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Home , Elliot Ackerman, Marc Thiessen, Ryan Crocker, Still Processing, Zalmay Khalilzad

WTH is going on with the retreat from ? Amb. on

withdrawal, and the consequences for US national security

Episode #115 | September 1, 2021 | , Marc Thiessen, and Amb. Ryan Crocker

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, What the Hell Is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on?

Marc Thiessen: I've never been more disgusted in my life with what's happening with what America is doing than I am right now watching the last planes leaving , leaving behind American citizens, thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to help us, the blood of 13 dead Americans and hundreds of Afghan civilians. It is the most shameful thing I have witnessed in my entire career in Washington. I'm shifting between absolute abject pain and rage as I watch this happen. Dany, what are your thoughts?

Danielle Pletka: It is the worst thing in the world that a country like ours, we've suffered defeats, we've made mistakes, we've done terrible things. Never, I hope willfully, but by mistake, we've done terrible things. And we have betrayed allies before. We've not done enough for people who need us. We've let down the Kurds in , we've let down the Syrian people, but we have never actually gone in and rescued a group of people who in turn sacrificed all for us and for our security as Afghans did, because make no mistake, we were not in Afghanistan for the Afghan people. We were there because of 9/11, because of what that country represents to jihadists and the opportunity to plan and operationalize attacks against us, gone in and abandoned them with the most disgraceful, I would say shameful, but it's shameless abandon. And worse yet, we have done so with epic, epic incompetence.

Marc Thiessen: Let me pick up the point on incompetence. So , my newspaper, reported this Sunday, the lie that Americans have been told, and we didn't know it was a lie until now, look, nobody expected the to reach Kabul as quickly as it did. We were taken by surprise and so we were stuck in this situation where we had to collapse to the airport and depend on the Taliban and

2 the to provide checkpoints and security in Kabul while we evacuated people. And that's the situation we found ourselves in that was beyond our control. Every one of you has heard that. It's an absolute lie. The Washington Post reported that when the Taliban reached the gates of Kabul on August 15th, they had no intention of entering the city.

And they had a meeting with General McKenzie, who's the combatant commander at CENTCOM in and Mullah Baradar, who's the leader of the Taliban, in which the Taliban said that they would not enter the city if the US agreed to secure the city and asked, Either you do it or you have to allow us to do it. So what that meant was that we had the opportunity, the Taliban would have stayed outside of Kabul, allowed the US military to secure the green zone, to secure the road to the airport, to set up its own checkpoints, and to manage this evacuation without having to depend on the Taliban and Haqqani Network for security. We would have been able to get everybody out without having to bypass Taliban checkpoints and all the rest of it, and we told them, No, that's okay. We'll just take the airport.

Danielle Pletka: In other words, the blood of all of these people is on the hands of our leaders who decided to hand off to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, two organizations that have been devoted to hosting, supporting, and indeed training people to kill Americans.

Marc Thiessen: And just so people understand what the Haqqani Network is, because that might not be a household word for everybody. The Haqqani Network is an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization, whose leader is the number two leader of the Taliban and has a $5 million FBI reward on his head for information to his whereabouts. We are depending on him, the Haqqani Network run by this man for security, for the checkpoints leading to the airport. We depended on him to stop the suicide bombers from getting through. So what you have been told by your government is that that was a fait accompli that we were handed. We had no choice in the matter. It was not a fait accompli. It was an American choice. We decided to hand Kabul to the Taliban because we didn't want to send in the troops. didn't want to send the troops in necessary to secure the airport.

He later had to send 6,000 troops as the situation deteriorated, but he didn't want to do it at the time. And so we invited the Taliban into Kabul. Everything that we've seen, as you said, Dany, the Afghans chasing down and falling from American aircraft, the scenes of desperation outside the airport, the Afghan translators hiding in their basements from Taliban thugs, the US veterans who have gone out and had to plan their own rescue missions for these people, because the commander in chief wouldn't authorize them, and yes, the death of 13 Americans.

Danielle Pletka: And that was all a choice.

Marc Thiessen: That was all a choice. It is the worst abdication of presidential responsibility I've ever seen in my lifetime. And you know what, we impeached for a horrible phone call with the president of Ukraine. This is worse. This is an absolute abdication of his responsibilities as commander in chief. I'm absolutely

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3 appalled.

Danielle Pletka: Well, it gets worse. This morning, a real fine piece of reporting came out from . I want to read everybody the lead of it by Lara Seligman, one of their suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside International Airport, senior military leaders gathered for the Pentagon's daily morning update on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Speaking from a secure video conference room, Defense Secretary instructed more than a dozen of the department's top leaders to make preparations for an imminent mass casualty eve to get ready for it.

According to the story, during the meeting, Mark Milley, who's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, warned of significant intelligence indicating that ISIS was planning a complex attack. Commanders calling in from Kabul relayed that the Abbey Gate where American citizens had been told to gather in order to gain entrance was quote, "highest risk." And Austin added, "I don't believe people get the incredible amount of risk on the ground." On a separate call that afternoon, the commanders detailed a plan to close Abbey Gate, but the Americans decided to keep it open longer than they wanted. American troops were still processing entrance at the airport at Abbey Gate at roughly 6:00 PM in Kabul, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest there, killing nearly 200 people.

