In a rare admission, retired
General Mike Mullen has disclosed
to the media that our foreign
policy in Afghanistan was in fact
a complete and utter mistake.
In fact,
he first confessed this during
an interview with Martha Raddatz
on ABC's This Week, let's watch.
>> I thought we could
build the army and give them
a chance to create structures which
would run a country
in a much more modern fashion.
That just is not the case.
>> So when you look back on those
years, are you really kind of
beating yourself up over that?
>> Well, I am, yeah.
What I thought we could do, and
I advised President Obama
accordingly as I thought we could
turn it around.
Obviously, I was wrong.
>> You've also heard
President Biden say, look,
we should have gotten out ten years
ago, we should have gotten out
after they killed Osama bin Laden.
You were there when they killed
Osama bin Laden.
>> Sure.
>> You were the chairman,
should we've gotten out then?
>> I think in retrospect, yeah,
we should have.
I don't think it was possible for
us to just abruptly walk away right
after we killed Bin Laden.
But clearly we could have gone
earlier than we did.
>> Did the mission fail?
>> I think complete failure, no.
Clearly taking out Bin Laden was
a huge impact in terms of Al Qaeda
and what was represented there.
I'm not inclined to just lay it on,
yes, it was a success, or
it was a failure.
I think we're somewhere in between.
>> Now, again,
that was Admiral Mike Mullen.
And according to Slate,
Mullen, who was the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff from October
of 2007 till September of 2011,
is thus far the only senior officer
of that period who was publicly
admitted that the United States and
the US policy that he of course
was personally involved in,
was deeply mistaken.
In fact he says, quote,
it's hard to deny the evidence
in front of you.
Now we share the fact that he is
the only individual who has
admitted the terrible foreign
policy mistakes in Afghanistan.
He is an exception to the rule.
If you've been watching cable news,
if you've been watching network
news or any of the corporate media,
what you're likely to hear over and
over again, is various retired
generals, various members
of former administrations,
think that we should remain in
Afghanistan forever.
We should always have boots on
the ground indefinitely because we
need to be there to prop
up a government that clearly was so
weak that it immediately started to
fall apart as soon as US troops
were withdrawn from that country.
Now, guess what, despite all of
those awful mistakes, the one thing
that I disagree with Admiral Mullen
on is the fact that maybe we should
have left ten years ago.
But he thinks we should have left
as soon as Osama Bin Laden was
captured and executed or
assassinated.
But the fact of the matter is
we should have never invaded
Afghanistan to begin with,
because the whole point was to
bring Osama Bin Laden to justice
for what happened on 9/11.
Well, before we had invaded that
country, there was
a possibility for that to happen.
There was a possibility to avoid
war and to bring Osama Bin Laden
to justice.
In fact,
let me take you to an excerpt from
a piece that was published by ABC
back in October 14 of 2001.
They reported the following.
The United States rejected yet
another offer by Afghanistan's
ruling Taliban to turn over Osama
Bin Laden for trial in a third
country if the United States
presents evidence against Bin Laden
and stops air attacks.
Now when explaining the Bush
administration's rejection of that
reasonable offer, Bush made clear
that he didn't believe that there
was any need to negotiate with
the Taliban, to work with them, or
to take them up on that offer.
He says, quote,
there's no need to discuss it.
We know he's guilty,
just turn him over.
There's nothing to negotiate about.
They're harboring a terrorist and
they need to turn him over.
So instead,
Bush decided to go to war.
>> Okay, so
the exception proves the rule with
Mullen because everyone is noting,
my god, that's a military official,
and obviously very important one.
And a rare television segment,
in fact a unique television segment
where they actually criticize
the actual war, not the exit, but
the war.
Isn't that amazing that all of
the rest of television never
criticizes the war?
Never says something as plainly
obvious as we spent 20 years there,
and the entire time
the Pentagon was telling us,
victory's around the corner.
We got this thing figured out,
with the Afghan government in
good shape.
We rebuilt the Afghan military,
they're going to stand up to
the Taliban,
and they collapse in 11 days.
So shouldn't there be people all
over television right now saying,
what the hell, my god, the Pentagon
lied to us for 20 straight years.
The intelligence officials were
horrific.
The Pentagon was worse, and
the defense contractors profited
off all this death and waste.
Yet it's never said on cable news,
and even there Martha Raddatz is
kind of challenging [INAUDIBLE}.
>> Of course.
>> From my, whoa, wait a minute,
are you saying that endless war is
bad, former chairman of the joint
chiefs?
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
In fact, he said in another case,
quote, it's hard to deny
the evidence in front of you,
unless apparently you're a reporter
on television.
In which case it's
exceedingly easy.
That's what they're all doing wall
to wall, pro war coverage,
as all of us are seeing an epic
collapse of a 20 year effort that
apparently accomplished absolutely
nothing in Afghanistan.
Remember, they didn't get Bin Laden
in Afghanistan,
they got him in Pakistan.
