How We Failed Afghanistan (And Ourselves) with HR McMaster
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Hi, it's Barry. This is Honestly. And I don't know about you, but I've been completely glued to my phone for the past week. I am just absolutely unable to stop taking in the news out of Afghanistan. It's devastating. I don't think there's another word for it. And I'm watching all of this and I'm thinking, how the hell did this happen?

How did we spend 20 years, more than $2 trillion, more than 2,300 American lives, and something like 50,000, 60,000 Afghan lives only to wind up like this with this catastrophe? So that's one thing I've been thinking about.

The other thing that I'm noticing is the way that the events of this past week feel like they've solidified what's been an emerging isolationist consensus, a consensus that's bringing together people on the right and the left. I'm stunned that Joe Biden is the president to be truly the best anti-war president in the last 20 years. There's just really no other way to say it. I think you have to probably say of our lifetime. Here's what I mean.

You have a left that's basically saying, good riddance, good riddance to the American imperial project. This war was doomed. It was wrong to begin with. And it was built on a tower of lies. History of similar lying.

by governments for decades, first to lie our countries into a war that has no benefit to the people, that makes people rich in Washington and powerful in Washington, but does nothing for the American people except risk their lives and their hard-earned taxpayer money. We were there not because it served the Afghan people, but because it served the military-industrial complex. And all this talk of women's lib, that was just another facet of our colonialist outlook.

It turns out that the people of Afghanistan don't actually want gender studies symposia. And on the right, we have people saying they don't hate their own masculinity. They don't think it's toxic. You know what? We're so decadent. We're so woke. Our priorities are so wrong. We've so abandoned virtue that we deserve this defeat. This is not like other empires. Unlike other empires, ours does not operate for our benefit.

Instead, the entire point of our imperial project is to give meaning to the empty lives of the neoliberal bureaucrats who administer it and then enrich the contractors who work for them. Who are enriched? You'll be happy to know. What role do the rest of us play in this? None. We just pay for it. And I have to say, there's a part of me that understands both of these arguments, not the specifics of them, but more the despair and the rage and the nihilism.

Watching this, you just also cannot help but come to the conclusion that the people running the show in this country are absolutely incompetent. But then again, I see what existed not two weeks ago in Afghanistan and what exists today and what will surely exist two weeks from now. And I think, how is this better? How is this better than just keeping 2,500 troops there? All of this is why I wanted to talk to my guest today, General H.R. McMaster, a man who has skin in the game.

The general is about as educated and as decorated as a general gets. In 2018, he retired after 34 years of Army service, and he retired as a three-star lieutenant general. He served in the Gulf War. He was a leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And most recently, he was a national security advisor to President Donald Trump. We talk frankly. We talk frankly about the collapse of Afghanistan, whether the military brass bear the brunt of the responsibility,

Whether it was the politicians' fault or whether it was doomed from the start. And if it wasn't, when and why things went so horribly wrong. H.R. is also an author. He wrote a famous book about Vietnam called Dereliction of Duty. Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam. It's a book that remains highly relevant today. His most recent book is Battlegrounds, the fight to defend the free world.

When H.R. McMaster agreed to come on the show, I reached out to a few sources in the foreign policy world to think through some questions that I might ask him. And one of them wrote back this. H.R. is the only general I've met that I personally like. The rest of them are pathetic jocks. They're liars and they're idiots. And God help us if we have a war with China because we will all be dead. So that's H.R. for you.

Today's conversation is powerful and it's serious. And so I want to warn you that the ads are a little bit lighter than the conversation, but I hope they add some needed levity. I hope you'll stay with us. Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

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So, HR, a lot of shocking images have been emerging out of Afghanistan in the past few days. Images of people hoisting their babies over the wall at Kabul airport to try and get them on a plane out of the country.

images of women begging to be led onto planes. Thousands of Afghans desperate to get out, some seem chasing a U.S. military plane, a C-17, as it was taxiing for takeoff, climbing onto the plane. But the image that I can't stop thinking about, and it's a clip that I can't stop watching, is of the American C-17 taking off. Desperate to flee Taliban rule, Afghans are resorting to this, grasping at U.S. military aircraft and risking their lives.

And of course, in the background, you see these two tiny dots falling from the sky. Some hung onto the wheels and fell to their death. And at first, I didn't understand what I was seeing. And then I realized that those dots are people, Afghans who were clinging to the wheels of the plane. And it's striking to me how these images are coming almost 20 years to the day since the attacks of September 11th, where

Of course, as everyone will remember, men and women were falling from the sky, leaping from those buildings rather than dying inside. And I kind of wanted to begin there, to use those two images together

as bookends of this conversation. I mean, I think these images evoke really the consequences or expose the consequences of our self-delusion over those 20 years, a self-delusion that I think manifested itself in kind of a form of moral equivalency. You know, there were those, even in the U.S. government, Barry, when I served as national security advisor

who were advocating for a role for the Taliban in government in Afghanistan under the belief that, well, maybe the Taliban will impose a more benign form of Sharia. Maybe the Taliban isn't intertwined and interconnected with jihadist terrorists such as Al-Qaeda. Maybe the Taliban will be willing to share power in Afghanistan. And it was the results of this self-delusion,

that led to this strategy. I think what happened, Barry, is we defeated ourselves largely because we lost the will to sustain the effort. And we never even talked about the Taliban. If you just consider the recent speech that President Biden gave

You know, as the world was beginning to see these images, he had a lot of critical words for Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan, or harsh words for the Afghan security forces, 70,000, by the way, of whom have died since 2001, protecting the freedoms that the Afghan people have enjoyed since then.

But he had not a crossword for Haibatullah Akhenzadeh and the Taliban. And so I think that what we're seeing is a reversal of morality and that the self-delusion is now completely apparent and I think illuminated by your evoking of these two images 20 years apart from one another.

I think it's self-delusion. I also think it's about just a absolute crisis in confidence in what America is and what it's meant to be in the world. I want to get to everything that you just touched on, Biden's speech, the blame game, the lessons that we can learn from the past 20 years. But before we get there, I want to go back to 2001.

So within weeks of the attack from al-Qaeda that not only kills thousands of Americans, but I think ushers in this era that I think has now definitively ended, the U.S., along with several of our allies, invade Afghanistan.

