BENSON: Could there be a Taliban flag flying over the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by September 11th, 2021? Joining me now, former CIA officer and radio host Buck Sexton. Buck, as you watch these images — and there’s reporting late in the day that Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, is now under Taliban control. You see these pictures and these videos and you watch these reports coming across the wire, what do Americans at home who might be grappling with perhaps mixed emotions about this…? In your view, what do they need to know?
BUCK: Well, there’s so much here that’s really just in conflict with each other. I think on one level, Guy, you have people that… I was in Afghanistan a decade ago, and what’s happening right now wouldn’t be a surprise. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you that the moment the U.S. pulls out, you’re gonna have deterioration.
The surprise, I think, is at how rapid it has been. I think people would have expected that after 20 years, a trillion dollars, countless tens of billions of dollars of just mentoring and direct support of the Afghan military plus a trillion in the overall war effort, that we would last — or we would expect, rather, the Afghan war allies to last a bit longer than this.
So, I think that this has to be remembered as something the Trump administration wanted to do. There is a bipartisan sense that it was time to go, but the withdrawal is about as awful and messy — it seems right now — as it could possibly be from the perspective of security in the country of Afghanistan.
What an absolute debacle! And then we have to think about the possibility — and I know nobody wants to hear this, but we’re all thinking about it; everybody is — is this going to get so bad, is the Taliban going to decide that they’ll bring in Al-Qaeda again —
BUCK: — and then we’ll be discussing whether it’s a U.S. military mission?
BENSON: It’s like the cycle begins again —
BUCK: Yeah.
BENSON: — which is why we were in there in the first place, Buck. But to your point about how quickly it looks like the Afghan forces and the government just sort of melted away and has been quickly overrun. Is that perhaps an indication that after twenty years, this was never going to work? I mean, yes, there’s a humanitarian catastrophe underway.
This feels like a national humiliation for us. It does, given so much blood and treasure that’s been spent there. Nevertheless, the results are speaking for themselves. Is this perhaps adding fuel to the argument that we should have gotten out a long time ago, because all the extra years apparently didn’t achieve very much, which is a horrible thing to say, but here we are.
BUCK: Well, as I said, the assessments even at the start of the first Obama term, which is when I was handling Afghanistan issues at the CIA’s Afghanistan desk, Guy, those assessments would have told you that the training of the Afghan national military — just in general throughout the government throughout the intelligence community — we all knew there were tremendous problems of corruption.
And this was going all the way up to the very top, and also just ineptitude on the part of the Afghan national security forces, Afghan national police. And so none of this is really surprising, and I do think people are wondering, how was it we had so many cycles of military leadership…? Look, a few thousand U.S. troops basically holds this place together, right? We all know, yeah, we have the best, most efficient, bravest military in the world.
That doesn’t translate (chuckles) necessarily, obviously to the Afghan army. How was it we had so many cycles of leadership — generals, four-star generals — coming in, who were saying, “Oh, we’ve figured it out, we’re making progress”?
BUCK: Obviously, we weren’t really making progress, Guy, at least in terms of a sustainable Afghan state. So we need to look at that as well, and then also the possibility of having to go back again in the future, which I know nobody wants to hear, but that’s something we have to consider.
BENSON: Yeah. And your heart just goes out. It’s gut-wrenching to the people who have sacrificed so much — Americans — in that country. And you think about the people in Afghanistan, women and girls in particular. It is going to be very ugly. Buck, we appreciate you coming on tonight. Thank you.
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