That had nothing to do with the war
in Afghanistan, and
that happened a decade ago.
But here, I'll give you more.
Is anybody saying, hey, Trump for
four years old,
was he in favor of withdrawal,
or was he not?
No, Trump did nothing for
four years.
Absolutely, positively nothing.
Now there's some Trump haters, so
you might even see that
here and there.
Eight years of Obama,
an obvious failure.
Have you heard one person on
cable news?
Isn't it amazing that Fox News and
MSNBC agree on only this.
War is awesome, so we won't even
criticize Obama for keeping us
there in an obvious mistake.
The most obvious mistake has
anybody has ever seen.
Nope, the only thing they're
criticizing is the exit.
>> Yeah, look, we talk about
the financial interests at play,
the war profiteers, and the fact
that those very war profiteers
happened to be the sponsors and
advertisers for some of these major
networks and cable news channels.
So to give you an example,
yesterday we were talking about how
Boeing happens to be one of
the advertisers for Chuck Todd's
programming over the weekend.
And a longtime sponsor for
Chuck Todd for
corporate media basically.
And what does Boeing sell to
ordinary average consumers?
Nothing, but
that money does have an impact on
the type of reporting that we see
in regard to foreign policy.
But there's another aspect to it.
And that aspect is the access
journalism that we time to time
bring up as well.
Whenever there are these
panel discussions,
whenever there are these interviews
regarding foreign policy,
they want to make sure that they
talk to either a current general,
a former general.
One of the people that you're
likely to see in the press
commenting and weighing in on
Afghanistan is David Petraeus.
So I want to give you an example of
what kind of opinions and analysis
you get from David Petraeus when
he's being interviewed by people
like Katie Couric, let's watch.
>> What kind of troop presence do
you think should have been
maintained in Afghanistan to keep
things under control?
>> Well, we had somewhere between
2,500 and
3,500 troops on the ground
depending on your accounting rules.
Again, we had not had a battle loss
in some 18 months or so.
That's partly attributable to
the deal that we did, very unwise
deal that we cut with the Taliban
during the previous administration.
We could have crafted
a sustainable, sustainability being
measured in terms of blood and
treasure, sustained commitment.
By the way, a sustained commitment
would be the one that would provide
the most solid foundation from
which to negotiate.
Part of our problem all along for
three administrations,
is that we have repeatedly said we
want to leave.
And then we expect to negotiate
with an adversary who realizes we
want to leave and is not going to
concede anything to us.
We got really nothing from
the agreement that was signed
in the previous administration.
>> But there have been problems
with the government and
the military that was propped up by
the US government.
We've known that for
quite some time now.
I mean, there were issues
with corruption,
there were reports on that.
I mean, the fact that everything
crumbled so quickly as soon as
US troops began leaving Afghanistan
gives you a sense of how 20 years
and $2 trillion later, that nation
building project was a complete and
utter failure.
And what people like David Petraeus
are calling for is troops
on the ground indefinitely.
That's what he means when he
says a sustained effort.
And what wasn't disclosed at any
moment during that interview, or
even in the description box in
the YouTube video of that
interview, was the fact that there
are financial interests at play.
And that David Petraeus has
a massive conflict of interest
because he works for corporations
that profit from these wars.
And this is again, something we've
shared with you before, but
I want to repeat it because it's so
important even in this context.
This is reporting from the The
Intercept, Petraeus serves on the
board of Optic Security, a large
cyber security firm that contracts
with the defense department.
And is a partner of KKR and Co.,
a global private equity firm with
assets in the defense sector.
He called the Afghanistan
withdrawal a Dunkirk moment on
Fox News and told BBC,
quote, we should literally reverse
the decision adding, quote, I fear,
we would come to regret
the decision and we already are.
There are no good outcomes,
unless the United States and
its allies recognize that
we made a serious mistake.
So I just don't get it,
I don't get it.
It should be disclosed that
David Petraeus has this massive
conflict of interest, and should
not be weighing in on something,
especially when he's calling for
permanent troops on the ground in
Afghanistan that he stands to
profit off of.
>> Guys, look,
the minute you say obvious things,
the mainstream media becomes
a joke, it becomes crystal clear.
So for example, Petraeus said we
needed a sustained commitment.
Don't you think a normal follow up
would have been we were there for
20 years, what would you consider
a sustained commitment?
100 years, 200 years?
How many years did you want to stay
in Afghanistan, if 20 years is not
a sustained commitment?
And he said, well, they didn't
want to negotiate with us,
the Taliban, because they realized
that we were going to leave.
Well, what was the alternative?
Were we going to stay in their
country forever?
I don't know if you know this,
Afghanistan is not the 51st state.
I hope obviously we were going to
leave at some point.
But since Patreus works for
defense contractors, he says no.
Basically he's saying right there
we should never leave, and
the media applause.
Yay, we should never leave.
Look here,
our members are already writing in.