So our Pentagon was planning for a mass casualty event that they were sure was going to happen, knew where it was going to happen and they left the Abbey Gate open. I'm sorry. What has happened to this country? What has happened to our leadership? And by the way, if this had happened under Donald Trump, would there not be people left, right, and center resigning? Did not , the Secretary of Defense, resign over plans to pull out troops from Syria? Where are the resignations? Where are the standards of all these people who would never hesitate to criticize the previous administration, but apparently have absolutely no compunction when it comes to this leadership?

Marc Thiessen: Joe Biden is ultimately responsible because he's the commander in chief. As he says, the buck stops with him, but he is surrounded by a team of sycophants and enablers who, remember, we'd always hear in the Trump day is about the adults in the room, right? The people who are willing to push back on the president and give him sound advice. And to his credit, he did hire people who he disagreed with like , who he absolutely disagreed with on a lot of foreign policy issues, H.R. McMaster, Mattis, and others, and there were people in the room to push back. And sometimes he listened, sometimes he didn't. He didn't listen enough in my view, but he did. We still have 900 troops in Syria, even though he wanted to pull everybody out. And that's because adults in the room pushed back and convinced him to do it. There are no adults in the room today. Where are the adults in the room? This is as much on Milley and Austin and General McKenzie-

Danielle Pletka: Our commander in Afghanistan.

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

4 Marc Thiessen: Our commander in Afghanistan. The one who met with Mullah Baradar and told under orders from Joe Biden, we don't know. But where are the people, as you say, who are willing to put their stars on the table and say, Mr. President, I can't carry this order out? You're the commander in chief, but I can't carry out your orders, too irresponsible. No one's pushing back on this guy.

Danielle Pletka: No one is pushing back and no one is pushing back about the values that they supposedly hold dear. I'm sorry, I thought we cared about human rights and democracy. I thought we cared about women's rights. So folks, I will say this. Usually you hear Marc and I bickering, trying to bring, let's say different perspectives on things. But in this instance, I'm sorry, there's no room. But I will tell you one thing, in Washington, DC, I have, and I know Marc has talked to everyone in our community, everyone who works on these issues, everyone who cares about America in the world, everybody who cares about democracy and about freedom. And that means we have talked to a ton of Republicans and Democrats. I don't have a single person in my rather wide circle of acquaintance who is not ashamed and appalled at what has happened. Some have been more silent than others because of the politics behind it. But I know nobody who can make excuses for this. This is a travesty.

Marc Thiessen: Because you can't defend the indefensible.

Danielle Pletka: That is exactly right.

Marc Thiessen: It's just that simple. And I mean, truth be told, he's getting beat up a little less vigorously, but Biden is getting beat up on MSNBC and CNN, just like he is on , Washington Post, and New York Times. When Biden's getting criticized by MSNBC, it ought to be a wake-up call that you're doing something wrong.

Danielle Pletka: But I don't think they've woken up. I don't think they're hearing it. They're defending this.

Marc Thiessen: No. And they keep doubling down on stupid. They keep making more and more dumb decisions. Let's stop ranting because we can do that for a long time and turn to our guest and let him rant.

Danielle Pletka: So I'm sure our guest is well-known to almost everybody. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who's a good and a dear friend and somebody who Marc and I hold in enormously high regard. He's a career ambassador in the US Foreign Service. He was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And as I've joked with him, he has been ambassador to pretty much everywhere terrible. He was ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, , Syria, Kuwait- that's not so bad- and

Marc Thiessen: Can't he get like the Turks and Caicos or something? At some point, you got to reward people.

Danielle Pletka: I didn't say this while Ryan was still on the call, but of course his horrible secret--

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5 he liked it. He was a man in service to his country when he was in the Foreign Service and he continued that service, he became the Dean of Texas A&M's George Bush School of Government and Public Service. And he is just a thoughtful and a wonderful friend and better still, a friend to all of the people with whom he served as ambassador in all of these countries.

Marc Thiessen: Here's our interview.

Marc Thiessen: Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Ryan Crocker: Thanks for having me.

Marc Thiessen: So as we record this, the last US flights are taking off from Kabul airport. The evacuation is almost done. As someone who's been so involved in Afghanistan over these last 20 years, what are you thinking?

Ryan Crocker: To be honest, I think I'm still in a state of shock. Events have moved so precipitously, generating so many actual and potential consequences it's hard to center myself. I do believe I am witnessing potentially the worst national security disaster to the in decades.

Danielle Pletka: Ryan, I don't know where to start. I'll be honest with you. Like you, but for less time and less intimately than you, I've been involved with our Afghanistan policy and our counter-terrorism policy for decades. We have made a lot of bad decisions. We made bad decisions during the eighties when we supported bad choices in Afghanistan. We've made mistakes, but I have not seen us willfully choose something like this. You had that wonderful piece in , and Marc has written as have I, so I want to start out on a different tack. Was there a good reason for Joe Biden to have made this decision?