Take us back, H.R., what was the original purpose? What was the original mission of that invasion in October of 2001 with Bush as president? What was the goal to start off with? Take us back to that moment. Well, of course, it was to attack al-Qaeda, those who were responsible for the most devastating terrorist attack in history.

and also to unseat their state sponsor, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, run by the Taliban. And that was an extraordinarily successful campaign. But the long-term goal was to ensure that Afghanistan could never again be used as a base for jihadist terrorists who want to commit mass murder against us and who are essentially the enemies of all humanity.

Of course, to do that, you need a sustainable political outcome in Afghanistan that is hostile and intolerant of jihadist terrorists and those who would aid and abet them. And that's what we endeavored to do in Afghanistan, but we did it half-heartedly. We took essentially a short-term approach to a long-term problem and then paradoxically, therefore, you know,

lengthened the war and made it more costly and difficult. Here's what I remember. What I remember is that within months of American troops arriving in Afghanistan, so say it was like

December 2001, the Taliban had basically collapsed. And yes, you know, bin Laden and his henchmen had escaped to the Tora Bora mountains. I remember looking up what the Tora Bora mountains were, but it seemed clear then that the Taliban were on their back heels. And I remember there was a feeling at the time of something like victory, but we didn't pack up and leave. It seems to me that then the goal shifted and

So if the original plan was beat back the Taliban and dismantle al Qaeda, all of a sudden it seemed to me that the goal shifted from that to something like nation building. Do I have that right?

No, I think you're wrong about that. Okay. But you're not the only one. Tell me why that's wrong, because I think that that is the conventional narrative. No, it is the conventional narrative now, right? And so this is really the argument that we should just take the George Costanza approach to war and leave on a high note. Right.

But I think what we should learn from history is that the consolidation of military gains to get to sustainable political outcomes has never been an optional phase in war. Now, it can be for military raids, which is not war. That's a military operation of short duration, limited purpose, and planned withdrawal.

But we have always had to try to consolidate gains and get to a sustainable political outcome that is consistent with what brought us into war to begin with. Now, this has a very practical dimension to it in terms of what would have happened if we had just left. Well, of course, the Taliban would have reconstituted as they did in Pakistan.

They would have done so as they did with the help of al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, the intel arm of the Pakistani army. And they would have taken back control of Afghanistan. That's exactly what would have happened.

So what we endeavored to do from that point on is to help foster a political settlement in Afghanistan that would put that country on the road to self-sufficiency over time, over multiple generations, with a sustained and sustainable commitment that would harden and strengthen Afghanistan against the regenerative capacity of the Taliban, which was mainly across the border in Pakistan.

And if we had acknowledged that as our mission from the beginning, Barry, we would have made it much easier on ourselves. Meaning if we had, I want you to explain what you mean when you say sustainable. Do you mean having a small footprint of a few thousand soldiers there indefinitely in the way that we have something like 50,000 soldiers in Japan, a similar number, I believe, in Germany? Is that what you mean by a sustainable solution? Well, I mean, we do have 50,000 soldiers in Japan.

We have 30,000 in South Korea, 30,000 in Germany, you know, 70 years after World War II, 75 years. So I just think...

Barry, it really, the numbers don't matter, right? It's what those soldiers are doing. How are they contributing to essentially a political outcome? And is the investment and is the risk that those soldiers take and the cost of the effort, is it worth it? Do the American people think it's worth it? That's what's important.

But I think what happened in Afghanistan is by taking the short term approach, right, to say, hey, we're leaving, you know, OK, we're leaving now. OK, now we're really leaving. What we did is we took this short term approach to a long term problem. What we encouraged

on the part of the Afghans was hedging behavior, right? I mean, Secretary Rumsfeld, you know, remember everybody makes a big deal about President Bush's mission accomplished moment on the aircraft carrier? - Right. - On that same day,

Secretary Rumsfeld was in Afghanistan declaring that war over, right? And so what the Afghans did is they looked over their shoulders like, who's got our back? Nobody? Hey, it's time to cut some deals, right? And what happened is President Karzai at the time

really then pursued a political settlement in Afghanistan that was based on unchecked criminality. He gave the Mujahideen-era militias, who essentially affected capture of nascent state institutions that had to be rebuilt in the wake of the Taliban, gave them license to steal in exchange for their political fealty.

And so what we had is we created a political settlement in Afghanistan that was based on really unchecked criminality. And we handed it over because of our inattention to the consolidation of gains.

to groups that were hollowing out the institutions that we were building, right? And they were doing it to prepare for return of civil war. I mean, they had very much on their minds the destructive civil war of '92 to '96 that resulted in the Taliban taking power from '96 to 2001. And they were resolved to not allow that to happen again to their particular group.

And so we didn't do what we needed to do politically, diplomatically to forge a sustainable political settlement in Afghanistan. That's just one of many problems associated with this short-term approach to long-term problems. But guess what we're learning, Barry? We're learning exactly the opposite, really what you alluded to. Shouldn't we have just left on a high note? Well, if we had, it would have been a catastrophe except 20 years earlier.

Well, you raise the question of whether or not the American people think that the war is worth it or having, in this case, 2,500 soldiers on the ground is worth it. Twenty years ago, when America went to Afghanistan, 80% of the public supported the ground intervention. Now, as of last month, 70% of Americans say that they supported the U.S. withdrawing.

How do you make sense of that dramatic shift? Is that a failure of political storytelling? Is that a failure of, you know, national morale? Who's to blame there for that shift?

Well, leaders are. I mean, it's a failure of political leadership, right? What do the American people deserve to know about the commitment of their sons and daughters abroad? They deserve to know two things. What is at stake? Why do they care? Why is this worth it? And the second is, what is a strategy that will deliver a favorable outcome at an acceptable cost and risk?

And no president. The last three presidents have told Americans it's not worth it. Right. And have prioritized withdrawal over the achievement of worthy aims.

So it's no surprise Americans don't support the effort because their political leadership haven't done their job. I would also say that really in your profession too, Barry, the fourth estate, you know, I mean, I think this is the most underreported war in history in the information age. And a lot of it has to do, I think, with business models for, you know, for our mainstream media that don't want to underwrite the cost of foreign correspondents being there.

But I also think it's the predisposition of many journalists who covered the wars toward, I think, a form of disinterest and defeatism.

that set us up for the loss of will. Why is it now, Barry, as the Afghan people and Afghan women in particular are about to lose everything that they have gained since 2001, that we are now talking about the transformation of Afghan society that occurred across the last 20 years, right? The narrative has been, oh, we wasted trillions of dollars. I mean, the president of the United States just said it. We wasted trillions of dollars.

The Afghan women who are now going to be repressed again by this misogynistic group of people who use forced marriages as the cover for raping adolescents, right? I mean, do they...

