-The Taliban have regained control in Afghanistan,
amid a chaotic U.S. evacuation, bringing a tragic end
to a 20-year bipartisan foreign-policy disaster
that American officials of both parties
bear responsibility for
and which they have repeatedly lied about.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Theme music plays ]
The crushing reality of the so-called global war on terror
is that some of the highest-ranking officials
involved in it now admit that it was a colossal failure,
and that's a reality we should all grapple with.
Presidents, politicians, and foreign-policy elites
of both parties deserve blame for this calamity.
In his new book, "Reign of Terror,"
author Spencer Ackerman writes,
"In 2020, I asked Stanley McChrystal,
the former Joint Special Operations Command
and Afghanistan War Commander,
if the War on Terror had been worth it.
'It would be impossible to argue that it was,' he answered.
'The outcome just hasn't been positive enough to argue that.'"
That's not an anti-war activist saying that.
That's a former commander of the war in Afghanistan
saying the 20-year War on Terror was a failure.
It's like if Kevin Feige said, "Honestly, I have no idea
what's going on in the Marvel cinematic universe.
None of it makes sense to me.
I mean, they all have superpowers,
but every fight comes down to karate?
What the hell, right?" Of course, in reality,
the only thing Feige has to apologize for
is not putting Vince Vaughn in Loki.
You missed a huge opportunity to create some buzz
and reunite the greatest comic duo since Laurel and Hardy.
"Buddy, buddy, buddy.
And I say that because there are three of you."
I'm sorry to reference 2005's "Wedding Crashers."
That movie is so old, it came out
four years after the start of the war in Afghanistan.
A comment like that from McChrystal,
the idea that the so-called War on Terror
has been a 20-year failure should provoke
some serious introspection and soul-searching
on the part of Washington elites.
And yet somehow I can't exactly imagine
the people responsible for this calamity
looking inward and holding themselves accountable for it.
George W. Bush is too busy in his art studio,
trying to, I don't know, get a dog's eyebrow right.
So strange that sandwiched between
James Patterson's co-author
and New England's newest party promoter,
we have a former President who's just okay at painting.
Also, were the dogs supposed to look like him?
I'm not crazy, right?
Doesn't it kind of look like the dogs have Bush's face?
And that expression of his that says,
"I don't know the answer to your question"?
[ Laughter ]
And, yet, as tragedy unfolds in Afghanistan,
the political world is, of course,
engaged in finger-pointing
for what has been a generational bipartisan failure
that presidents and politicians of both parties
bear responsibility for.
For example, over the weekend
former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to claim
this would not have happened
under the previous administration,
but got called out by Fox host Chris Wallace.
-It looks like the Biden administration
has just failed in its execution of its own plan.
The plan should have been much like we had,
was that we would have an orderly, conditions-based way
to think about how to draw down our forces there.
I can assure you, were I still the Secretary of State,
with a commander-in-chief like President Trump,
the Taliban would have understood
that there were real costs to pay.
-You were the first American Secretary of State
to ever meet with the Taliban,
and you talked about how they had agreed to join us
in the fight against terrorism.
Do you regret giving the Taliban that legitimacy?
Do you regret pressing the Afghan government
to release 5,000 prisoners, which they did,
some of whom are now back on the battlefield,
fighting with the Taliban?
-Chris, you make peace with your enemies.
Chris, we never trusted the Taliban.
You can ask them yourselves.
We didn't take the word of the Taliban.
We watched their actions on the ground.
When they did the right thing
and they helped us against terror,
that was all good.
And when they didn't, we crushed them.
-Alright, first of all, there's literally a picture of you
meeting with a Taliban leader
the Trump administration had released from prison.
That's from November -- nine months ago.
It's not some ancient photograph from 30 years ago
that we had to unearth by digging through
microfiche at the National Archives
and then smuggling it out
in a rolled-up copy of the Constitution
like Nick Cage in "National Treasure,"
although I would give anything to hear Nick Cage say
the word "microfiche."
[As Cage] There's a secret message,
written by Benjamin Franklin's ghost,
and it exists only on microfiche!"
[ Normal voice ] "National Treasure" --
three years after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.