Ryan Crocker: In a sense, what troubles me the most about all of this is that this was not the work of one president. This was the work of two presidents of diametrically opposed viewpoints on absolutely everything. And for them to converge in a perfect storm is deeply and doubly chilling. When the Trump administration announced that they were going to commence talk with the Taliban, but without the government of Afghanistan, I said immediately that these are not peace talks. This is a surrender negotiation. We are surrendering, we're done. And the Afghan government will pay the price. And I can take you through it all, but you know it as well as I. Forcing the government to release 5, 000 Taliban prisoners who immediately joined the fight was horrific.

Do you wonder why the Afghan army quit? They were fighting for their individual lives because that's all that was left. Now what Joe Biden did, he doubled down on it. It is true, he was dealt a very bad hand, but he took the cards and played to the results we see today. We're starting to see voices come out in the administration saying, well, the Trump deal with the Taliban is that they would not shoot at us as long as we got out, and that Biden had no choice except to accept that. Well, that's appalling. He had every choice. And the fact that he just kind of knuckled under on this without thinking about the ownership of this he was taking and how he would implement it is beyond stupidity. It leaves me groping for words. Whatever happened to leadership? Whatever happened to

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6 vision, whatever happened to working with NATO partners? All of that got kicked forwards. And now we're looking at the consequences. Biden owns this thing. He embraced Trump's policy. He embraced Trump's envoy. So it's his show right now and it is just horrific.

Marc Thiessen: Well, wouldn't you say he made it worse? I mean, yes, Trump's deal with the Taliban was horrible, but the Taliban violated it, didn't they? Part of the deal was they weren't supposed to take the capital. They weren't supposed to march. They were supposed to have some sort of a negotiation with the government to form a coalition government. I mean, the whole march on Kabul was a violation of the agreement. If they violated the agreement, why were we bound to follow the agreement?

Ryan Crocker: Well, look, I mean, it's certainly clear to the two of you and even most, I think, most Americans who don't have the intense focus you've always brought to these things. The Taliban was going to say any damn thing we wanted to hear because they knew once we're gone, we're not coming back. And again, you said that publicly, I said that publicly. In a sense, it's a surrender negotiation that doesn't even need to be negotiated. So we can stand up and say, well, you violated the provisions of Article 3 (8) small b. That plane has flown, as we say. It is a disaster and national security disaster that two presidents and two parties bear responsibility for, and that makes it all the worse.

Marc Thiessen: So let me ask you about the news that broke this Sunday in the Washington Post. The big problem we've had over the last two weeks is that the Taliban came in and took over Kabul and so we're surrounded at the airport and we're depending on the Taliban and the Haqqani Network to do checkpoints through, which we have to get our people. And apparently a suicide bomber made it through those checkpoints and killed 13 American Marines. The Post reported on Sunday that the Taliban hadn't intended to enter Kabul on August 15th. And that there was a meeting between General McKenzie and Mullah Baradar in which Mullah Baradar said to him, Well, look, somebody's got to secure the city, if you're not going to do it, you have to allow us to do it, and basically gave us a choice to secure Kabul. They wouldn't have entered the city. And we told them, No, you take the city, we just need the airport. What is your thought on that?

Ryan Crocker: I have no visibility on, or access to, any privileged information. I'm not really on speaking terms with this administration, just as I was not on speaking terms with the previous administration. And as I look at that, that's pretty impressive. To be at such total odds with two different administrations, well, it is obviously a subject for a different conversation. So look, I have no doubt that the Taliban were as surprised as anyone at the situation they found themselves in where the armed forces had completely collapsed. There was no resistance anywhere. So that there was a scramble all around, I don't have any trouble believing that. I would be mildly surprised that Baradar would actually say such a thing to McKinsey. I mean, if I were him, I just would've done what they did anyway, go for the roses, get into the city, and then we can talk.

Danielle Pletka: So I want to talk to you about this collapse. We had Fred Kagan on last week to talk about this and we all know Fred very well. He laid out, I think very nicely, the

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

7 issues behind the trouble with the Afghan armed forces. And I don't think we need to rehearse them, but you were ambassador there, you know these folks pretty intimately. And the one thing that my inbox has been full of in the last week is hate mail from Afghan friends and sources and colleagues about Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, who reportedly, and again, I can't tell the difference between what really happened and what is Russian disinformation. The Russians first reported this, it has since been reported by others that Ghani bailed out of town, took suitcases upon suitcases and his family, and a ton of money, and has now resurfaced in the United Arab Emirates. And that, that was at least part of the problem with the acceleration of the collapse inside Kabul. What should we be thinking about Ghani? What should we understand?

Ryan Crocker: Well, to start, I think with your last point there, I've seen those reports too, multi- millions and millions and millions of dollars. What I think is imperative right now for the United States, for the international community, at least those elements who care about these things. We've got to find a way to freeze those funds, to track if they're already in the banking system and just get them frozen because somehow I don't think they are commensurate with the salary of the president of Afghanistan.

Danielle Pletka: That's probably true, but is this a surprise to you? We all know these guys because all of them were players in the exile community for many, many years. Is this credible reporting about Ghani?

