like number 20 on their list of concerns. I've actually been impressed; I've been very impressed that the American people have been able and willing to stay with Afghanistan as long as they have. So now you have, in Biden's mind, a solution, and a bad solution, in search of a crisis or a problem that doesn't exist. This isn't Vietnam. And so, we have to continue, I think, to preach the good word of American leadership. We haven't really, since W. and since Reagan, had any good spokesman for what American strength is.

Marc Thiessen: I was talking and speaking out against globalism years ago because it was a sovereignty debate, right? This was, should we put our seed power to international institutions and super national institutions? Or should we protect American sovereignty? And the argument was, "No, we need America to be a strong and independent, powerful nation too, because the Pax Americana is a way to go, not putting our trust in the United Nations." Somehow the globalist versus nationalist argument has been turned on its head, and it's a whole different topic.

Rep. Kinzinger: Yeah. I agree 100% with you. And it's turned into though now, if you want to be a member of NATO or have any trade, you're a globalist and that's not what's happening at all.

Marc Thiessen: George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all campaigned against nation building. I mean, all three of them. In fact, Obama and Trump used the exact same phrase. "We need to do nation building here at home." The fact is we're not doing nation building in Afghanistan. We're not even doing combat for the most part. It's as you said, a train and equip mission. But it's caught up in a larger argument about the freedom agenda, which is kind of what Bush called his view of world expanding and freedom. And that's kind of out of vogue right now, but 20 years ago, we learned that the lack of freedom in Afghanistan could hit us in the streets of New York and Washington. And we just had another reminder of that with the pandemic, which is that the lack of freedom in Communist China, the lack of accountable government that's answerable to its people, that tells the truth, that's transparent has led to a global pandemic that killed half a million Americans and millions of people around the world. And we're still struggling with that.

Marc Thiessen: I know it's a big exit question, but where is the freedom agenda and how do we bring it back?

Rep. Kinzinger: That's a great question. You look at the inconsistencies of people that would talk about the freedom agenda, and Lindsey Graham kind of inherited the mantle of John McCain and then under Trump basically shed that mantle. So, I don't know where it is. It's not in a good place. I think there's this belief that dictatorships work. They don't. I think in some areas you maybe need a strong leader. Like if you look at Jordan, you have a strong leader, but there's still an outlet for Parliament. Democracy doesn't have to look like the US, and please God, not

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

13 since January 6th, but dictators don't work. They're not effective. People don't like to be oppressed. It doesn't matter where you're from. And the only other option is self-governance and it's messy, it's not pretty, it's costly.

Rep. Kinzinger: But that's the choice. You either have a dictatorship that fails in human tragedy, where you have a civil war, like Syria, that has affected the world, or you have a messy democracy, like, for instance, the country of Georgia, which has difficulties, but is not in a civil war. It's a choice we have to make because I tell you what, bringing all the boys home and ignoring the rest of the world didn't work in the 20s, won't work today. It's the part of living in a fallen world and having the burden of leadership, which the US does have, that we benefit from greatly. It's going to be a tough battle going forward. But look, the lazy, lazy argument is to go to people and say you want to just bring everybody home, and you know you're lying. You know that's not leadership, but at least you might get reelected.

Danielle Pletka: Well, on that depressing note thank you.

Rep. Kinzinger: I like puppies. That's not depressing. Right?

Danielle Pletka: We all love puppies. Thank you both for your service and for waving that flag of freedom. I won't speak for Marc, but as a relentless globalist and a ruthless cosmopolitan, I believe firmly that America is better off when we are in the world and we are leading and helping people as well. So, thanks for that. God knows there aren't enough of us.

Rep. Kinzinger: You bet. Thanks guys. Good chatting with you.

Marc Thiessen: Okay, Dany, you're not a globalist and you know it. You are what we used to call an internationalist, which is a very different animal than being a globalist. I don't believe you think that we should be handing over our foreign policy to the United Nations and all these super national institutions. You and I are internationalists, which means that we believe in big North American leadership in the world, forward-leaning foreign policy, US presence around the world and all the rest that, and that is what Joe Biden is rejecting. He's not rejecting globalism, he's rejecting American internationalism, and he's rejecting the legacy of one of the great democratic statesmen of the 20th century, Harry Truman. Harry Truman is the one who made the decision after World War II to keep US troops in Germany and Italy as a buffer against the Soviet Union and the Cold War. He's the one who decided to go into Korea and prevent the communist takeover of that country and then leave troops in there.

