pete: crisis in afghanistan. what's happening now and what's next? >> the truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. pete: president biden admits surprise at the speed of the taliban's takeover of afghanistan. president biden: the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, i don't know how that happens. pete: but pushes back at criticism he was caught off guard by the mayhem and disorder that followed. >> the afghans that i've spoken to have talked about betrayal. pete: after 20 years of fighting and billions of dollars of aid, why couldn't the u.s. and afghan government stop the taliban's resurgence? now what for afghanistan and its beleaguered people? next. announcer: this is "washington

week." corporate funding is provided b- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no contract plans and our u.s.-based customer service team with help find one that fits you. to learn more visit consumercellular.tv. announcer: additional funding provided by the estate of arnold adams, koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and sandra and carl delay-magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. pete: a good evening and welcome to "washington week." i'm pete williams in for yamiche alcindor. kabul has fallen. the taliban have taken power. and the biden administration

faces a new urgent mission evacuating thousands of americans and afghan allies stuck on the ground. the pentagon has sent nearly 6,000 u.s. troops to protect kabul's airport to allow for flights out of the country and the u.n. report shows the taliban are already carrying out a door-to-doorman hunt seeking reprisals against afghans who were allied with the u.s. on friday, the president acknowledged the danger of this mission. president biden: i cannot promise what the final outcome will be. and it will be without risk of loss. but as commander in chief, i can assure you that i will mobilize every resource necessary. pete: what's the latest in afghanistan? how did we get here? and what's next? joining us tonight with more insight are four top reporters on this story. peter baker, the chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." and here in the studio with me anne gearan the white house correspondent for "the washington post." vivian salama the national security reporter for "the wall street journal" and peter bergen, national security analyst for cnn and author of

"the rise and fall of osama bin layden. peter bergen, how well are u.s. officials coordinating this massive effort? peter bergen: a fiasco, debacle, they have said they got 13,000 people out so far. but clearly we have all seen the images of t tiny baby being thrown over the wall of thary port. i think it speaks for itself. we have reports of the taliban beating americans. we have reports of people on the ground saying that unless you have an american passport or a green card you're not going to get on the airport. so that -- how does that lead to the special immigration visa category people? so i think -- it's not good. pete: vivian, the president seemed to suggest twice this week that this chaos was inevitable. whenever we were going to evacuate, it happened. what about that? vivian: it depends how you describe that. chaos was inevitable with a taliban takeover and nobody really saw the taliban taking over as soon as they did.

however, chaos was inevitable because of the fact that we did not work earlier to get a lot of our afghan allies and partners out, that we didn't work to get our own people out with the taliban closing in so quickly on kabul. and a lot of pressure now on the administration to say, you had so many weeks to prepare. why did you not implement this sooner and make sure people were safe and out of the country? pete: i want to come back to that issue but peter baker let me ask you this question. did it seem to you that the president was sort of oddly disconnected from the actual reality of what's happening outside the airport walls? peter baker: yeah, i think several times this week you heard him make a -- assertions that were at odds with what we were seeing on television or what we were hearing from other reports. among other things he talked about how much smoother the operation was today even though air flights were shut down for hours and people were of course still desperate to get in. you heard him talk abt how there's no problem with credibility with the allies even as you hear all kinds of frustration and anger coming out of european capitals.

you heard him say that nobody told him that the military actually would have preferred to keep a small force there when of course there have been multiple reports saying that the top military brass suggested just that. so i think that the problem for the president among other things is he does seem to be making assertions that are not in keeping with what journalists are reporting and what we're hearing from government officials here and abroad. pete: so anne, this question about why the evacuation didn't start earlier. was it because the president made a promise to the afghan president that we would wait so it wouldn't destabilize the country? anne: yeah, pete. that's one of several reasons. i would add to peter baker's list of things that biden has said that seemed somewhat disconnected from the current reality that as recently as a month ago, the president also said that it was not inevitable that the taliban would take over. and that he did not predict the kind of chaos and mayhem that we're seeing now. that he actually thought that that would not happen. so a lot has happened in that

month. and during that month, was really the window that the united states had to really get plans in place when it became clearer and clearer that the taliban was getting close to kabul. i mean, this was not a huge surprise by the time it happened. i mean, they had as of three weeks ago afunctional encircled kabul and a week ago, they started taking the largest cities in the country. and by the time it happened it wasn't an enormous surprise. to your point about the president achraf gani he met with biden at the white house and according to biden and aides later, asked the president not to mount some massive evacuation of americans or vulnerable afghans because it would undermine confidence in his own government. that really was the president biden's opportunity to say, you know what? dude, like we're out.