Ryan Crocker: It's certainly to me, credible enough, to try to take some steps to secure it, at least until its providence is sorted out. Again, I suffered through this as ambassador 2011, 2012 after the Kabul Bank mess. And a hard fact is that in a fractured society without institutions and respect for the rule of law and means of enforcing that respect, this is what you get, steal while the stealing is good because you kind of know that you're not really on the road to peace and tranquility here for the future of the nation. And I certainly hope it's a lesson we have learned that, however justified even reconstruction efforts are, they're going to go badly off the rails, even if they're implemented because of fraud, because there are no protections and there is no respect in a society, again, that is being remade overnight, particularly when it's being remade overnight by foreigners.

Marc Thiessen: The Biden administration and President Biden personally has been basically trying to blame everybody, but himself. And one of the calumnies that he's put out there is that, well, the Afghan security forces, they folded, they weren't even willing to fight for their own country. And that if I was not going to withdraw our troops, then I would have had to send tens of thousands of Americans to fight somebody else's civil war. Could you take on both of those statements, because as I checked, I think 60,000 Afghans died in the last six and a half years fighting the Taliban.

Ryan Crocker: Yeah, the number I hear is 70,000, but you get the order of magnitude. Look, when I was ambassador, every week at International Security Assistance Force headquarters, there was a short, solemn ceremony. When the names of those killed in action were read out, we would always start, and sadly, during the time I was there, there was not one single week in which there was not at least one

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8 name, one American service member's name read. And sometimes as you know, a lot more. We would then be followed by coalition officers, obviously fewer casualties. The last person to the microphone was the Afghan military representative. He didn't read names. He just said a number, 137, 185. That was the number of security forces killed that week. And for President Biden to put all of this off on Afghan security forces who fought, bled, and died for their country is contemptible. It is absolutely contemptible. And again, what they were put through, they knew it was a corrupt system. Pretty hard to hide anything from privates and lance corporals in anybody's army.

And then of course, when the surrender negotiations began, when thanks to US pressure, 5,000 of the enemy were released to the battlefield. And then the United States says, we're gone. Of course, they crumbled. What was there for them to fight for? A president who has just absconded with the national treasury on a first-class trip to the United Arab Emirates? An ally that was supposed to have your back, that was supposed to be providing medevac support, logistical support, fire support from the air has said, it's gone and oh, by the way, as the contract stipulated, particularly for the Air Force, the American contractors go too. And so they did, leaving the Afghan Air Force with planes they could not possibly maintain. Should it have played out differently, yeah, in some dream world thing, they should have fought until the last man or whatever. But those troopers were betrayed by everyone at every level, multiple times, including us. And to pin it on them, as I said, is contemptible.

Marc Thiessen: And then the second part is this idea that the straw man, he builds up, that the alternative to this was that we would have to send tens of thousands of American troops on the front lines to fight the Taliban ourselves. I mean, as I understand it, the combat mission ended in 2015 and we were in a support role while the Afghans were doing the fighting and dying and our casualties were actually very low. Could we have maintained that position for a long time?

Ryan Crocker: And that's the tragedy within the tragedy. When I left Afghanistan in 2012, it was close to the peak of the surge, a little bit after. So about a hundred thousand troops on the ground. At that time, the Taliban held no provincial capitals. We steadily withdrew down that force going lower and lower so that when Obama left office, what was it, about 14,000, 15,000. And guess what? The Taliban held no provincial capitals. We got into the Trump years, the drawdowns continued. And then his shock announcement that he was going to cut 5,000 to 2,500, no consultation with the NATO allies.

Well, that unfolded. And at the end of it, if you will, the Taliban still held no provincial capitals. 2,500 was in the red zone. I don't think that was sustainable, and I don't second guess the senior officers who have to make these decisions, but say 5,000, say we bumped it up to 7,500. There would have been casualties, I don't think there's any question and no one wants to see that. But when you remember why we were there, 9/11, that's a pretty cheap insurance policy against another 9/11, a tiny fraction of what our troops were at the height of the surge and the thing is still holding together. So yes, he did have an alternative, which he does not seem to have considered. I don't know what the hot wash is going to show on this.

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

9 I would like to think that at least some in his administration stood up against his insane desire to implement Trump's God-awful policy. I guess we'll figure that out later. But yes, there was an alternative. This whole notion, and again, you guys know this better than anybody. It's stupid to talk about winning in Afghanistan, it's stupid to talk about victory in Afghanistan. You're managing a problem that can go on for a very long time, but managing it is a pretty good way, again, of ensuring that al Qaeda doesn't come back in under the Taliban wing and give us another 9/11.

Danielle Pletka: Ryan, I don't like talking about individuals generally speaking, unless there are people who've chosen to thrust themselves into the limelight, like the President of the United States.

Marc Thiessen: But she'll make an exception.

Danielle Pletka: But I'm about to make an exception. I'm going to ask you about an individual because he's someone who I've known for 30 plus, 35 years, so I suspect you too. And he's been at the heart of these negotiations with the Taliban. And I don't know whether we had a terrible negotiator, we had a terrible policy, we had a terrible president, we had an overly skilled adversary? But has been at the heart of this. He was ambassador there, but now he's been the Biden administration negotiator, the Trump administration negotiator. I don't get this whole thing. Is there something to understand about the role that these negotiations played?