Marc Thiessen: And our troops have basically been in the strategic footprint that Harry Truman established since the 1950s until today. Imagine what the world would look like if we had not followed Harry Truman's philosophy and withdrawn all of our troops from those places. They'd be speaking Russian and Chinese in Pyongyang and Berlin. And the reality is that is what Joe Biden is rejecting, this model of American forward leadership around the world, the US presence, the security umbrella we provided there that kept the peace, allowed democratic allies and pro-American governments to emerge and has benefited us in a way in terms of trade and wealth and prosperity. And that's what he's rejecting in Afghanistan today.

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14 Danielle Pletka: What surprises me the most about this, and it shouldn't surprise me because we haven't had the same Senator Joe Biden since the Obama administration, but Joe Biden used to be that guy, used to be that Truman-esque Democrat. Was a man who supported NATO expansion, was a man who smacked down his fellow Democrats who didn't want to stand up for the US in the world, who didn't want to stand up for freedom. Joe Biden was a guy who made his fellow Democrats who just mouthed words about democracy and women's rights but never actually believed in those things, he was one of those guys in the Senate who actually put his money where his mouth was, and he supported American leadership that protected the values that he held here at home. That guy is gone.

Marc Thiessen: I don't think he remembers that guy, literally.

Danielle Pletka: He may not, or he may just be drifting on the tide that is carrying his party to Vermont. I don't know, but it is a big mistake. And what Adam said and what we asked him about at the time is exactly right. What happens to us is we engage in these self-indulgent exercises in which we say, "We're going to bring our boys home and we don't care how the Taliban or the Chinese or the Iranians interpret it. I need to win the next election, damn it." And the only thing that gets us back is World War I or Pearl Harbor.

Marc Thiessen: Or 9/11.

Danielle Pletka: Or 9/11. And you would like to think that the most powerful country in the world with 100 years of this experience would say to itself, "Hmm, maybe we'd like to make low level investments beforehand so that we don't have to go through this catastrophe, this costing lives again." But the answer is now, "No, we don't want to do that. We don't want to maintain our profile abroad. We just want to invite the terrorists and the bad guys to remind us that we're America because we can't be bothered reminding ourselves."

Marc Thiessen: And by the way, that can happen faster than people realize. I mean the withdrawal from Iraq, which it was within very short order then all of a sudden, we were surging more troops into Iraq and Syria in order to tamp down the ISIS caliphate that emerged because of that catastrophic decision to withdraw prematurely. So, they created ISIS. Donald Trump used to say that Obama was the founder of ISIS. That's not far from the truth. They were down to a few hundred people when George W. Bush left, because thanks to the surge, Obama inherited a pacified Iraq where the terrorists were largely defeated, and he withdrew and allowed them to regain strength and come back. And it took us years and billions and hundreds of billions of dollars and the sacrifice of more American troops to go back in and knock them down again.

Marc Thiessen: And I fear the same thing might happen in Afghanistan sooner than we think, putting aside the whole issue of whether they can use it as a safe haven to attack us on the homeland. So, we just don't learn the lessons of history. It's just incredible. And you said it in the intro, it's a lack of leadership. The American people, I've always felt, they're not globalists. They're not isolationists. They're reluctant internationalists. They don't want to go out in the world searching for monsters to destroy, but if you make the case to them that America's interests require a deployment of troops or a military engagement of some kind and you

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15 convince them of that, they're willing to do it. And nobody has been telling them for now two administrations, actually three administrations when you add Biden's in, of both parties, why we're there, why it matters, what the benefits are, what the consequences of defeat would be and what the consequences of success are. And when you don't do that, then it shouldn't be surprising.

Marc Thiessen: But even so, there's no groundswell to withdraw from Afghanistan. This is a completely self-imposed thing. They're marching on the street and rioting for a lot of reasons, Dany, but it's not because of Afghanistan today. So, I just don't get it. It's so short sighted. It's so potentially catastrophic. I'm at a loss for words.

Danielle Pletka: Well, you're never at a loss for words. But I know. Hey guys, if you disagree, see things differently, think we should have appreciated a different perspective, let us know. Write to us. Don't hesitate. We'll write back. And thanks for listening. We really appreciate every single one of you joining us for these weekly rant fests.

Marc Thiessen: Take care.

Danielle Pletka: Bye.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org