and we're going to start bringing people out no matter what. and he chose not to. pete: of course, the war in afghanistan spanned 20 years and four presidents. but much of what's happening now can be traced to some recent decisions. earlier this year, for example, president biden pledged to withdraw all troops from afghanistan by the end of this month. and on monday, the president addressed the nation and defended his position. president biden: 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. pete: the taliban surged to power caught the u.s. off guard. u.s. intelligence as recently as last week simply underestimated the speed of the takeover. here's the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, mark milley. >> there was nothing that i or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army, and this

government, in 11 days. pete: vivian, your reporting showed that an internal state department memo last month warned the administration that the taliban takeover was imminent. and that the afghan military may be unable to stop it. so were those warnings simply ignored? vivian: the state department asserts that they weren't ignored. that secretary of state blinken received the memo immediately. he welcomed the feedback. but what they did about it is the question. these diplomats, about two dozen in total, really emphasized that the situation is getting -- growing dire. the afghan military is not up to the task. they're not stopping -- they're not able to stop the advance of the taliban. so the government needed to act quickly to get these afghans out as well as americans out. and they said by august 1, we need to start mass evacuations. otherwise, we're in trouble. pete: the president said yesterday we get a lot of advice and this was one sort of option. vivian: he was very administrative about it and that's one of the issues right now is we're going to be going

back now and showing what they knew and when they knew it to understand whether or nothey had the time to act and whether or not they could have mitigated some of the chaos that we're seeing now on the ground. of course, peter bergen was talking about babies being carried over the walls of the airport to rush them out because people are so desperate to get out now. some of that chaos that we see outside the airport probably could have been eased have we started moving people out in greater number earlier than when the taliban was actually standing at the gates of the airport. pete: peter baker, is there a certain factor here that the president just madep his mind and then whatever anybody said didn't shake him from his position? peter baker: yeah, if you talk to democrats, that's what they think. you know, you had a president here who made up his mind really in 2009 back when he was barack obama's vice president and they debated at to do about afghanistan. he took the position even back then of a lighter footprint, you know, basically beginning the idea of pling out. so i think he has been eager and anxious to do this for about a decade.

and he was set on doing it. and i think he was set on doing it regardless of what general milley or any others might have warned him about in terms of the collapse. and you heard him say this week repeatedly that the fact that the taliban came to power, whether it came in 11 days or 30 days or 90 days he anticipated that and basically has no problem with that or at least was willing to make that sacrifice in order to get out. that he was going to get out regardless of whether or not it empowered the taliban to take over the country because he decided that the war wasn't worth fighting anymore. that we weren't really making any progress and it was time to get out. so i think you're right. he was already set on this. whether -- how much he listened to the people around him is a question that we will be exploring i think increasingly through hearings and other, you know, reporting and investigations and the -- in the days and weeks to come. pete: so let's focus in on the immediate period this week ends -- at the "washington post," compiled a tiktok of president biden's weekend at camp david and the 72 hours that shaped the president's response to this crisis. so what do we know about what unfolded in the white house over

the weekend? and how has president biden justified his handling of this? vivian: well, i think the answer to how he's justified it is that he felt compelled to speak again on monday. and then speak again today. and interrupt his vacation a couple of times. they know at the white house that they -- the opt ickes as they like to say are not good here. any time you have the kind of -- the scenes of chaos, sobbing, heartbreak, mayhem, that surround the airport, that are being televised, everywhere this week, it -- as the president said today, it's heart breaking. but he keeps coming back to the same main point which is that this -- this war is no longer in the united states' interest. in his view. and the longer americans are on the ground in afghanistan, the more rk to those americans.

and he said i think three times this week how long would you have me stay a. version of that? how many more americans would you have me put at risk? and that is the crux of his argument. and as angry as he has -- has been at the way this has all played out, as frustrated as many white house officials are, they just keep circling back to we made our decision because it's in the u.s. interest. and we're sticking to it. and it's pretty unapologetic. pete: so they're basically saying this will pass? anne: they are counting on a couple of things here inclung overwhelming public opinion that says that -- and consistent public opinion that says that polling out from -- pulling out from afghanistan is the right thing. pete: it fell of course to the taliban just four weeks before the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks. in annterview with george stephanopoulos of abc news president biden explained why the u.s. military went to afghanistan in the first place. president biden: we went there for two reasons, george.