I mean, do they think, you know, that we wasted that money and that there was no there were no gains? As you know, in Afghanistan, it has had the freest press in the region. Right. Was that a waste? Do those Afghans think that we wasted our effort? There was no coverage of that. Look at the improvements in health care and education. I mean, so it was Afghanistan, Denmark. No. And guess what? It's never going to be Denmark.

But I think that it is a failure of narrative, as you alluded to, but it's fundamentally a failure of leadership. There's a lot of veterans that have been expressing just absolute devastation over wondering whether their sacrifices were worth it. I'm working on a piece by a Marine,

And he wrote, for over a decade, our political leaders have failed to give a reason, any reason, why this mission was worth our sacrifice. The commander-in-chief owes that to our military and their families. That's their job, and they have failed. Each year, they should have made the argument for sending new troops into the theater. Instead, they only talked about how they wanted to pull us out, even as they sent us in. Do you think that's fair?

Heck yes, it's fair. Yes. I mean, in 2009, when President Obama announced the reinforced security effort, he announced the withdrawal of troops at the same time. Barry, I write about this extensively in Battlegrounds and maybe with maybe a little bit too much emotion, you know, but...

But I mean, how does that work? Right. And then, then he initiates negotiations with the Taliban. So you tell your enemy, Hey, here's the timeline for my withdrawal. And by the way, I'd like to, I'd like to cut a deal with you. I mean, that's crazy. It's help explain that to, I mean, that seems I'm a civilian. I have no nothing about military strategy. I know that if you tell someone, Hey,

hey, I'm leaving on this day, the people that are fighting a civilizational battle who say, you Americans may have the watches, but we have the time. Why would you ever, ever admit to your timeline? I don't get it. What's the most generous read of that?

The most generous read is astounding incompetence. I think maybe there's an element of self-loathing there and moral equivalency associated with self-loathing. And I would say that those who have been educated in American universities...

and who have been subjected to what I would call the curriculum of self-loathing in American humanities departments, have learned that we are the problem of the world. All the ills of the world prior to 1945 were due to colonialism. All of the ills after 1945 were due to capitalist imperialism. And guess what? Many of the best graduates from these universities, top graduates, are now in our government.

And I don't think they recognize that war is a contest of wills. I think that they don't recognize that even the nature of our enemies and this narcissistic approach to the world is profoundly arrogant because it doesn't grant authorship over the future to our enemies.

And, you know, George Shultz, the late George Shultz, you know, who was a colleague here at the Hoover Institution until he passed away last year, he said that negotiation is a euphemism for capitulation unless the shadow of power is cast across the bargaining table. Right. That's common sense. Right. And, you know, this is...

if you're a student of negotiation and mediation theory, they have this concept of the BATNA, right? The best alternative to a negotiated agreement. You have to make your enemy's BATNA look pretty damn bad, right? For them to be able to agree. And then, of course, we know from

You know, the history of warfare, right? Winning in war means convincing your enemy that your enemy's been defeated. We have this idea now that we don't really need to win in war, right? Remember this phrase you hear now these days, a responsible end, right? You don't hear people talk about winning in war. No. But you know what? Not only is that counterproductive. I mean, Barry, you know, war is...

is a high stakes contest. Can you imagine even in a relatively low stakes context, a boxing match? Can you imagine a boxer getting the ring and saying, I just really want, I'm just going for the responsible end here. You know, I'm not going to win. And I just want, and I just want my opponent to recognize the international community. I mean,

I mean, right. You know, it's it is it is it is crazy. And, you know, but also it's unethical, Barry. Right. So I believe St. Thomas Aquinas stands the test of time with his just war philosophy and and and and, you know, juice on ad bellum theory calls for orienting all efforts in war toward a just end. Right.

And what would a just end in Afghanistan be? It's not what we're seeing today. And when I came in as national security advisor, I prioritized a South Asia strategy and new strategy for the Afghan war because I thought it was not only my duty to the president to do that so he could exercise presidential leadership in matters of life and death, but I thought it was an ethical priority to do it. And you know what? We got a good outcome out of that. I got chewed up in the process, which I was at peace with.

But he made the right decision. Now, of course, he abandoned that decision because there were all sorts of Iago figures in his ear right away, you know, with the ending the endless war mantra. Right. And and and and the conventional wisdom that we should have just left. We've you know, we've you know, we've wasted trillions of dollars there. You know, it's an endless war. What are we doing? You know, and then I think there's also an element of this, Barry, that is bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity. Hmm.

And you know, those Afghans, they'll never get it. They don't respect women anyway, you know? And they've always been susceptible to this extreme perverted form of Islam, all of which is not true, right? - Right.

mantra of the graveyard of empires is fundamentally a historical. We were not there for imperial purposes to occupy the Afghans against their will. We were fighting alongside courageous Afghans who wanted to preserve the freedoms they enjoyed since 2001. Afghanistan was never an Islamist extremist country. It was not until

The Mujahideen resistance against the Soviet occupation and the degree to which the Saudis and the Pakistanis with this neo-Deobande strain of Islam radicalized many of those fighters, many of whom were foreign, and it took hold.

in portions of Afghanistan. And it took hold after the civil war when there was a chaotic environment that Taliban could use to propel themselves to power. I think the self-loathing that you're talking about and the kind of parochialism and narcissism of our elite class, it's kind of playing out strangely in two ways.

On the far left, you have this kind of, you know, we get what we deserve. We're an imperialist power. America, KKK. You know, we never should have gone there anyway. But you see this strange new narrative coming out of the right that's kind of fetishizing the Taliban and is basically saying, look, like they're actually committed. They actually believe in what they're doing in a way that we never have. We deserve what we're getting because unlike the

them. And there's this like really strange, almost veneration of the Taliban and jihadists, which is a really strange thing to say. Have you been noticing that? Yeah, I have. And it's gut-wrenching. And you hear it about China too, HR, right? Like the 21st century ought to belong to China. At least they have will, at least they have a vision for what they're about. Same people are saying that too. Right.

Well, you know, of course, what that really overlooks, right, is the fact that we're in a democracy and we all have a say in how we're governed. We can all demand better. You know what, Barry? You make me think of a Clinton quotation. And by Clinton, I mean George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic, who...

who in 1972 released a Funkadelic album called America Eats Its Young. And one of the tracks on that album was, if you don't like the effect, don't produce the cause. And I think if you don't like what you see going on in our country, don't produce the cause. Demand better from our leaders. Get active in your communities. Help fix education. Help fix access to health care. But stop...

