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Frederick Kagan on the Fall of Kabul, the to the Taliban

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Frederick Kagan on the Fall of Kabul, the to the Taliban WTH is going on with the Taliban takeover? Frederick Kagan on the fall of Kabul, the to the Taliban Episode #114 | August 18, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Frederick W. Kagan 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 bloody hell is going on? Marc Thiessen: The Taliban are back in charge of Afghanistan. We are in the middle of our August hiatus that we told you all about, that we were going to take a month off because nothing ever happens in August. Apparently the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan happens in August. So we have come out of hiatus to do an emergency episode of this podcast, because what is unfolding before our eyes in Afghanistan right now is, honestly, I said this on Fox the other day, and I will repeat it here, it's the worst thing I've seen in three decades in Washington and the most horrifying thing I've seen in three decades in Washington. The betrayal of our allies, the abdication of American leadership on the world stage, the humanitarian catastrophe that was unleashed by a decision made in the Oval Office. And I'm almost at a loss for words to explain how awful the situation is. Danielle Pletka: First of all, I guess we've seen this coming. The president signaled that he wanted this to happen. I think everybody was not fooled by his, well, what can I call them? Lies, about what was going to happen. It was obvious to anybody who's been paying attention in Afghanistan that this was a moment of strength for the Taliban, that the United States had been doing things that would weaken both the Afghan government and the Afghan military, not providing the necessary support that we had been negotiating with the Taliban behind the back of the Afghan government. And yet Joe Biden went before the American people, and this has obviously been unbelievably well-documented, and said the place isn't going to collapse, but even if it does, that's not my problem because we got to go. And the one additional thing I would note here is, Marc, you and I have both said this repeatedly, where was the parade demanding we get out of Afghanistan? Did I miss it? Marc Thiessen: You missed it because it didn't happen. There was no groundswell of public support demanding our withdrawal from Afghanistan. And the reason for that is quite simple, which is that the war in Afghanistan, as we know it ended in 2015. In January of 2015, the United States handed responsibility for the combat 2 mission in Afghanistan to the Afghan Army. And we moved into a train, equip and support role. And so what we were doing in Afghanistan, we were not nation building. Everybody keeps bringing up that tired phrase. We were not policing. We were not even fighting a war. We were training the Afghans and providing them with mission planning, intelligence and air support, while they took the fight to our enemies, to the people who had harbored the terrorists that carried out the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Marc Thiessen: We were doing it with, at the height of that mission, less than 10,000 people at the end of that mission, about 2,500 people on the ground. The Americans were not dying in large numbers. But you know who was dying in the large numbers? The Afghans. I went back and dug up the numbers. And from January 2015 until this year, somewhere between 53,000 and 57,000 Afghans were killed in battle fighting the Taliban, including 2,600 through August of this year. And for the Biden administration to go out and say that the Afghans were unwilling to fight is libelous. And the victim blaming that's being taken place from this administration, Biden blaming Trump, he blamed the Afghan army, he blamed Afghans for not leaving the country when they were told to. The people who are now hiding for fear of the Taliban death squads, he's blaming them. It's victim shaming. I've just never seen anything like it. Danielle Pletka: And you have to ask yourself what the consistency is, right? Because I can see what gets this administration excited. What gets them excited? Women's rights. The rights of minorities in the United States. Those are the kinds of things that they're very excited about. But weirdly they're not excited about those things when it's foreigners. They're excited about allies when they're NATO, but they're not excited about allies when they're Muslims. I don't really get the sort of the messaging issue. This is a government full of people who were outraged by the fact that the United States would continue a relationship with Saudi Arabia after the Saudi Government had a journalist murdered in their consulate in Istanbul. I'm sorry, how many people are being murdered now in Afghanistan? A government that negotiated with the Biden administration about coming into power. How many women are being raped? How many minorities are being killed? I don't understand the inconsistencies here. I don't understand how anyone in the Biden administration with a de minimis IQ doesn't see these inconsistencies. Marc Thiessen: I mean, look, the Biden administration is making a lot of arguments that I think we need to address. The first one is that we've been there for 20 years. If the Afghans can't defend their own country by themselves after 20 years, why should Americans be in there fighting their civil war? As I started at the outset, we were not fighting their civil war. But second of all, I'm sorry, which U.S. ally anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of the British or the French, and the French history is not exactly glorious in this, could defend themselves against a massive assault like this without U.S. help? Marc Thiessen: I mean, there's a reason why we have troops in Germany. There's a reason why we have troops in Japan. There's a reason why we have troops in South Korea. And by the way, if those countries can all defend themselves without any U.S. help, we should pull our troops out. Right? The idea that it's the Afghans' fault because they can't defend themselves without U.S. intelligence and air support AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 3 and mission planning, it's somehow that that's proof that we needed to pull out is just absolutely appalling. Danielle Pletka: Well, it's dribble. Come on. It doesn't stand up to even the most basic of scrutiny. And when you are in a position where MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The New York Times are condemning you up one side and down the other, perhaps it should become obvious to you that you've screwed something up royally and that you shouldn't go out to the American people, pretend that the buck stops with you and then blame anybody and everybody for the debacle that is going on in Afghanistan right now. Marc Thiessen: And then the other argument that absolutely drives me batty is, well, Donald Trump signed the agreement with the Taliban and we had no choice, our hands were tied. I mean, first of all, the Taliban violated that agreement. The agreement did not involve them marching into Kabul and overthrowing the regime. And second of all, I'm sorry, Joe Biden has spent the last eight months of his presidency reversing every Trump policy on everything you could possibly find. I mean, he's reversed Trump's policies in the Southern border, and the Keystone Pipeline, the Paris Climate Agreement, Nord Stream Two, the Iran Nuclear Deal, but his hands were tied in Afghanistan? That was the one place he had no choice but to carry out the Trump policy, is he kidding me? Danielle Pletka: Yeah. Well, I think he is kidding. And I think the only people who are standing with him are people who would stand at any moment. You and I both excoriated Donald Trump for, if you recall, the negotiations with the Taliban, the desire to bring the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. But this is worse than that in so many ways. Marc Thiessen: I agree with you. And two quick points before we get to our guest. Which is one, is that for all his flaws, Trump promised to withdraw based on conditions on the ground. That was repeated over and over again. The Biden administration, Joe Biden explicitly said that our withdrawal would not be conditions based. He sent a message to the Taliban that no matter what the Taliban did, they had a green light to carry out this offensive because we were leaving no matter what. The final issue that gets raised is that, oh God, we spent all these years nation building and it was right to go in and whack the terrorists after 9/11, but then we got distracted by this nation building exercise and it was time to pull the plug on that. Marc Thiessen: Look, the mission in Afghanistan was never to turn it into a Jeffersonian democracy.
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