Ryan Crocker: Well, there is, Dany. Again, once those negotiations begin, I think for a lot of us, it was no longer a question of if we pulled out and the whole enterprise goes down the drain, it was when. The Taliban had been saying for years that there would be happy to talk to the Americans any time, but they weren't going to talk to the puppets of the Americans. We caved on that point and once we did it, I think the outcome we got was guaranteed. Now, not the rapidity of the collapse, so forth and so on, but you could see where the end of the day, whenever it came, what it was going to bring. We gave up on the Afghan new government, Zal sat down with Baradar. Now, I don't have any information on this again from inside. Thank God. I have to assume that Zal did what President Trump wanted him to do. Now, when was it, the story leaked before it was announced on the total withdrawal. Was that, what June, July?

Danielle Pletka: Something like that.

Ryan Crocker: Yeah. So the administration made an effort to reach out to some folks. I was on

a clear signal, I think, to everybody, especially the Afghans themselves, where this was going. I don't know, again, whether Zal, how much was Zal, how much autonomy did he have in what he said and did, to what degree was he carrying out instructions? I don't know that, but he was the poster boy for what we've got now.

Marc Thiessen: Let's look forward. Describe what you see as the threat to the homeland today,

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

10 because as we all know, this is not Joe Biden's first rodeo when it comes to disastrous withdrawals of US forces. We saw what happened in Iraq when he pulled all of our forces out.

Danielle Pletka: And you were ambassador there too.

Marc Thiessen: Exactly you were ambassador there too. There were only, as I understand it, there were only about 700, according to the CIA, about 700 ISIS fighters at the time. And they grew to 32,000 in short order and built a the size of Great Britain and became a magnet for terrorists and jihadists from all over the world and ended up spreading their tentacles across the world and carrying out attacks in 149 countries that killed thousands of people. Are we going to see a repeat of this movie?

Ryan Crocker: So there've been all kinds of analogies with Vietnam, false and otherwise, I suppose. Fast forward now to what we got coming out of Afghanistan, it isn't a country that defeated us, it was a movement. And the Taliban narrative now is, clad only in the righteous armor of the one true faith. We vanquished the infidels. Well that, as we have already seen, is the best boost anyone could possibly give to al Qaeda, Islamic state, Pakistani Taliban, the Kashmiri militants like Lashkar-e- Tayyiba. What a great day that was for them. And we're going to pay the price for that.

Our children are going to pay the price, our grandchildren are going to pay the price for that. Our aiding and abetting basically has created a situation in which militant Islam is on the march and we're going to be hearing on a lot from them down the road. I just would give you one anecdote since I love to say it to you because most Americans have no idea who Hamid Gul is, but you know him, the head of Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan that made the decision to back the Taliban in the mid-nineties and stayed with them ever since. So he had a great line. He said, Inter-Services Intelligence defeated the in Afghanistan with American help. That's been the narrative for years. Now there's a new narrative. Inter-Services Intelligence defeated the Americans in Afghanistan with American help.

Danielle Pletka: I quoted him in the piece I wrote last week about Pakistan. And you led me directly to asking about that. For reasons that mystify me, I'll be honest with you. I can't figure out why Pakistan has continued to skate with a pass. They are sponsors and supporters, financial and military of the Taliban going back a few years. Osama bin Laden lived there right under the noses of the military. And I'm curious what you think their role now is going to be and what their role has been in helping President Trump and President Biden embrace this defeat.

Ryan Crocker: Well, you know the Pakistani narrative, I was ambassador there for three fun-filled years.

Danielle Pletka: I don't know who you offended in the State Department, but is there anywhere crappy that you haven't been ambassador?

Danielle Pletka: Yemen? You weren't ambassador in Yemen.

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

11 Marc Thiessen: Was Paris unavailable?

Ryan Crocker: Well, I know the core of the team that will go with me, you guys, and we know your home addresses.

Marc Thiessen: Sign me up.

Ryan Crocker: You know the Pakistani narrative, you stabbed us in the back after the Soviet defeat. You stopped getting waivers for the Pressler Amendment on cessation of aid to a country with a nuclear program. You saw the civil war coming and you were gone. So 9/11 and you're back, and we love it, because the money's flowing again. We're going to make the most of it and take the most of it. And we're happy to help you with al Qaeda, but you're crazy if you think we're going to turn the Afghan Taliban into a mortal enemy of us, because we know you, you're going to leave. Sooner or later, you're all going to get on your planes and you're going to leave because that's what you do. You don't have any patience.