Stop acting as if you don't have any agency. You know, I think that we have stuck. Really, I think the 1970s is a decade that we can use as an analogy, right? Remember, I mean, remember a lost war in Vietnam.

Gosh, the Mike West incident, right? The stagflation, you know, an oil embargo, you know, the, you know, the malaise speech in which, you know, Carter never used the word malaise, but it became known as this malaise speech, you know, during the hostage crisis right after the Iranian revolution. So and then and then think about how we recovered from that. We did recover from that.

And we can do it again, right? We do have agency. We're not China, right? We don't just have to rely on the party to tell us what to do. We have a say in how we're governed. I want to jump here, HR, into the blame game. It seems to me that there are kind of three buckets, if I can use that inelegant word, of blame. The first is...

And I know that you dispute this, but the idea that the mission itself was flawed from the beginning, the idea that we could nation build in a dusty graveyard of empires, agree or disagree with it, that's certainly one of the narratives. The second is the idea of political incompetence, which we'll get to. And the third is the failure of military leadership, the failure of the generals to

to be honest, that this was unwinnable. Those are the three things that I'd love to discuss. And I'd love to begin with this idea that the mission of nation building was itself...

flawed to begin with. If you go back to what Joe Biden himself said in February 2002, he said, History is going to judge us very harshly, I believe, if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we are fearful of the phrase nation building or we do not stay the course. History is going to judge us very harshly, I believe, if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we're fearful of the phrase nation

nation building. And then, of course, he turns around his speech yesterday and says, our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building.

It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. So I'd love for you to just reflect a little bit more on this idea of nation building, what it came to mean, and if the seeds of what we're seeing now, this catastrophe, this debacle, were in that very idea.

Well, you know, nation building is a dirty word now, right? What I would use is consolidation of gains, right? And the need to get to a sustainable political outcome, not to create an Afghanistan in our image, but help the Afghanistan become Afghanistan again, right? And so what happens is that you set an expectation for Afghanistan to become Denmark, and then you declare failure if it fails.

if it hasn't become Denmark. But hey, wouldn't you have preferred the Afghanistan of just a few months ago to the Afghanistan of today? I think so. Was it sustainable? Yes. Could you envision Afghanistan getting on a path such that in decades from now, it is no longer a ward of the international community? Yes. But now I think what we have is what we're seeing is the alternative. We're seeing the alternative. Right, my friend.

My friend Eli Lake wrote that it's, you know, we took a stalemate and we transformed it overnight into a catastrophe. And a stalemate is preferable to a catastrophe. Right. And I don't think it was a stalemate from the perspective of the Taliban until the capitulation agreement.

that was signed by our Secretary of State in 2020. Our Secretary of State signed a surrender agreement to the Taliban. You're talking about Mike Pompeo? Yes. And do you know what happened next?

The Taliban began to marshal weapons and fighters. They left Pakistan, began to marshal for a major offensive, timed for about this time, right? Planned well in advance. Planned, by the way, by Siraj Haqqani, who's a member of Al-Qaeda and the military commander of the Taliban. Okay, tell me again how there's this bold line, you know, between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? It's laughable, right? And then what they did is they went to Afghan commanders at various levels and said, "Hey, here's your alternatives.

The Americans already told you they're abandoning you. So either we can come to an agreement, you know, where we'll, you know, we'll give you some pay. We'll give you free passage and everything. Or the alternative is we're going to kill you and your families. How about that for a deal?

And so that's why you saw the collapse. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. I mean, the Taliban didn't defeat us. We defeated ourselves. And what's worse is we threw the Afghans under the bus on our way out. Hey, if we were just going to leave, why the hell didn't we just leave? Why did we force them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth who immediately went back to terrorizing the Afghan people? And...

Before the ink was even dry, right? On this capitulation agreement, they were attacking maternity hospitals.

gunning down expectant mothers and infants. They were setting bombs in girls' schools and setting secondary bombs up outside so as they fleed the initial explosion, they could kill more of them, right? This is the enemy who we surrendered to. And I'll tell you, I think this is, it's a travesty. But it begins with our enabling the psychological defeat of the Afghan forces and the Afghan government. And then to hear President Biden give that speech

during which he criticizes the Afghans who we threw under the bus on our way out. Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now

Was the right decision. I just don't understand it. I mean, it makes no sense. So, H.R., you served in the Trump administration and you were gone by the time that deal was inked. But you compared that deal to the Munich agreement of 1938. I didn't say that. Somebody said, do you think it's like it? And then, you know, I didn't. I went on to talk about it on its own terms. Right. On its own terms. Yeah.

But suffice it to say, you think that the deal was a travesty. It was a travesty. I think I think I think Zal Khalilzad has done more for Chamberlain's reputation than anybody, you know, in the past century. Take us to your experience inside the Trump administration.

who was pushing for this sort of policy? Who was pushing against it? And in any way, did this contribute to why you left? Although I remember that you were, you know,

summarily fired by tweet. But take us a little bit into the Trump administration and the debate insofar as there was debate about this. Well, I'll just say not that anything that's having to do with me has any consequence given the gravity of what we're talking about. But I mean, it was a mutual decision to leave with President Trump. And we had discussions over several months about it. But really what started to get me chewed up there in terms of

You know, my influence was the South Asia strategy decision, right? And so, you know, it's important to understand what is the role of a national security advisor? The national security advisor is the only person in the foreign policy and national security establishment who has the president as his or her only client.

So to serve a president well, I believed you ought to give the president access to the best analysis and information available across departments and agencies, but from other sources as well, international partners and private sector and academia. But then also, you have to provide multiple options to the president, right? You have to recognize as a national security advisor, hey, nobody elected you. By the way, nobody elected the Secretary of State or defense or anybody. So you have to provide multiple options for the president.

can determine his or her agenda and make decisions consistent with that agenda. And so that's what I insisted on, on the South Asia strategy. From the very beginning, there were people trying to undercut that effort. Some people who wanted to sustain our commitment in Afghanistan did not want to present the president options because they were afraid that he would make the decision for a precipitous withdrawal.

Others wanted that precipitous withdrawal. Some others wanted to privatize the war with mercenaries. I mean, and so you had, you know, you have people, I think, who serve in administration who were doing what I was trying to do, which is to, you know, to provide the president with options. But then you have others.

who are motivated by other, you know, they have different motivations, right? They actually want to manipulate decisions consistent with their own agenda. And there was a very strong neo-isolationist agenda, right, that has to do with, you know, I think,

This idea that this is an endless war, you know, and instead of recognizing it's an endless jihad, actually, that jihadist terrorists are waging against us. And if we disengage, we actually enable our enemies to do us even more harm.