two reasons. one, to get bin laden, and two, to wipe out as best we could and we did the al qaeda in afghanistan. we did it. then what happened? we decided to engage in nation building. that never made any sense to me. pete: so peter bergen, this gets to the question that many americans are asking. how did it come to this? peter bergen: when you say this, meaning what? pete: to where we are now? in other words, who lost afghanistan? peter bergen: oh, my god. that is such a big question. let's start with president obama announcing a withdrawal on december 1, 2009, at west point when he announced the surge of troops. we've been saying we will be leaving for a very long time. and then throw in trump and his agreement which was signed in february of 2020. we have been saying we're leaving for a long time. the taliban aren't reading the newspaper or listening to the radio or watching tv they had a long time to prepare for this and biden went through this in a major unforced error. 2,500 troops and 1.3 million

active duty troops and two million if you throw in the reserves, this was a very small and relatively small insurance policy that was i think politically sustainable in the united states. economically sustainable as well. pete: so vivian, what is the role of the trump administration's decision to negotiate with the taliban for the u.s. withdrawal? are we seeing the consequence of that or could it have come out differently? vivian: no. probably seeing the consequences of two decades of policy measures, probably. but the trump administration decided that they believed diplomatic solution was the best way. president trump as we all remember was very keen on striking deals and he believed that a deal, a peace deal, was the way to go in afghanistan and was going to be the measure that's going to ensure that we could get our troops out. and so last year, his administration signed a deal with the taliban that sentially agreed in -- for a number of things, a, peace talks but also b, the release of 5,000 taliban prisoners. and that has been the start of some of the concerns that we've

seen now that possibly could have empowered them. you know, given them a little bit of force and motivation, mobilization to get this -- you know, get their offensive that we saw in the last week or so going. we know commanders that have been involved in the takeover of cities in the last 10 days or so, where some of the prisoners that were actually released as part of that deal. and so of course a lot of blame and a lot of questions spill over to administrations. we can't just blame one. but what's been so interesting is how this administration has been handling the taliban is they've been very careful about not coming out and just full on blasting the taliban for some of their past offenses. they've used very careful language with regard to them. they say we hope that the taliban of 2001 is not the taliban of 2021 and that we can work togher as partners. in fact, that cable that the diplomats sent asked the state department to use harsher language when describing the taliban to really expose some of their -- their atrocities in the

country. and so we don't know. maybe they're doing it as a strategic thing. there are americans still on the ground in afghanistan. so maybe they're just trying to play it cautiously until the august 31 deadline. either way, they're trying to take this new tack with the taliban. anne: they're they negotiating with the taliban on the ground now which is something that we've never seen before. i mean, in theory, the negotiations -- peace negotiations are taking place in doha. that's become completely irrelevant and we have american military commanders going face-to-face. pete: peter baker, let me ask you this question about american public opinion which the white house seems to be counting on that a, americans agree that we should be out of afghanistan and b, is the white house thinking that americans don't really care much whether we get all the afghan allies out? peter baker: yeah. i think that's the cold calculation at the white house which is that basically as long as they get americans out, that america -- americans would be back at home won't care about whatever happens in afghanistan from now on. that this will fade. these pictures will be unpleasant for a few days. but basically they'll go away

and americans will by the time they come back to the polls won't be voting on foreign policy because there won't be any american stake seen in afghanistan. and they have a point about that. i looked through front pages of newspapers across the country. in the last couple of days. and while this is obviously getting big play in the national media and the national networks, papers and cities like phoenix and fresno and austin, they weren't putting this on the front page anymore. so you can make the argument that's what they're making is that americans won't mind the fact that there was this chaotic messy departure. but there's also another argument. the other argument is -- and this is one republicans will no doubt try to take advantage of if it shows a lack of competence, if it plays into the notion or the indictment of president biden as somebody who is in over his head or can't handle the job or in some ways has made america look weak on the international stage that will be a problem for him politically going down the road. it may depend on other events and other factors and see if they play into that kind of a narrative. by itself might not do it. but it doesn't hurt -- it doesn't help the president to