So they were vindicated and it was probably a couple of hours of high-fiving around the corridors of Islamabad and Rawalpindi and then the oh shit moment set in because what this victory has done has empowered groups like the Pakistani Taliban who want to bring down the Islamabad government. Their focus isn't Afghanistan, it s Pakistan. And do they think the newly ascended Taliban are going to express their gratitude by doing everything they can to help Pakistani eradicate or control these kinds of elements? Oh no, they're not, because that's part of the Taliban's Islamic legitimacy now. And certainly for the Haqqanis, who I would not expect are going to again, show great gratitude to the Pakistani regime as they take control of key portfolios in Afghanistan. So the Pakistanis are scared to death, as they should be. And as we should be. I mean, 220 million people and nuclear weapons, and they're going to be facing now an Islamic insurgency against a weak corrupt state that could topple them. So can this get worse? Oh, you bet it can and it probably will.

Marc Thiessen: You know who else said the same thing you just attributed to the Pakistanis? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheik Mohammad told his interrogator, at the CIA black site, he said, what you don't understand is that we do not need to defeat you militarily, we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourselves by quitting. And that's literally what we're doing. And before we went on the air we were talking about 1983 and the bombing there, and the impact that had. A young jihadist named Osama bin Laden watched that and said that inspired him to carry out the 9/11 attacks. And after we invaded Afghanistan, he says, he told the Taliban, don't worry, the Americans will quit.

So this seems to be a very universal perception in that part of the world. Talk about the impact of quitting in terms of our national security and not just in the Islamic radical world, but China's watching this. We just saw the Chinese were taunting Taiwan, saying Watch the Americans leave Afghanistan, that's an omen for you. North Korea is watching this. is watching this. Russia's watching this. What's the impact of an America that has no staying power to deterrence around the world?

Ryan Crocker: And that again is the principle question. And again, what we're dealing with now

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12 differs so dramatically from the Vietnam narrative because again, we have ignited or accelerated a global inferno here from Islamic or so-called Islamic-oriented groups. But as you point out, it doesn't stop there. It's not a new problem. And I've spoken about it until I'm hoarse over the years. We are the greatest nation on earth, no question in my mind. For all of our stupidities, we are the greatest nation on earth, but we have certain endemic flaws and one of them is a lack of strategic patience.

We just don't do that. That's not how we built our great country, get er done. Well, that doesn't work so easily overseas. And I think as Americans see engagements that are costing lives and money, kind of their default position is, let's get out. We don't need this, we don't need to do it. We have had a singular lack of presidents who have even made the effort to explain why we do need to do it in some cases. So it's that old thing, tell me where my people are going so I can lead them into preemptive defeat. I mean, you want to end the war, the quickest way to do it is surrender, which we've done. It's not a new narrative that the Americans lack strategic patience.

Danielle Pletka: No.

Ryan Crocker: And this is just going to amplify that. Our adversaries are emboldened and our allies are frightened. So again, it's another way we're going to be paying for this over generations.

Danielle Pletka: I couldn't agree more. So my exit question is also a little bit about the future. You and I remember, and I'm sure Marc remembers too, something called the . In the 1980s, they were part of the coalition working to defeat the Soviets in the 1990s. They stood up against the Taliban. Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, was murdered by terrorists posing as journalists. And his son has recently decided to take over the anti-Taliban resistance. They're no longer called the Northern Alliance, but they are like the group of old, they're holed up in the Panjshir Valley, which is a strategically isolated part of Afghanistan. Good as a place to hole yourself up. Not necessarily great as a place from which to launch a battle to take over the country, but they are fashioning themselves as the resistance.

A lot of Afghans, Special Forces and others have run away to the Panjshir Valley, which you know is good in the sense that they have a diversity of forces there. What do you think about these guys? What do you think about the prospects for there being an anti-Taliban resistance? I'd love to know, and don't take away all hope that I have.

Ryan Crocker: Yeah. You're absolutely right of course. On 9/11, I was on a US air shuttle in the morning up to LaGuardia to go talk to the Russians about Iraq. Obviously, that meeting didn't take place. But on my long drive back from New York, I was why al Qaeda went to the huge trouble of assassinating Ahmad Shah Massoud because they wanted the most capable anti-Taliban fighter off the field before Alliance, and maybe we are, but I'll have to be persuaded that they've got the leadership, the readiness to fight and the wherewithal to do it. I was struck by the

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13 Taliban campaign plan, which focused on Northern provinces, which they took with hardly a shot fired against them, so there is no Northern Alliance. We'll have to see help.

We were part of that help very quietly, as you know, after the Soviet defeat. The Iranians were a bigger part of it, and for all of their crowing about our catastrophe in Afghanistan, they're probably not real happy either right now. I mean, they almost went to war with the Taliban in 1998. There ain't enough room in the Middle East, or even in the world for an Islamic Republic and an Islamic Emirate, particularly when one is Sunni and one is Shia. So it may be that after flapping and brawking about what happened to us, they ll start to worry about what may happen to them and get behind a Northern Alliance type thing. I hope that's possible that they can recreate this, but the surviving leaders, people like General Dostum, well, I sure wouldn't want him running my Boy Scout troop. I'm not even sure he stayed in the north, suffice to say, maybe something will come of that, but it's going to be a long march.