And there are others who, again, really cast our effort in Afghanistan as this futile endeavor to nation-build and create an image in Central Asia, create a nation in Central Asia in our image, which was not the case either. But how do you have—I mean, it's not that shocking that Trump would say something like the Taliban was going to kill terrorists for us, but to hear that out of the mouth of—

the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I mean, the statement itself, I remember at the time, was so absurd on its face. You know what's extraordinary is,

The Trump administration, this is after I left and, you know, I think all these Iago figures got in his ear and, you know, the Charles Koch funded politicians in the Republican Party want to pander to him because he's a big source of their of their political funding. You know, they they, you know, they they they doubled down on the flaws of the Obama administration. Who are these Iago figures?

Well, you have – I mean I think you have plenty who are trying to influence the president in that direction, right? This is one of the sort of – this is an element of the jingoistic and nativist ideology of elements of the alt-right. But then you also had really –

The same arguments being made from the left in the Obama administration. Right. So, you know, so so you would have you could find statements by Ben Rhodes and Mike Pompeo that look exactly like each other. But this gets to a really important point.

You're saying, you know, in a way, and correct me if I'm mishearing you, that this neo-isolationism, it's kind of fringe, it's kind of from the far right, it's funded by the Kochs. I see it, for better or for worse, as the new foreign policy consensus in this country.

You have neo-isolationism. Barry, let's hope not, right? So I wrote an essay about this in Foreign Affairs called Rebutting Retrenchment, and I write about it in the conclusion of Battlegrounds. And I allude to, I think, what we're talking about, Barry. We're talking about our confidence, right? Our confidence and our ability to implement an effective,

reasoned approach to foreign policy and national security. And I think we've lost our confidence to do that. Now, I think the reason we've lost our confidence is because of incompetence, incompetence based on strategic narcissism. Define strategic narcissism for us.

Strategic narcissism is the tendency to define the world only in relation to us and to assume that what we do or decide not to do is decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome. And this is exactly what we've done in Afghanistan. We have not acknowledged the agency and influence that others have. So with an idea of strategic narcissism B, and these are two images that are getting shared widely on social media right now, the fact that Kabul University offers a degree in gender studies and

and that a pride flag flew above the military base in Afghanistan in April. There are people that look at this and say, as this country that was flying a pride flag devolves overnight into the 7th century, and they look at it and say, what hubris on the part of the United States to think that we could export our cultural mores to this faraway land. Do you see where that perspective is coming from?

Yeah, I do. And I think that it is not our cultural mores. It's actually, I think, consistent with

you know, the freedom to educate women in universities isn't unprecedented in Afghanistan. It was it was present in Afghanistan in the 1970s. Right. So so I think that what you have is, you know, this false dilemma posed that are you going to, you know, sort of embrace, you know, reified theories that are that are destroying us in the West, I would say. But

such as elements of critical race theory and so forth, and really just critical theory overall.

Or are you going to embrace, you know, kind of the, you know, the anti-modernist, anti-modernity philosophy of the Taliban? I mean, I mean, there's a hell of a lot of ground in between those two extremes. Of course. And I think that, you know, I do. Should the Afghan people have the have the right to make that decision for themselves? I think so. I don't think I don't think any any.

human being, any society is culturally predisposed toward not wanting to say in how they're governed. Right. I really don't. I mean, I don't think that's true for the Chinese people. I don't think it's true for the Afghan people. And I think oftentimes, you know, we stress cultural differences in a way that masks our common humanity. Well, going back to this idea that we were touching on before, where I believe that

ultimately for worse, but that neo-isolationism is emerging as the new foreign policy consensus. I mean, that takes us right to Joe Biden's astonishing speech. When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.

just a little over three months after I took office. He basically says, amazingly, given the fact that he doesn't seem to feel the need to honor Trump's wishes on any number of things, but he feels the need to honor the commitment to pull out and that he was locked into that deal. I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I've learned the hard way.

that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. He said that he stood by his decision to withdraw American troops exactly as he did, and he blamed the sudden takeover by the Taliban on the cowardice, the lack of will of the Afghan army and of the Afghan government. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

What did you make of that speech? Do you see it, as I think that I do, as a kind of watershed moment, I think, in this sort of emergent new American isolationist foreign policy? You know, I think it illuminates, you know, what so many people had not, maybe had not have seen it so starkly, right? And I think that it is astonishing, that speech, and that he, you know,

He then talked about human rights, Barry. I mean, after we helped create the conditions where the rights of Afghans were extinguished before our eyes and then talked about how they would continue to talk loudly about human rights. I mean, the idea that our talk has an impact is—

And then what you've heard in recent days is a call for the international community, whatever the heck that is, Barry. I mean, actually, that's a figment of our imagination. Yes. There is no such thing as the international community. I mean, the international environment is competitive and there are many people in the international community not waiting around to be led by American values. Right. And who are actually pursuing agendas inimical to our interests and our values. It's a competitive space.

I mean, it's almost as if he didn't acknowledge the competitive nature of international affairs and war itself, as if as is as if us talking about it is going to make a difference. And then to threaten, you know, to threaten the Taliban with our our profound disappointment, you know, if they start to treat women unfairly. I mean, it's just the the degree of.

On seriousness. I mean, it's this is clownishness. When I see when I see the State Department spokesman talking about how calling for an inclusive government in Afghanistan with the full and meaningful participation of women, I think to myself, how are we governed by such fools? Yeah. And, you know, what to watch for now is.

Who in our government is going to be advocating for normalization of relations with the Afghans? We know the Chinese are going to do it. Do you mean with the Taliban? With the Taliban. I mean, with the Taliban, I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think that's something we have to really be loud about. And sure, it does not happen. I mean, but the Trump administration already did that, didn't they? Yeah.

Well, I mean, no, I don't I don't think so. You know, I think that we we we surrendered to them militarily, essentially with that capitulation agreement. But we did not. You know, I unless there's a part of the agreement, I think more of this will be coming out in the future of what was actually talked about and said in those in those meetings.

But it doesn't presuppose recognition of a Taliban government. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, that would be a travesty. Is there anything you know about that that you want to share? Not that I can share at the moment, you know, because it's still very early and tentative. And I hope that our government does the right thing. Hey, believe me, listen, Barry, I want President Biden to succeed. I want, you know, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to succeed.

