The Armstrong and Getting Show. And I think it's fair to say that Mr Trump did not create the mess in Afghanistan. But I also think you're gonna end up owning its tragic outcome. We got this brilliant ambassador Khalizad, who knows more about Afghanistan and anyone in the US government negotiating and gutter with the Taliban. But Mr Trump has said publicly essentially we're out politically by so what
is there to negotiate. The Taliban are also winning, are now control more terrain than they have some two thousand and one. The Afghan government is fractured and competent, corrupt. Their military is semi dysfunctional. No belligerent ever negotiates away something that won in the battlefield. The situation looks tragic. The outcome will come soon after we withdraw. That's General Barry McCafferty. You was on MSNBC last night. Uh, he's making the argument and why we gotta stay in Afghanistan.
Washington Post today, the editorial board pieces Trump risks turning a chance for success in Afghanistan into a shameful failure. It sounds like it's a failure right now based on what General McCafferty just said. Tallyband has more property than they had in the last eighteen years. The government is completely a mess. So we've spent I don't know how many trillion dollars on this project and all these years and thousands of lives, and and this is where we are.
Why would I think it's gonna get any better anyway? I need to hear from another expert. Yeah, with all due respect to General McCafferty, My clients a military analysts for CBS News and others throughout the year, retire major as well artilleryman Mike clients, how are you, sir? Hey, guys, so great to be back with you. So why don't we start with the general's description of the situation, his prescription, which is we have to stay the course your reaction.
You know, that's a kind of a classic ec Swamp frankly description to what's going on there. But you know, staying there is the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and think we're gonna get a different result. The president cut the troops in half, the Taliban took more uh land while they were there. Um, this gets back to we've got to decide as a nation, if we want to go to war like this endlessly
and um and do something about it. This this president is at least willing to stick um, you know, a stake in the ground, and his heel's gonna take a very big political hit. And when when we see this turn into what will be Vietnam nineteen seventy five, No question, the Taliban is going to kick out the current government there and they're gonna return Sharia lawn, bring the whole situation back to But after eighteen years, there's not again. We want to spend another dollar, you want to spend
another life there? I'm not sure that's a good option. Yeah, the political hit, the politics of it is is a different story. I I don't I don't know how people are going to react to that. I would I would assume after all this time, the cume doesn't think, oh my god, look what's happened. Um, My heart breaks for people who live there. God, I think of some little girl who's going to have to live in that country.
That's awful. But we can't fix it unless we really dedicated a tremendous amount of manpower, lives and money to it. And we're not going to do that establish police state because there are people living in those tragic conditions all over the world. Right, we had these ebbs and flows over the past eighteen years. You know. The Obama administration
comes in said it was the Good War. Surgis troops there to over a hundred and thirty thousand, We gained control of most of the outlying provinces, and it went well from a military perspective. But then all of a sudden, you know, he wants out of there too. He put conditions just like this president did. They were based on a calendar. He said that that was going to make the couple of government more responsive. That that didn't do anything that The bottom line is it's still a country
with a very low rate of education. Um, the literacy rates remains very high. We've tried to impart Western values which we think we can export, but we can't, and we've not exported, um the capitalism that we should have. The Chinese have come in. They own a lot of the land mass in Afghanistan because they're stripping it out for rare earth minerals as well. And um, you know, again the Taliban when they when they were in power,
allowed al Qaeda free reign there. I think the only difference now is we'll have this throughout this very thin needle that says, um, if you bring al Qaida anybody back, then that violates the deal and we're gonna come back into Afghanistan. All that means they're gonna use strategic weapons to go after people. I'm certainly no genius just reading these stories in the newspaper and following the news. I've
been saying that now for like fifteen years. We tell the Taliban we're leaving, You're you're gonna take the country. But if you let al Qaida set up shop again, we're gonna bomb the crap audio and I think they would, they would. We're gonna end up in the same spot a decade and a half later. Right now, You're you're seeing also reports that al Qaeda has increased its ranks by four or five hundred in Afghanistan. Um, you're also seeing the same resurge and of isis in in Um
in Syria and and a rock. I can't tell if it's just the media just concerning to troll the president because he obviously says that we've defeated them. We have, and it's not possible to defeat the ideologies. Um, it's going to take a lot longer than that. But the bottom line is, Um, whether the Taliban goes after al Qaeda inside Afghanistan when they finally take over, remains to be seen. My clients CBS military analysts on the line.