have these pictures out there because i think he'll see them again when we have future elections. pete: so the taliban takes charge, many in afghanistan are fearing for their lives and their futures. on tuesday, the taliban vowed to honor women's rights within their interpretations of islamic law. vivian, there already are disturbing reports of restrictions on women's freedom. so do you think the taliban is going to keep this promise? vivian: it remains to be seen. it doesn't seem like they're going to just flip a switch and kind of go back to the old ways. and in many ways the taliban wants to sort of win over public opinion of their own in afghanistan. and so a lot of times, and i've seen this in iraq and seen this in a lot of other places with groups like isis, they slow roll it. they wait until they have sort of established themselves before they really impose the strict rules that they -- that they adhere to and we'll see what happens. and i don't think a lot of people have too much faith that they will be completely different from the old iteration of thealiban that we knew in 2001 or recently even. pete: so peter, is this the

taliban 2.0? peter bergen: i'm very skeptical they have changed. within the context of islamic law is the modifier they use for everything. whether it's women's rights or independent media. their understanding of sharia law is quite different from most other muslims. and that -- it's really a rural understanding of what women might be ableto work in a clinic that treats only female patients. or maybe teach in school, for girls, only up to the age of 12. this is what we're going to see. and it's not going to be that different. yes, they may have changed a little bit around the edges. but they may -- allow television because now they are pretty adept at propaganda in the old days they banned television. so i don't see it. and one thing i think that we should be looking at is a lot of people were released from bagram air force base prison. the taliban prisoners, al qaeda prisoners, these are huge force multipliers not just the 5,000 released that vivian mentioned as a result of the peace agreement. so you know, and to pick up about something that peter baker said on 9-11 the sit screen

will be every jihadi group in the world that's managed to get to afghanistan having this huge celebration. so this -- the stories and the pictures are not going to just fade away tomorrow. anne: the head of the hikani network is back there today and a $bounty on his head and walking the streets of kabul. pete: what sort of influence will the west have on the taliban? any at all? anne: a couple of things. definitely money. so to the degree that the taliban wants international recognition, there's a diplomatic lever. but to the degree that they want to be able to function as a government, and actually run the country, they are going to need some continued influx of foreign capital. there just isn't enough capital sloshing around in the country nor means to produce it to run the country. so a huge lever will be international aid both government to government and international aid groups. and any business that the

taliban wants to do with other countries. that's really the main hammer that -- certainly the united states has. remember, we promised billions to the afghan army. who's going to get that money now? if it flows at all? vivian: one really quick point to add to what they just said, pete, is that today, on friday, president biden said that al qaeda is defeated in afghanistan. i don't think anyone at this table believes that al qaeda is defeated quite to the contrary. they just talked about the hikani network linked to an affiliate of al qaeda and a major problem moving forward and if they empower the taliban or fight against the taliban we can wait and see about that. but it's going to be problematic for the biden administration moving forward and the administrations to me. pete: so what are the possibilities of a civil war? peter bergen: there's been a civil war in afghanistan since 1978 even before the soviets invaded. and we're just going to go into another iteration, like back to the future, and the great commander who was fighting the soviets and the taliban and assassinated by al qaeda two days before 9-11 his son is now

leading the resistance in pangio valley northern afghanistan never taken by the soviets or the taliban. and salay the -- says the legitimate president now that gani is out of the country and another big cycle unfortunately. pete: so will we hear from president biden again on? do you think briefly? vivian: president biden definitely is wanting to sort of manage expectations. i think he also wants to move away from it and sort of focus more on his agenda. don't forget that he had this big infrastructure win in the middle of all of this going on and so i think he would love to shift focus on that to shift focus to covid battle and the pandemic battle. but you know, he's going to have to answer to the questions and especially the more and more chaotic the situation gets he's going to want to explain it. pete: thank you all very much. we'll have to leave it there for this week. we leave you a couple of minutes early so you can support your local basketball station. -- pbs station. thank you to peter baker, anne gearan, vivian salama and peter

bergen. and monday "the pbs newshour" for more on the fall of afghanistan. our conversation continues on the "washington week" extra. find it on our social media and our website. this week's topic is covid-19. i'm pete williams. good nht from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided b. additional funding provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences

in our communities, and sandra and carl delay-magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. announcer: you're watchi

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