But I think I can't help them do that unless I'm critical of what the heck they're doing. I think that they are engaged in policies that are going to have profound and negative consequences. They are operating under the supposition that lost wars have no consequence. Now, we're seeing the humanitarian consequence right now.

We're going to see the security consequence with the degree to which jihadist terrorists gain strength, much like ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda 2.0 after our complete withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. And we're going to have profound political consequences around the world. I mean, our allies are going to doubt our resolve. Our enemies are going to be emboldened. I think it is not—I don't think it's not—

overly alarmist to think that Russia would move on Ukraine, for example, or that China would become much more aggressive toward Taiwan, right? Exactly. The people defending Biden and certainly people inside the Biden White House are basically saying, yes, this is a tragedy. Yes, the optics are terrible.

But this was unavoidable. And the speed of the collapse actually proves the wisdom of Biden's withdrawal policy, that it wouldn't matter if we were there another six months or a year or a decade or two decades. And the speed of the collapse proves that. What do you say to that argument?

Well, I mean, they have to make that argument, right? Because otherwise they would be morally responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe that they see now, right? So people will, I think, interpret events the way that they need to, to insulate themselves from, you know, from their real responsibility for this catastrophe. And I think that's what you see happening. It's just a form of rationalization on their part. Or maybe as you'd call it, self-delusion. Yeah.

It is a continued self-delusion. Absolutely. More with H.R. McMaster after this. I want to turn now to the generals, a group that includes you and a group that I think is getting a lot of criticism right now. Maybe the group that gets more, if any group gets more blame than the president who prosecuted this war, it's the military leadership, the generals. And the case against the generals is basically this, that the people in the

positions of power in the military never stood up to the political leadership, never stood up and said, this is unwinnable, or else they sort of

If you want to be generous, pretended or want to be less generous, they lied and they said, we just need this many more months or this many more years or this many more soldiers or this many more billions of dollars. Avoiding the fact, and again, this is the argument, that the mission itself was not a sustainable or winnable mission. I'd love for you to respond to that line of criticism.

Well, of course, there are many different lines of criticism aimed at the military. I think some were valid than others. This, I think, is not valid because I still believe, Barry, I mean, you can agree with me or not. It's fine. I mean, but I believe it still was winnable. It just depends on how you describe winning, right? Is winning a sustainable outcome in which the Taliban is unable to take control of critical parts of Afghanistan, that the Afghan government can continue on a slow path

to enduring security and stability, can harden itself against the regenerative capacity of the Taliban, and can slowly wean itself off of international support over time. If that's success, yeah, that's success. And in fact, I think the narrative was just wrong. We actually did win and then defeated ourselves because we set unrealistic standards, right? Hey, Afghanistan is not Denmark. The Taliban still controls areas of territory in Afghanistan, and maybe they gain control of some other rural areas.

But hey, compare, Gary, compare what we had a couple of years ago to this. And I think we had a sustainable, favorable outcome. So-

So but I think in terms of criticism of the military and not making the argument forcefully enough, I think that could be valid at times. You know, I think if you look at some of the retired military officers who were in senior positions in recent years who have actually added their voice to maybe the justification of of this, you know, of this surrender to the Taliban and the consequences we're already seeing. I think you see maybe an element of that in some statements that are even been made recently.

But I think the vast majority of my colleagues were giving their best military advice. That's their role. Right. Nobody elects generals to make policy. Right. And and and I think that that you had, you know, Stan McChrystal. Right. When he was the commander right before the debacle of, you know, that bar and, you know, that that that crazy reporter that was there and.

And he got fired. But before he got fired, he did a review, and he recommended a reinforced security effort. Okay, well, that was deliberated on for months and months and months in the Obama administration. And I write about all this in the book. Then what they decided to do is to give him maybe about half of what he recommended, and then—

And then announced the timeline for the withdrawals. They're committed. Well, I mean, that was a policy decision. That wasn't a military decision. And I think it was ultimately a terrible decision. It wasn't the military's decision to open up the Taliban political council. So these jackasses, you know, who are the enemies of all humanity could sit across a conference table with us, live in five star hotels, travel, you know, travel internationally. You know, I mean, that was a

That was a political decision to listen to Barney Rubin and others who were essentially apologists for the Taliban. And that was a policy decision. So, I mean, the military is not off the hook. I mean, I think in particular the development of Afghan security forces in a way that perpetuated dependence on us. I think not taking on the problem of corruption and organized crime networks is—

and the degree to which these organizations were hollowing out the institutions we're trying to build from the beginning, I think, heck yes, there's military responsibility for it. But ultimately, you don't want the military to make policy decisions. We're a democracy. Now, what you can criticize the military for is whether or not they provided best military advice. I will tell you,

that when I was in the job as national security advisor, that General Mick Nicholson wrote a 80-page report

that I never got to see as national security advisor and the president never got to see because the Department of Defense wanted to control the advice that came out of the department. Ultimately, I think this decision was made by the president, the right decision, but wouldn't it have been good for President Trump to at least maybe have one conversation in his whole entire presidency with the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan? He never talked to him, ever.

And the reason is I think some people think it's more important to control and meter the advice that gets to a president when I think access to senior military commanders is vitally important. Scott Miller, the last commander in Afghanistan, I know him extremely well. He is a leader of

extraordinary integrity. He would never sugarcoat it. I'm just telling you, he's been silent. You know why? Because he should be silent. You don't want generals going around saying, hey, my civilian leadership is screwed up, right? I mean, that would violate, you know, civilian control of the military and compromise our professional military ethic. HR, do you believe that the majority of generals...

and I think I'm getting your position here right, believe that the U.S. needed to maintain a small troop presence of a few thousand soldiers in Afghanistan indefinitely to prevent scenes like the one we're seeing today. And that the reason that that narrative wasn't really out there was that it was just too politically unpopular or else that it didn't really fit in to a neat idea that we have of what war is today.

Yeah. OK, so two great questions. First of all, yes, I think that that narrative was out there because I think military advice was not made available to the public in the way it should have been. And I think that that what is important is is Congress's role here.

Congress has oversight over the military, too. And that puts senior military officers, especially members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chairman in particular, and combatant commanders and theater commanders in a tough spot. Because when you're asked questions, often from a partisan political perspective, you know, that are aimed to get you to contradict the commander in chief, that puts you in a tough spot. But you know what? You owe your best military advice, both to the president and to the military.

to the people's representatives in the Congress. But I think that the guideline, which is easier said than done, is to provide that best advice, but not cross the line between advice and advocacy of particular policies.