Second, you think the Trump plan would have been more orderly
than what's happening now?
You guys are the ones who wanted to withdraw by May.
I have a hard time believing Trump would have done it
in a more orderly way,
since nothing he ever did was orderly.
He couldn't even withdraw from an umbrella in orderly fashion.
Instead of armchair generals engaging in
craven political-point-scoring, what we need right now is
everyone calling for the U.S. to accept
as many Afghan refugees as possible.
That includes Afghans who worked with the U.S. Army,
but it shouldn't be limited to them.
We should welcome anyone who wants to come.
-What should the Biden administration be doing
for the people of Afghanistan right now?
-Every Afghan who is interested in doing so
should be given asylum inside the United States.
There should be an urgent process.
They should be fast-tracked, and the logistics of it
can be, in part, the responsibility
of one of the greatest logistical organizations
on the planet, which is the United States military,
and in particular, the United States Air Force.
The idea that what the Biden administration is doing
is helping get out Afghans
who worked for the United States military
or served the United States occupation.
That is a moral floor that is functioning as a moral ceiling.
Working with the United States should not be
a condition of acceptance
by American refugee-admissions people.
-That's exactly right.
Taking in as many Afghan refugees
as want to come here and granting them asylum
is the bare minimum we can do.
We should be doing it as fast as possible.
And we have the logistical capability to do it.
I know it's not the same,
but when I got my vaccine at a FEMA site,
I was in and out in 20 minutes
with a shot in my arm and a CDC card
that for some reason doesn't fit in my wallet.
And I know today probably isn't the right time
to plug a product, but I'm excited to announce
MyWallet, the new awkwardly sized wallet,
built specifically to hold your vaccine card.
MyWallet -- order now to receive a free pair of MyWeirdPants,
the only pants with pockets big enough to hold MyWallet.
Anyway, the point is, we should be marshaling
the same logistical prowess to take in as many Afghan refugees
as possible, as quickly as possible.
The priority should be getting them out now
and worrying about the paperwork later.
And yet, for some reason, the process for many Afghans,
including those who worked with the U.S. has been a nightmare.
For example, "The Atlantic" detailed
the flight of one "interpreter who worked
alongside NATO combat units.
His first visa application, like those of so many others,
was denied on spurious bureaucratic grounds.
His second attempt hung in limbo for years
as he tried to track down the human-resources department
of the military contractor that had employed him
and that subsequently went through
several changes of ownership and name."
Holy [Bleep], just let him come here.
Screw the paperwork and the red tape.
Why are we putting them through a process
that's more complicated than trying to switch
your Verizon bill to a new address.
"No, I don't want to upgrade to the Triple Play package.
I just want to move my service.
No, I do not want to add a phone line.
I'm just moving.
I do not know my account PIN number.
No, I do not know my 11-digit billing code.
What's my dog's middle name?
Hey, what's your middle name?
He doesn't know."
And those attempting to flee now,
in the face of the Taliban onslaught,
are dealing with the same chaos and confusion,
as NBC reported over the weekend.
-We went to a processing center today,
a private kind of pop-up office,
where there was two people
with a computer in front of them.
And the office was packed with Afghans coming in
who were trying to navigate their way
through the U.S. State Department's website.
All the documentation that they need to provide
is in English.
They need to be in multiple copies.
And a lot of the people who were coming in
certainly didn't speak English.
'Cause it's not just translators.
You have security guards and you have contractors
and cleaners. Not all of them speak English
and can navigate their way through a website.
-Why are we making this so [Bleep] complicated?
You need to navigate a government website
with multiple copies of your personal records
in a packed office with just two people at a computer?
So, basic, it's the DMV. We just re-created the DMV.
And no one should ever have to go through that.
The last time I was at the DMV,
I waited in line so long, I grew a mustache,
and they ended up putting the wrong name on my license.
[ Laughter ]
And then my license was too small
to fit in my new MyWallet. [ Laughter ]
The tragedy that's unfolding now is the culmination
of a two-decade-long legacy of failure
left behind by politicians of both parties
who repeatedly withheld the truth from the American people.
