WTH is going on with the retreat from Afghanistan? Amb. Ryan Crocker on withdrawal, and the consequences for US national security Episode #115 | September 1, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, 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 Kabul, 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 Iraq, 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 the Washington Post, 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 Taliban 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 Haqqani network 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 Doha 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. Joe Biden 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 Donald Trump 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 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 3 appalled. Danielle Pletka: Well, it gets worse. This morning, a real fine piece of reporting came out from Politico. I want to read everybody the lead of it by Lara Seligman, one of their suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside Hamid Karzai 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 Lloyd Austin 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 Jim Mattis, 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 John Bolton, 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.