I think that at times our senior leaders pulled back on that best advice or they were not put in a position to offer it. A friend of mine, a senior military commander abroad, his mother passed away and he could not be with her toward the end because he was not permitted to come to the United States because I think the senior defense officials didn't want

him to be able to give his advice in Washington. You know, I mean, I think it's that bad in terms of lack of access to military advice. So I think if there's a deficiency, the deficiency is not, right, that military leaders were not forthright or honest. I write about this in a book on how and why Vietnam became an American war called Dereliction of Duty.

And I explore really the chief's responsibilities in the book. And I characterize what they did during the run-up to the Vietnam War as a failure, right? Because they failed to give their best advice.

But ultimately, I also included that Lyndon Johnson, you know, he got the military advice he wanted by the way that the way that he limited their access. And by the way, he sort of made clear his expectations on what he wanted to hear. But H.R., let's just choose something really specific. So when when Mark Milley spoke to the Senate in June, he said there's a medium risk that the Taliban would have the capability to retake Afghanistan and it would take two years.

Is that poor intelligence? Is that wishful thinking? How do you explain the chasm between the predictions and the collapse of this country in a matter of a week?

Well, you know, I think it was always a possibility it could have gone much faster. But maybe what he didn't know at the time is the extent to which this capitulation agreement in 2020 had provided tremendous psychological advantages to the Taliban that they were already using to their advantage. You know, by, you know, by, as I mentioned, you're approaching military commanders at various levels and providing them, you know, with, you know, with, you

you know, with an offer that they couldn't refuse, essentially, right? You know, hey, America doesn't have your back. You're done. We either kill all your families, you know, or we come to an agreement right now, right? So, and you also had, at the time, you know, Tony Blinken, our Secretary of State, you know,

He writes an open letter, a letter that was leaked actually, to Ashraf Ghani saying, hey, we need you to do more for peace. So we were casting the Afghan government as the impediment to a peace agreement instead of the Taliban who were continuing their assassination and campaign across the country, right? So I think maybe to be fair to Mark Milley is he didn't realize the degree to which we had –

worked to defeat ourselves and our Afghan partners in particular psychologically. And, you know, war, you know, Napoleon said the moral is to the physical in war as of 10 to 1, right? And that actually holds true. HR, I am watching all of this and I'm just thinking to myself over and over, we are not a serious people anymore and we are not governed by serious people.

The Taliban's very scary. They're evil. Same with Al Qaeda. But I'm also very scared, frankly, of the incompetence of the people that are supposed to be running the country. You had our secretary of state on July 7th saying, we're not withdrawing. We're staying. The embassy's staying. And if things deteriorate, it won't be to a Monday to a Friday situation.

On July 8th, you had President Biden saying there's no circumstance where you would see people lifted off the roof of an embassy and the Taliban's not going to take over. And of course, most shocking of all, just the total abandonment of the

10,000, maybe it's more, American citizens in Afghanistan who are being told to get to the airport, to be evacuated, but we can't guarantee you any security to get there, to say nothing of the Afghan allies who have helped us over the past 20 years. Convince me that I'm wrong. You're not wrong.

i mean you're not wrong barry i mean i i think but but what we what we should take if we can if we if there is solace in any in anything if we take solace in anything it's it's uh gosh it's that we have a say right we can demand better from our political leaders right we can demand a higher degree of competence uh we we can we we can put an end

you know, to this, you know, this sort of neo-isolationist sentiment in which we don't acknowledge that we have agency. You know, we can reject, you know, sort of the excuses that they put forward that this was inevitable instead of recognizing our complicity in helping it to happen, right? And I think what we can do is something right now

which has mobilized a massive humanitarian campaign to limit the suffering of those who are fleeing Taliban rule. To first get them out, we should demand that our government play a role in establishing safe quarters and establishing safe havens and evacuation routes from multiple places. I don't know if they'll do it, but certainly from both sides of the Kabul airport to let the civilian charter flights in

And then to work with communities in the United States where there will be an outpouring of support to welcome Afghan refugees, just as there was an outpouring of support for the Bo people who fled the Vietnamese communist government in Vietnam after 1975. And they will become amazing U.S. citizens and they will become great advocates for trying to rescue over time Afghans.

Afghanistan from Taliban rule, which I believe, Barry, I would like to predict is going to happen. I have to interject for a second. I'm all for bringing Afghans here. I'm moved as anyone to see the flights packed with people. No doubt. There's not a question in my mind about that.

I am left wondering, again, as a civilian with no military strategy, no background the way you have, but just pure common sense. And I'm looking at this and saying, what the hell have we been up to the last several months to say nothing of the last 20 years that we're now having to do GoFundMe, GoFundMe drives led by random journalists to help their translators and their families get out?

well i mean i think i think you know what i think you know what we've been up to with with our you know with my research assistants and chief of staff and my admin assistant here at hoover is we have been doing everything that we can you know to help afghans fill out sivv's applications but also to fill out forms for those that don't qualify for it we've been trying to make physical linkups

between people who are hiding in Kabul and our personnel at the airport. But explain to me how we closed the Bagram airbase before we got these people out. How does this happen? There's absolutely zero excuse for that. And Barry, we were in control of airfields in Herat, the Zahra al-Sharif, Qamil,

Kandahar, the Kabul airport and Bagram. And we gave up all of those airports. And I think that the only reason I can think of is that, you know, President Biden, remember, you know, he's one who came up with the narrative that military advice given to President Obama had boxed him in. Now, how does advice box in, you know, the commander in chief? So I think that there may have been a climate established where the president got the advice he wanted to hear only.

And this is not to make an excuse for it. This is military incompetence not to have those airports as the last place you depart from.

But, you know, I just I don't know. We will find out probably eventually how these deliberations occurred, what the role of military advice was in in in in in really, you know, setting us up for for failure. Even if just if the objective was withdraw, it wasn't even planned well. I want to maybe share with you my mindset as I'm watching these images. I'm someone who.

I feel like I'm going through a real shift. I was someone very unpopular in my cohort, but I supported the war in Iraq. I thought...

That it was, and I did it for extremely, I guess you could call it liberal. Maybe you'd say naive now, but very idealistic reasons. The idea that everyone wants freedom and everyone deserves to live in a country with as much individual freedom as possible. And yes, maybe Iraq and Afghanistan can't be Denmark or Belgium or the United States, but maybe they could be something closer to it.