You know, in the spirit of fairness, I criticized Barack Obama fairly harshly for setting time because it's just in this situation, you can't have that umbrella over a negotiation, or, as General McCafferty pointed out, why would you negotiate if you if you have the upper hands. So I don't like that. I get it politically speaking, Uh, it's always an election cycle, but I just don't think it's very smart. But no, we're gonna have to call it something. Um,
it's going to be victory or defeat. Um. We go into this with our eyes wide open. We were taking down the Taliban government and taking out Alqaida after nine eleven. It was great intentions. The Bush administration was all in, everything was good, and then our focus shifted to Iraq and frankly, we've been you know, kind of wandering since then. And the military is not going to stand up and say we're not doing this anymore. That's just not what
they're that's in their in their DNA. Interesting. So there's this horrifying attack at a wedding in Kable, Afghanistan, over the weekend, and it was isis killed seasty five people or something like that, and the Tally band said, oh, that's beyond the pale. So we're we're we're are the Taliban, and iis, how do they fit into Afghanistan? So they perceived them to be a threat to the Taliban. That's how've been perceived isis to be a threat to what
they're trying to do. And let's let the Taliban. Yeah again, you'll see what they'll They'll be more focused on getting control of couple. And then the civil war takes breens, which is really what's happening. That we're in the brink of a civil war there in inside of Afghanistan. I mean, it's only been going on for what nine thousand years anyway, um, and so it's all kind of it's just as a matter of who is going to take control and who out the power and what they're gonna do when they
get it. Um. You know, whether maybe this is why the president wants he does. He definitely wants to pick it up as an election accomplishment and which is why he wants out both for election. You know, if I were the president, Mike, I have a number of access to grind and causes that I would babble about, but one of them would be helping Americans understand we can't solve everything. There are some problems that just have to be managed. It's like a chronic health condition. You just
do your best. And I think we we as a country, feel like we can fix everything, and we just can't. And and and we've we've we need to pivot back to that Cold War mentality where we contain Russia. That was the big thing to contain, and now we've got to do the same kind of containment in the Middle East and in Afghanistan in a smaller scale. And the problem is where we you don't have the military design
to do that. We were into the strategic weapons, We're gonna hit you from five miles away, and you'll ever see that, you ever see it coming. All those kinds of things. We still built a military around occupying and working with our allies on the ground, knowing full well that we're not going to change anything. We're not going to change in lines no matter what we bring to the table. Next time we talk buying Greenland with my clients,
military analyst, Giant airfielder, Mike, it's always enlightening. Thanks a million, got it. My only final note on this is the annoyance of the media. I just do not believe that NBC in the Washington Post would be arguing against leaving Afghanistan if Barack Obama were doing exactly the same thing. I just don't believe it. People, smart, people of good conscience can be on both sides of this argument, no doubt, absolutely, but I don't believe that's what's happening with the Washington Post.
And Barack Obama was saying it's been long enough, we're gonna get out, they'd be cheering it, guarantee. That's really maddening. Yep, what's coming up? For the record, we're saying the same stuff when old Barry was the president. Yeah, I was, we are now I've been forgetting out the whole time. What's coming up your news? Marshall, California's new deadly use of forest law stirring up a national debate Jill Biden's rather odd endorsement of husband Joe and turning hostility into inspiration.
Wait a minute, I could use that. I'd be a cool pivot. What if I can do that? Stay tuned, are Strong and Getty