Marc Thiessen: So my exit question is, what should US policy be with regard to that? So you have the Biden administration dangling the possibility of US aid to the Taliban. Talking about, the Taliban is our Afghan partners in recent weeks. They clearly want to use the possibility of US recognition as a carrot to get the Taliban to be more moderate. Should we go down that path or should our position be as Representative Mike Waltz and Lindsey Graham have said that the Afghan constitution is still enforced, that this is an illegal overthrow of the Afghan government and we continue to recognize there's an Afghan vice-president and the Panjshir Valley who claims to be the legitimate leader of Afghanistan? Should we recognize them and support this nascent Northern Alliance? What would you be advising a sane administration to do?

Ryan Crocker: Boy, if you see any of those on the Walmart shelves, pick one up for me too, a sane administration. It's heavily discounted. I got it. Well, you make a great point because our own legislation requires our government to withhold assistance to any element that seized power from a democratically elected government. Now, we tend to forget that when it's in our interest and I can be one of the most forgetful when you're looking at places like Egypt, but this would be a great time to marry interest and principle and to say, no, there's not going to be anything for the Taliban. They overthrew a democratically elected government. There we stand. Now, that would be the easy part.

The hard part would be who? Because it would take some shrewd internationally-focused lawyers to sort it out. The default, I assume, would be Ghani. Can a legal case be made that somehow it isn't him, but its Massoud junior and his cohort? I don't know. But I do think it's really important before we waltz down the aisle with the Taliban that we make that position clear. We're not going to recognize these guys. And we are certainly not going to facilitate any form of assistance by anyone to them. And then we see. Who knows, maybe we don't know who these Taliban are. I mean, these Taliban don't know who they are. Does Baradar, is he really the kind of the supreme leader there? Or do you have field commanders who were like five years old when the Taliban lost power who have a very different agenda and vision? So, step one, to me, it seems just,

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14 freeze assets everywhere.

Ghani, we have frozen assets in the FED system. We did that right away, thank God. Encourage as many others as we possibly can to fall in on it. That just got a lot harder since, again, we capitulated without even telling NATO we were going to do it, but you got to make the effort. And then see what happens, see where your opportunities might be. But what we cannot do, I mean, we decide now we're going to play footsie with the Taliban none of that's going to happen. And frankly, then you got absolutely nothing going for you at all.

Danielle Pletka: Well, that's optimistic.

Marc Thiessen: We'd feel a lot better if you were helping to make these decisions.

Danielle Pletka: We sure would. Although I have to say, I ask myself if I were a Ryan Crocker, would I take that call? And I think, you've served and you've been dutiful to Republicans and Democratic presidents. I got to say, this has so shamed me as an American. I'm not sure that if somebody picked up the phone and asked for help, I would be able to say yes.

Ryan Crocker: Yeah. I feel the same way. Fortunately, I'm in no danger of anyone. But my days and nights have been consumed with trying to get people out of Afghanistan before the Taliban kill them. And of course, we are folding our tent of sticking to the August 31 deadline. And I support that actually. Cause again, I'm scarred by what happened in Beirut, an undefined mission of unknown duration. And we've already seen a horrible position the Marines were put into. So I'm dealing with these cases mainly of the special immigrant visa holders or people in the pipeline. And my inbox gets filled up every day with these desperate pleas for help.

Marc Thiessen: Here's a question, how can our listeners help?

Danielle Pletka: And how can we help?

Ryan Crocker: So again, I'll just tell you, frankly, what's on my mind. What we got to do now is get out of the mindset that come August 31 and we're all gone, that, that is not the end of this. There are thousands and thousands of Afghans who are at risk because of us. And that risk factor just got higher. So two conversations ongoing, one with the Qataris and I'm hopeful no more than that, that once we're out, the Qataris may be willing to step up their evacuation efforts in coordination with the Taliban, but they could run diplomatic convoys to the airport. And then of course could use air assets to move them from there. That would just be an example. It might be that the United Nations could do something. Now I know one of my favorite UN slogans is The United Nations, we take bribes so you don't have to if this is a real emergency, please hang up and call America. And all of that. I can go on. But it might be, if you got somebody with some courage, as Staffan de Mistura for example, and a Secretary General who does not consider us the agents of all evil. And if the Taliban wanted to try for a different image, maybe something could happen there to get more people out. I just don't want America and Americans to give up on them, to say, we've done all we could. And if they have to die in a ditch for

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15 serving us, we couldn't do anything about it. Please don't let that happen.

Marc Thiessen: Amen.

Danielle Pletka: Amen to that. I think everybody needs to make sure that this is front and center on their minds and on the minds of their representatives as well.

Marc Thiessen: We're going to stay on it, for sure.

Danielle Pletka: And certainly, we are going to stay on it. Hey, thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Crocker: Thanks for this. This would have cost me hundreds of dollars an hour in expensive therapy, and I got it for free.

Danielle Pletka: There you go. We're here anytime you need us. Well, you'll always be number one on our phone dial list. Take care.

Marc Thiessen: So Dany, your daughter was just at Dulles Airport the other day. Tell us about that.