And I have to tell you, I feel very humbled by what I'm watching. I feel like I'm looking at all of this and thinking not just that I was wrong about that policy, which is something I've thought about for a few years now, but that I was wrong fundamentally about what America is capable of doing in the world and also what maybe other societies want. The nature of people, the nature of states,

I feel like I'm in a very existential place. Barry, do not lose faith in humanity. Don't. Okay? So over...

Over the many years I spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have met the most extraordinary people, people who are humanists, people who believe in tolerance and religious freedom and freedom of speech, people who fundamentally want to build a better world for their children and for their grandchildren.

And and and I think what we see now is we see the worst of humanity because we have allowed it to triumph over those who didn't have the means on their own to defend against it. But the vast majority of people in cultures that are that are quite different from ours are.

want fundamentally what we want. Now, that's not to say that, you know, that the answer for them is Jeffersonian democracy, but it is probably some form of representative government. It is rule of law, so they don't have to seek protection from criminals and thugs and tribal militias in a way that perpetuates the fear and the insecurity of the environments that they're in.

And it allows for their children to be educated, right? So that terrorists and other extremist groups can't continue this to perpetuate a cycle of ignorance, ignorance that's used to foment hatred and hatred that is used to justify violence against innocents. So don't lose faith in that, right? No, I'm not losing faith in human beings. I'm losing faith, I think, in America's ability to

to be serious and project power in the world. And frankly, HR, some of the smartest people I know are saying not that, as Charles Krauthammer said 15 years ago, that decline is a choice, but that we are in inexorable decline and the best thing that we can do is manage it. What do you say to those people?

Well, this is the Fareed Zakaria argument, and he just made an argument relevant to that about Afghanistan a couple of days ago. I don't buy it, Barry. I don't buy it.

I don't buy that we should just manage our decline. I think we should think about America as my friend Zachary Shore, who's just a great historian. He's written wonderful books. And he's just a neat guy, by the way, overall. But he just wrote an essay about America as a rising power. He wrote it in connection with the competition with China. But what's...

But what if we think about ourselves as a rising power? What other country has really the tremendous entrepreneurial environment and unchecked entrepreneurialism that we see in this country?

What other country enjoys the degree of rule of law and due process of law? And of course, we have problems associated with inequality of opportunity. But there are so many examples of Americans who have overcome tremendous barriers to take advantage of the great promise of this country. Why don't we just take in this one of our darkest moments, Barry, we should take a moment to celebrate what we do have so we can at least build on it.

and view ourselves as a rising power. What other countries are people trying to immigrate to, right? I mean, who's trying to get into China right now, Barry? Nobody. So I think we ought to really... HR, I have no disagreement with that. I think the response on the part of the people who say...

we are in decline would be if we want to turn it around, if we want to do exactly what you're describing, the people who have gotten us into this mess, the people who...

make us look like fools in the world are not the people that can be running the show anymore. I agree. I agree with that. I agree with that. Absolutely. I mean, we need to hold leaders accountable. This is, you know, hey, Barry, this is why Donald Trump became president of the United States, by the way, you know, is already the discontent

that he tapped into, right, associated with transformations in the global economy that left people down, exacerbated by the financial crisis in 2008. Add on to that an opioid crisis, frustration over the unanticipated length and difficulties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, that's how you get

Somebody who everybody wanted to go in, drain the swamp, disrupt. They wanted a disruptor. Well, what they got is somebody who in that disruption really, you know, maybe have done some good things, but also made situations a hell of a lot worse. So what would accountability look like? Like should General Milley resign? Should the Secretary of Defense resign?

Well, you know, I think accountability and democracy is exercised through our vote, right? So I think all of us should encourage those who are predisposed toward public service to run for office and do their part. Now, I don't want to do that. I'm not going to do that. But we need good people. We need good people to represent us at the state and local level. Hey, one good thing, Barry, is, you know,

I mean, we're a federal system, right? I mean, we don't everything. Everything doesn't have to come from Washington. We're not a monarchy. Right. We can do a lot. We can do a lot at the local level as well. But I think for those who we do send to Washington, we have to we have to demand better from them. We have to we need leaders who are not going to try to score partisan political points.

At the expense of our confidence in our democratic process and institutions. You know, we have to we have to elect people who who understand, I think, history, who can ask the right questions, who can make wise decisions. And and and I think who are believers. Right. And that America is is both a force for good in the world.

But it has limits in connection with the degree of agency and influence we can exercise when we face complex challenges abroad. So, I mean, that's what we need. And we can demand it. I mean, I think we can demand it. HR, before we wrap up, I want to give you the last word. I want to give you a chance to speak to the many members of the military who are feeling threatened.

really sick at heart right now who feel like maybe this was a waste and especially the parents of those who lost sons and daughters. I'd love if you could, I'd love to know what you would want to say to them before we sign off. Well, I think they should be immensely proud of their service to their country and also immensely proud of their service to all humanity. I think all they have to do is look at, in the case of Afghanistan in particular,

what Afghanistan looked like in 2001 before the invasion and what it looked like after the transformation of that society up to just a few short months ago. And while you can lament and be disappointed in and be disgusted by the retreat and the surrender agreement that set us up for this catastrophe, you should be proud of what you accomplished across that time and the real difference you made in real people's lives.

by bringing them security and rekindling hope. American warriors, Barry, I think people don't recognize, are both warriors and humanitarians. They're humanitarians because we have been engaged in fighting some of the most heinous people on earth who are the enemies of all humanity. And Afghanistan is, I think, a modern-day frontier between barbarism and civilization.

And they're humanitarians because American soldiers take additional risk on to protect innocents. And so I think they ought to be extraordinarily proud of what they accomplished, even as we lament how so many of those gains have been reversed based on flawed policies and strategic incompetence. And finally,

We need young men and women to serve in our armed forces more than ever. And I think that even at this terrible moment, it's important to recognize the tremendous rewards of service and being part of an organization that is committed to a mission bigger than themselves and then committed to one another, right? Organizations in which the man or woman next to you is willing to give everything, including their own lives for you.

The dangers to our nation and all humanity are going to increase as a result of this. And we need you probably now more than ever. HR McMaster, thank you so much. Thank you, Barry. Thanks for listening. It's only Wednesday and it feels like this week has lasted for months. I know it's pretty hard to pull ourselves away from the news right now, but I hope you can find some time to do that this weekend. Spend some time with the people you love. Get outside, get offline, or at least that's the advice I'm giving to myself. Be back soon.