oh and a tragic move for whimpering
neocons president biden
has made the correct choice to finally
pull out of afghanistan the war has
proven to be expensive
unwinnable absurdly protracted and
there's no definition of victory
whatsoever and we're two decades in
whenever a president has almost closed
the book on america's longest war
well next to the war on drugs they are
pulled back into the fracas
with promises of an al-qaeda or isis
on steroids hulking itself out of the
region toward the next
9 11. 2 400 american service men and
women have paid with their lives there
not to mention over 100 000 civilian
deaths according to the u.n
conservative estimates pegged the
20-year war cost
at 824 billion dollars but when you
factor in a broader range of costs and
you'd be naive not to
you're squeaking over the two trillion
dollar mark and for
what all the money we've poured in there
has nominally grown the afghan economy
but
we have nothing to show for the 24
billion we've torched
in the name of economic development
unemployment there is way up and afghan
corporations which are lorded over by
successively more corrupt regimes hire
cheap labor from pakistan and india
you know what they do there how they
make a lot of money
making lots and lots of opium if you
want to make america great again
end the drug war and grow poppies here
in the cemetery of the keystone xl
pipeline
in a 2018 report from the special ig for
afghan reconstruction
it is noted that counter narcotics the
counter narcotics campaign there
has been a dismal failure their word
not mine but i concur you've got
objectiveless death
a mounting tab a dearth of goodwill to
put it mildly
all for a war that makes us no safer and
certainly no better
and i'm astounded that people like
senator jeanne shaheen
blather saying quote i'm very
disappointed in the president's decision
to set a september deadline to walk away
from afghanistan
she continues the u.s has sacrificed too
much to bring stability to afghanistan
to leave without verifiable assurances
of a secure
future lady you want to sit around for
verifiable assurances good luck sister
you'd have better luck selling
ben and jerry's in hell it's time to
take the bullhorn away from the neocons
and get the hell out of afghanistan for
good
and that's the memo
now earlier today president biden gave
us his reasons for pulling troops out of
afghanistan watch
i believed that our presence in
afghanistan should be focused
on the reason we went in the first place
to ensure
afghanistan would not be used as a base
from which to attack our homeland again
we did that we accomplished that
objective
but as i mentioned he's running into
some stiff resistance
it's a really reckless uh decision and
i think that you know you don't end wars
by announcing that you're
leaving what you do is you seed the
ground uh to your enemy
the result of this decision today by
president biden
is this council and insurance policy
that in my view would prevent another
911. precipitously withdrawing u.s
forces from afghanistan
is a grave mistake it is a retreat in
the face of an enemy that has not yet
been vanquished
an abdication of american leadership so
is
now the time to finally bring our brave
men and women home
who've been there for way too long
joining me tonight fox and friends
weekend co-host and author
of modern warriors pete hegseth is here
welcome pete
nice to see you hey kennedy uh so you
and i
are are in agreement on this and uh that
brings joy to my heart
because the the doomsayers in both
parties and it's not just republicans
it's it's not just what people would
consider the usual suspects you have
seth moulton and gene shaheen
saying the same thing but there is zero
justification
for any more protraction in afghanistan
what are your thoughts
i agree with you kennedy you know we
want to see mitch mcconnell wants us to
stay
until his measure of when the enemy is
vanquished is reached
when will that be listen exactly listen
i am as you know a recovering
neoconservative it took me a long time
to get over the sort of hubris i had
about human nature and what we could do
at the end of a rifle in afghanistan but
once you've been there and you've seen
it and you
understand what we're up against you
understand why this is a
tragic at this point 20 years in waste
of resources and that doesn't take away
from the heroism that so many gave there
and i saw it firsthand
but ultimately what do we get for what
we've put in
and in a world of in a world of
unlimited resources fine stay forever
and
to manage this small possibility that it
turns into another 911 again that's not
the world we live in the communist
chinese
are are stacking the deck around the
globe and we're stuck in the dirt in
afghanistan trying to rebuild a country
that doesn't want to rebuild itself
with it with an afghan security forces
that i saw firsthand
we've been training side by side for 20
years and still can't take on
the taliban because the taliban has the
connection with the population if you
understand
the tribal system there you understand
why the national government would
never work so there are no good options
kennedy but it was the right decision by
joe biden he rarely makes the right
decision in this case he did
yes and i'm glad you have to give him
credit for that and and that's a really
interesting point because
obviously it's something that president
obama ran on in 2008 it's something that
he promised that we would be out of
afghanistan by 2014
it's also something that president trump
ran on so what is it
about that conflict that makes it
impossible for american presidents to
let go
well it's the connection to 9 11.
frankly i
i don't like the fact that they've tied
it to the 20th anniversary of 9 11. i
don't know what
it's a propaganda victory unnecessarily
for al qaeda and isis and others i don't
like that aspect of it
but for so many in institutional
washington afghanistan was the good war
yeah
iraq was the bad war and therefore you
couldn't quit afghanistan
and and actually it's backwards i mean
they both had their difficulties but at
least in iraq you had a chance
in afghanistan there never was one to
remake this society that that ultimately
isn't
has no chance of that happening so it is
it is 911 that kept us there
and then it's just listen every i i
respect a lot of the people
that came on our network and other
networks today talking about the war i
know them i know them well i
i think their intentions are right but
they always are talking about the
conditions on the ground
what if the condition on the ground is
you're never going to meet the condition
and trust me
we're never going to it's not going to
happen
at some point you cut bait and say we
know it's not going to be good
we don't like the people that will take
over hey if russia wants a shot at it
have at it you've tried it before it's
not going to work for you either but how
much is it
you know whenever people talk about
afghanistan they naturally make
comparisons to vietnam vietnam
we're only there for eight and a half
years and you know only sounds pretty
insensitive considering
the number of americans who died over
there not to mention the millions
of north and south vietnamese but part
of the reason we stayed there was to
save faith is that
what has happened in afghanistan you
know we're embarrassed
a little bit i think but it's also
there's also a
momentum of a military-industrial
complex that says here's the next
chapter of what we can accomplish and if
you
you can't leave because if you do it's
on your watch so you have to stay
committed
even though the outcome is totally
ambiguous and we can't say what victory
is anymore and the taliban is gaining
momentum but we say we're still holding
on
it was it's chaos and the lack of
political courage
trump started this by the way donald
trump opened the conversation to say
let's get out i don't see what the value
is joe biden is following through
and again bigger threats the communist
chinese we got to build a military ready
to deal with that
not looking backwards in afghanistan and
and you have kids who lost
parents on 9 11 uh and they were babies
on 9 11 and now they're fighting in
afghanistan
it uh it truly is mind-boggling but i
hope you use your rationale and your
experience
uh to convince more people of the
correct side
which uh blissfully you were on thank
you so much pete high seth good to talk
to you
thanks kennedy appreciate it