When Bush first announced the invasion of Afghanistan,
20 years ago, the goal at the time,
according to Bush and
the politicians that supported the war,
was to retaliate against Al-Qaeda
and the Taliban regime that was shielding it
and to prevent future attacks.
And as the war dragged on,
Bush continued to insist
the U.S. was succeeding in its mission.
-I said a long time ago, one of our objectives is
to smoke 'em out and get them running
and bring them to justice.
We're smoking them out. They're running.
And now we're going to bring them to justice.
-Remember when the President routinely used
the phrase "smoke 'em out"
like he was in an episode of "Branded"?
And I'm sorry to drop a "Branded" reference,
but sometimes you got to pander to the people
who are too old for the "MASH" jokes.
[ Laughter ]
Hope you guys liked it!
[ Laughter ] Hmm.
Throughout the war, Bush promised
that the U.S. would not repeat the history of failure
that had beset past empires in Afghanistan.
-The history of military conflict in Afghanistan,
it's been one of initial success followed by
long years of floundering and ultimate failure.
We're not gonna repeat that mistake.
-The very thing they told us wouldn't happen
is exactly what happened. He sounds like
he's describing his own battle with a poncho.
We had some initial success
followed by floundering and ultimate failure.
But we won't be deterred.
Next, we're gonna try an umbrella hat.
[ As Trump ] Umbrellas aren't easy either.
Just FYI. [ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] They knew, early in the war,
that the danger of failure and instability
was very real, and behind the scenes,
they even admitted they had no idea what to do about it.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
wrote in an internal memo,
only six months after the war started,
"We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan
unless we take care to see that there is something going on
that will provide the stability
that will be necessary for us to leave."
"'Help!' he wrote."
He literally wrote the word "help"
with an exclamation point. You know, the same way
you text your spouse when you're trapped in a conversation
at a dinner party that you desperately want to get out of.
"Rick has been talking about his metal cover band
for 20 minutes.
They're called Age Against the Machine.
Help!"
The Bush administration kicked off
a 20-year bipartisan tradition of lying about the war
in Afghanistan and shielding the American people
from the truth of what was really happening.
We know that from blockbuster reporting in 2019
from "The Washington Post," which got its hand
on a confidential trove of documents
called "The Afghanistan Papers,"
in which senior U.S. officials from both parties
admitted they'd been lying about the reality
about how the war was really going.
For example, a three-star Army general
who served as the White House's Afghan war czar
during the Bush and Obama administration,
said in 2015, "We were devoid
of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan --
we didn't know what we were doing.
What are we trying to do here?
We didn't have the foggiest notion
of what we were undertaking."
The U.S. foreign-policy apparatus
should not approach Afghanistan the same way I approached
trying to install a wireless router.
"Connect the router to a broadband gateway
from your ISP by inserting the Ethernet cable
to the port located on the back of the TP-Link?
I don't have the foggiest notion of what I'm undertaking!
Do you know how this works? Why am I asking you?"
And instead of being honest
and telling that to the American people,
officials cherry-picked and misrepresented the data
to make the war look like it was going
much better than it actually was.
For example, an Army colonel who served
as a senior counter-insurgency adviser
to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and '14
told government interviewers, "Every data point was altered
to present the best picture possible."
"Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable
but reinforced that everything we were doing was right
and we became a self-licking ice cream cone."
What? Is that a thing? A self-licking ice cream cone?
That sounds like something that would get pitched
on an episode of "Shark Tank" where everyone laughs
but then Mark Cuban invests, and three years later,
you hear that it somehow sold for $1 billion to Apple,
and go to a party, and all your friends
have self-licking ice cream cones.
"Try it. It's called the iCone. It's Siri-enabled.
It tracks your steps."
The majority of Americans
want the forever war in Afghanistan to end.
Should have ended a long time ago.
Ending it now is the only option.
The one thing we can and must do right now
is accept as many refugees and grant as many Afghans asylum
as we possibly can, as quickly as we can.
And if there's anyone left in politics and the media
who disagrees, who fearmongers
about taking in as many refugees as we can,
then when election time comes, I hope voters will...
-Smoke 'em out.
-This has been "A Closer Look."
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