Danielle Pletka: She took some pictures because she was so struck. So Sophie was coming back from overseas and we picked her up from Dulles early this week and she came out and she was crying. And why? She said she was surrounded by people in the hall where you pick up your luggage, obviously refugees, bags full to bursting, clothes spilling out, donations from Ikea sitting next to them, small children everywhere, crying. These are people who, in one tiny snapshot have lost everything from one day to the next. And the most horrifying part of that is those are the lucky people there at Dulles Airport. Imagine there are people sitting in that ditch outside Abbey Gate to this day, desperate for hope.

Marc Thiessen: And hiding in their basements in Kabul, hoping that the Taliban can't find them. And these are not just refugees. They re people in many cases who risked their lives for our troops, to aid our mission, to help our embassy. And they're our allies and we're abandoning them. We're abandoning them. And we have a moral obligation to these people, but we also have a self-interest in helping them because all around the world, there's going to be a time, I promise you, when American troops are going to have to deploy somewhere to take on people who want to harm us. And those people are watching the way we're treating the Afghans today. And there are people who are just not going to step forward and help us and help our troops because they know America won't stick around and we'll abandon them and they don't want it. It's not worth the risk because the way we treat our allies comes back to haunt us if we don't take care of them, because these people risk their lives for us and other people may choose not to risk their lives for us down the line because of the way we treated these Afghans.

Danielle Pletka: I think that's absolutely true. You know, one of the things that we have talked about repeatedly on this show is the fact that there are lots of fights overseas that we don't want to engage in. Where we don't want to commit troops, or we don't want to commit a lot of troops because people need to fight their own fights. We should be able to support them, but they should fight their own fights.

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16 We want to help the Syrian opposition. We wanted to help the Iraqi opposition, we've wanted to help the Afghans. And we could go on and on. And the question that each one of them has to ask themselves is, why would I ever stand with you? Why would I risk that knowing that I'm not just sacrificing myself, but I'm sacrificing my family, my children, my relatives in order that one day for political convenience, out of some misbegotten ideology, you're going to turn around from one day to the next, like Joe Biden ordered to be done, and bail out of Bagram Air Base without telling our NATO allies or our Afghan allies in the dark of night? And those people would be right to ask themselves that question, because this is starting to become our hallmark and it is a national shame.

Marc Thiessen: One of the disgraces and there's so many disgraces that it's almost hard to distinguish which is of greater depth, but one of the disgraces has been the failure of the Biden administration to mount rescue missions for these people. And what's happened, you just heard Ryan Crocker talking about how he's working full time at this point, trying to help get Afghans out.

Danielle Pletka: As is almost everybody I know engaged on this issue.

Marc Thiessen: We have this, they call it the digital Dunkirk, where Afghan veterans are in contact with their translators because they forge bonds on the battlefield that don't easily go away. They keep in touch.

Danielle Pletka: Their lives depended on it.

Marc Thiessen: Because these people saved their lives. And they're now risking their lives. We have Afghan vets on the ground in Afghanistan, not as members of the United States military, as private citizens, mounting rescue operations, trying to establish corridors to help these people escape. And I urge you that, that's by way of advertising. I urge you to tune in next week because we've got a guest coming on, Elliot Ackerman, who you will remember from our podcast with Jim Stavridis, he's the coauthor with Jim of the book, 2034, but he is an Afghan vet, Afghan and Iraq veteran, who has been helping to coordinate some of these efforts.

He had a great piece in the New York Times, which basically was saying, it shouldn't be left to American veterans to clean up Joe Biden's mess and do what Joe Biden supposed to be doing. So Elliot is going to be on the podcast next week and he's going to take us in a deep dive on this project, on this digital Dunkirk and these efforts to save these Afghan heroes, because that's what they are, they're heroes. They stood with us and they saved the lives of our troops and we owe them a debt of gratitude and not the betrayal that they're experiencing today.

Danielle Pletka: If folks want to know about organizations that they can support or provide either, whatever help you can, don't hesitate to let us know. We'll put a couple of links at the bottom of our transcript for organizations that are doing just amazing work.

Marc Thiessen: And tune in next week. As we'll ask Elliot that question, who should you be helping? Who needs help, who's worth helping? And he'll give us a list and we will post it on the transcript.

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17 Danielle Pletka: And I want to add one housekeeping note, Marc, before we say goodbye to everybody. In the last but not least category, our producer, Alexa, has abandoned us wantonly and selfishly in pursuit of her own personal goals and has left the American Enterprise Institute to go to Harvard Law School, for which she will forever be condemned and possibly become a donor. I don't know. And she has been replaced by the very, very worthy Jackson Krase. So if anything goes wrong, just so you know, it's not Alexa's fault because she's at Harvard, it's Jackson's fault.

Marc Thiessen: Now the one advantage of having Jackson around is that at the end of every podcast, you won't have 's Alexa turn on and ask you what you are asking for.

Danielle Pletka: Anyway, our warm-hearted thanks to Alexa. We'll miss her a lot and welcome to Jackson. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you next week.

Marc Thiessen: Take care.

Organizations working to help our partners in Afghanistan:

Keeping Our Promise, Inc.: https://www.keepingourpromise.org/

No One Left Behind: https://nooneleft.org/default.aspx

Email to ask how to support: [email protected]

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