Sullivan said that President Biden "will stop at nothing" to make the ISIS-K terrorists pay for killing 13 Americans (and killing and wounding hundreds more Afghans); he also pointed to our successful 'over-the-horizon' capability that the president mentioned the other day.
Wallace wondered if our intelligence was so good after the fact, why we didn't prevent the attack from happening in the first place. Here's part of Sullivan's response.
With respect to the attack at Kabul airport, we, of course, had been warning for days that such an attack could take place. We took action to try to prevent and disrupt such attacks. But, of course, all we can do is mitigate risk. We cannot eliminate risk. And this is a fundamentally dangerous and high-risk condition. The president has said that from the beginning. Those of us working on it have reiterated that from the beginning. And it continues, Chris, to be very dangerous.
They talked a bit about what the next couple of days, and our final hours in Kabul, will look like. Sullivan was careful, particularly when Wallace asked how many people would be left. He said there were 300 or fewer Americans still there, some of whom have chosen not to leave. And we have some commitments from the Taliban about getting our folks out, even after the end of the month.
Finally, Wallace wondered why President Biden wasn't "taking full responsibility" on abandoning Bagram Airport, instead of "laying this off on the generals." Sullivan reminded Wallace that he's heard Biden "take ultimate responsibility for every decision" he's made And, he explained the difference between a tactical decision, which is the purview of the generals, and a strategic decision, which belongs to the president.
Moving on to the Grim Reaper, here's his assessment of the war in Afghanistan.
I think what's been lost in all of this, Chris, is why we went there in the first place. We went there to prevent the Taliban from having a regime that would allow terrorists to reconstitute themselves and hit us again here at home. It's been a total success. If you -- this term "endless war," let's take a look at it. The last seven months, the Afghans have lost more people fighting than we have over 20 years. They've taken 65,000 casualties. We've taken roughly 2,000 in 20 years. The last year and a half we've lost no one. With our continued deployment of 2,500 people, we were, in effect, keeping the lid on, keeping terrorists from reconstituting, and having a light footprint in the country. The policy was working. Therefore, I think calling it and endless war or claiming that we're somehow trying to get involved in a civil war is - a domestic civil war is simply not accurate. We went over there to protect us here at home. We've not had a mass casualty attack from over there in these 20 years. I'd call that a successful policy.
Now we're looking at the exit and over the next two days our heroic military is doing the best they can with a horrible policy decision. This is one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history. Much worse than Saigon because after we left Saigon, there weren't Vietnamese terrorists who were planning on attacking us here at home. That we leave behind exactly what we went in to solve 20 years ago. And I fear for the future in continuing the war on terror. You know, just because we decide to quit fighting doesn't mean the terrorists go away. So they're still out there. They're invigorated. They're emboldened and excited about the success they see in bringing America to its knees in Afghanistan.
Next, Wallace turned to the decision to leave Afghanistan, something he said McConnell opposed when Trump started the process, and he opposed Biden continuing down the path to our full withdrawal. He asked McConnell
Senator, does President Biden have a point there? If in April he had said, hey, the Trump deal is off, we're staying in and, in fact, we're going to beef up the number of troops, he contends we'd have been back in a full-scale war with the Taliban, and, unfortunately taking a lot of casualties.
McConnell said that's not correct.
Once again, the president's off the mark. We hadn't lost as many as 13 people, which we lost Thursday, in any of the last four years. In fact, our casualties since 2014 have been quite modest, quite modest. We lost more - I repeat - more of our military personnel last Thursday then we lost in any one of the last four years. So the balance has been dramatically reduced for American personnel. Remember, in the whole war, Chris, we have regretfully lost a couple of thousand of our people. We -- that's very regretful. But the Afghans have lost 65,000. They have been fighting and we've been in the background helping them with counterterrorism and the ongoing training of the military. The policy was working if you remember why we went there, which was to keep the Taliban out and the terrorists from being able to operate with impunity so they could attack us again here at home.
Questions Wallace didn't ask?
- You say we lost more military personnel in last Thursday's attack than we lost in any of the last four years. But this data from the Defense Casualty Analysis System shows we had 13 'hostile' deaths in 2018, and 17 in 2019. What's the basis for your numbers?
- We did have four hostile deaths in 2020, but they were outside your 18-month window. Isn't the treaty that President Trump signed with the Taliban, which required our full withdrawal, the reason for that?
- Wouldn't breaking the treaty that was negotiated with the Taliban have escalated the terrorism threat in and of itself?
- How much longer should we have stayed in Afghanistan, training their military to do what they are apparently still unable to do, after all these years? At what point should they be able to defend themselves?
- How much responsibility do the Afghans bear themselves for what's happening in their country?
- Many people are pointing to the extreme religious beliefs of the Taliban, and how those will impact Afghan women. There's been a lot of publicity about an Afghan folksinger who was killed by the Taliban. How much should these, or do these, play in any decision we make regarding involving our military in other countries?
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