It's a funny handle,
[INAUDIBLE] potato wrote in.
I live in a neighborhood where
a lot of congress people live.
If I watch CNN or MSNBC,
I get advertisements for
weapon systems.
Of course you do.
Okay, are you going to
buy a weapons system?
You're not going to buy
a weapons system.
They're doing it so
that the press will go, yeah, war,
war kicks ass, right?
By the way, did they tell you all
these outrageous things?
Fred Kaplan, a great writer
at Slate we've been using him for
over 20 years to cover
foreign policy and wars and stuff.
And we don't always agree but
he has the facts.
And in this case,
he wrote about, hey, you remember
that time that high level Afghan
officials embezzled $850 million,
all taxpayer money,
US taxpayer money, US $850 million.
And the administration chose not to
prosecute.
So, then everybody knew
this was a joke.
They're just going to rob
all of our money.
They're going to take it and
then we're going to build all
these weapons.
And we're going to give it to the
Afghan military and the government.
And we know the Taliban is
eventually going to take it because
this government's a joke.
They all knew it.
They all knew it,
even Lindsey Graham's has quotes
saying what a joke it is, and
they couldn't possibly do it.
So, has the media in this moment,
where they're talking nonstop about
Afghanistan, said obviously nation
building doesn't work, obviously,
right?
Nope, zero, zero.
The closest we could find was that
Admiral Mullen clip,
that's why we shared it with you.
There's nothing else,
wall to wall propaganda that
endless wars are great.
They're not manufacturing news,
they're manufacturing consent,
that's what cable news.
And, look, everybody under 40,
I'm preaching to the choir.
You guys all know cable news is
a joke news, right?
And Fox News is one style
propaganda, but so is CNN and
MSNBC.
The establishment media does
a different kind of propaganda, and
in this case it's for endless wars.
But people above 45 think that
these guys are gods.
My God, what did Don Lemon say?
Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow,
my God, you're so great.
Who should I vote for?
Voting, yes, Nina Turner.
I'll definitely do it,
whatever you tell me to do.
I'll vote against progressive, vote
against Bernie Sanders [INAUDIBLE].
Vote for endless war, I love it.
And by the way, what
does that affect?
Honestly, it mainly affects
older Democratic voters.
So the right wing realizes they're
full of crap.
The progressives and young people
realize they're full of crap.
And I don't mean to indict all
older Democratic voters.
There's wonderful activists in that
group that are part of our audience
and great.
But look guys,
everybody in power still thinks
these guys are doing news.
I know to the rest of us,
it seems unbelievable.
But that these are the guys who won
the country.
>> I just also find it fascinating
that most of the conversation on
corporate media has focused on
whether or not we should have
withdrawn from Afghanistan.
But while they pretend
to be concerned about the people
of Afghanistan, it's telling that
they don't really focus much of
their coverage on what
should happen to Afghan refugees.
They might mention it here or
there, but it to me,
it speaks volumes that most of
the conversation is about,
we need to protect Afghan people by
making sure there are troops on
the ground permanently.
If you care about Afghan people,
if you care about those who have
suffered as a result of this war,
or who suffer as a result of
the Taliban.
Why aren't we having more
of a conversation about increasing
the number of refugees that we're
willing to admit into the country?
It's because they don't actually
care about the people of
Afghanistan.
And that was also abundantly clear
as drone strikes were taking out
entire families of
civilians on the ground.
>> Yeah. >> So.
>> Look, I'm going to say one last
thing, and I'll give
the members the last comments here,
but the mask is off basically.
So, no one could see the coverage
on television of Afghanistan and
think, this is fair news.
This is objective news,
talking about the 20 year failure
of the Pentagon.
The 20 year failure of nation
building.
It collapsed in 11 days.
It turns out every general
we've ever had on here, and
almost every politician we've ever
had on our television airwaves,
has been lying to us.
And we found the quotes, we played
them for you the last couple of
weeks of all the generals,
all the policies, all wrong, yet
no one on television is saying it.
All they're doing
is criticizing the exit.
And so, now you see it with
great certainty that they
too have an alternate reality.
There's a Trump alternate reality.
There's the establishment alternate
reality, and
then there are obvious facts.
So last words to the members.
If you remember we read
your comments and
you're part of the show.
I am Sock Wrights said,
remember how the media said that
Donald Trump officially became
president when he dropped the MOAB,
the mother of all bombs?
Yeah, I do remember that.
And I remember Brian Williams on
MSNBC talking about
the beautiful bombs.
And that was in relationship to
Syria I believe.
But whenever presidents
are dropping bombs, even Trump,
they're like bravo, bravo,
murder them, right?
Did it ever get you anything?
Never, and they never discuss it.
And finally, Jedi Mullet 77 says,
for those who
wanted to stay in Afghanistan
forever need to be asked how are we
going to pay for it?
Never asked
not once by the mainstream media,
because they're not doing news
they're doing compliance.