briefing from white house press secretary, jen psaki and national security advisor, a briefing that was not originally on the schedule. it was added after the scenes yesterday. thank you for getting up "way too early" on this tuesday morning. i'll see you for "morning joe" right now. there's some very brave and capable afghan special forces units and soldiers. but if afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the taliban now, there is no chance that one year, one more year, five more years or 20 more years of u.s. military boots on the ground would have made any difference. here's what i believe to my core, it is wrong to order american troops to step up when afghanistan's own armed forces would not. >> president biden more adamant than ever that america's

sustained military mission in afghanistan is over. we'll be joined this morning by a top voice at the defense department when pentagon spokesman john kirby joins us as chaos grips a country now ruled by the taliban. plus new developments in the fight against covid. the biden administration has decided that most americans should get a booster vaccination eight months after they received their second shot. we'll have the details on that just ahead. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, august 17th. and we're going to begin this morning with the chaotic scenes from kabul's international airport. with thousands of afghans surrounding planes in a desperate attempt to escape taliban control. richard engel has the latest from kabul. >> reporter: tens of thousands of afghans swarmed into kabul

airport. desperate to leave at any price. they burst through security. climbed over walls. and spilled onto the tarmac. searching for any airplane that would take them far away from afghanistan. away from the taliban. so many managed to cram into one plane, the pilot refused to take off. people on board refused to disembark. but it was across the barb wire divide where it turned really ugly. on the military side of the airport, american troops trying to evacuate u.s. embassy staff found themselves overwhelmed, suddenly battling crowds, firing warning shots. this was not the mission they came for. the pentagon says u.s. troops shot dead two armed afghans. but still, the crowds didn't disperse. instead, they ran along and clung to the undercarriage of a military transport plane as it

taxied for takeoff. one u.s. military official told me, it was 100 times worse than the humiliaing american pullout from saigon. afghans are running from the taliban, now in full control. setting up checkpoints with the very weapons american taxpayers bought for the afghan army which collapsed instead of fighting after the u.s. pulled out of bases and left them without air support. and the u.s. didn't see this coming? we reported on the tremendous security vacuum after the u.s. pulled out of bagram air force base leaving it so empty i was able to bike down the runway. the warning signs were there. and this weekend kabul was taken without resistance. and the afghan president fled. still in the country are tens of thousands of afghan interpreters marked for death by the taliban who were taking their meals in

the presidential palace, settling in, celebrating their victory. as we drove through kabul it's clear the taliban's hard line rule is creeping back. this was a popular beauty salon, styling women's hair and makeup. the taliban bans salons along with education for women and girls. so when the taliban returned. now they've painted over the beauty shop. people know what the taliban want, expect. we watched a man tear up the beauty parlor sign in line with the taliban's wishes. a 20-year war, the longest in u.s. history, ended in disgrace. the u.s. leaving behind a country its citizens are too terrified to live in. the administration maintaining it was taken by surprise. >> richard engel reporting from afghanistan. in the face of growing criticism from democrats and republicans alike, president biden returned to the white house from camp david briefly yesterday to address the nation and defended

his administration's decision to withdraw american troops from afghanistan. >> our mission in afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. it was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. our only vital national interest in afghanistan retains today what it has always been. preventing a terrorist attack on american homeland. 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. that's why we're still there. we were clear-eyed about the risk. we planned for every contingency, but i always promised the american people that i would be straight with you. the truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. so what's happened?

afghan 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. american troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. so i'm left, again, to ask of those who argue that we should stay, how many more generations of america's daughters and sons would you have me send to fight afghanistan's civil war when afghan troops will not? how many more lives, american lives, is it worth? how many endless rows of

headstones at arlington national cemetery? we will continue to support the afghan people. we will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence and our humanitarian aid. we'll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. we'll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the afghan people, of women and girls. just as we speak out all over the world. i've been clear the human rights must be the center of our foreign policy. not the periphery. but the way to do it is not through endless military deployments. i'm now the fourth american president to preside over war in afghanistan. two democrats and two republicans. i will not pass this responsibilities on to a fifth president. i will not mislead the american people by claiming that just a little more time in afghanistan will make all the difference.

nor will i shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here. i am president of the united states of america, and the buck stops with me. >> so, joe, not flinching there. president biden saying i stand squarely behind my decision to withdraw. there are a lot of people in the country that voted for the idea, who agree with the idea, to withdraw. but no one agrees with what they're seeing on their screens, c-17s swarmed by afghan people trying to get out of the country, escape the taliban, some falling from the sky as they cling to the planes and the president talking about the united states was prepared for every contingency, it does not look like it this morning when you see the images. >> you're right. most americans did support a withdrawal from afghanistan. an april poll showed 75% of

americans supported that withdrawal. we obviously -- i obviously didn't. most of the foreign policy community obviously didn't. because we had 2,500 people there, 3,000 people there. that were able to do their job, just like we had 3,500 people in syria that were able to hold back the iranians, the russians, the syrians, isis, iran, and for some reason donald trump decided to yank those troops out of that country. and this idea that there's never a good time to withdraw, well, the commander in chief is right. there was never going to be a good time to withdraw from afghanistan. and i would argue that if we have 50,000 troops in japan since 1945, 35,000 troops in

germany since 1945, over 30,000 troops in south korea since 1953. if we had 12,000 troops in italy since 1945. and if we have just a fraction of that, 2,500 troops in afghanistan and an american troop hadn't been killed in the last 18 months. seems like a false deadline to me. and i swear i can't find a military person who thinks this was the right thing to do. but that being said, joe biden ran to be president of the united states. he ran to get america out of afghanistan. people voted for him. i don't think they voted for him to get the troops out of afghanistan. maybe a few did. but it's not like he didn't promise that he was going to do this. so there's never a good time to withdraw. but joe biden had promised the american people he was going to withdraw from afghanistan.

but there's a right way to withdraw. and the president can say that he planned for every contingency, but he knows that's not true. the white house knows that's not true. and the american people know that's not true. and that's how a 75% proposition has devolved into a political disaster for this white house. they need to turn things around and the first thing they need to do is they need to save those who helped save our troops over the past 20 years. we just can't keep abandoning allies in the field. donald trump abandoned the kurds. we're abandoning our interpreters in afghanistan. we just can't keep going in, having people risk their lives

and then leaving in the middle of the night like we have here from bagram air force base or with these scenes. let's bring in george packer, his latest op-ed in the atlantic is entitled biden's betrayal of afghans will live in infamy. in it he writes in part this, there's plenty of blame to go around for a 20 year debacle in afghanistan, enough to fill a library of books. perhaps the effort to rebuild the country was doomed from the start but our abandonment of the afghans who helped us, counted on us, staked their lives on us, is a final gratuitous shame that we could have avoided. the biden administration failed to heed the warnings on afghanistan, failed to act with urgency and its failure has left tens of thousands of afghans to a terrible fate. this betrayal will live in infamy, the burden of the shame falls on president joe biden. you wrote this before the scenes

of yesterday, george packer. i'm curious your thoughts this morning? >> i feel sick to my stomach. i felt that way since sunday when we learned that kabul had already fallen to the taliban before any evacuations had begun. the entire content of the president's speech defending the decision to withdraw troops was politically successful, i think, and utterly irrelevant. we know that he had his reasons and there were some good reasons. that's done. the question is, what are they doing now? what are they going to do with the 3,500 or so marines in the kabul international airport? how are they going to get people from the city to the airport passing taliban checkpoints? how are they going to find out who needs evacuation? beyond the special immigrant visa candidates. there's thousands of other afghans, human rights activists, civil society figured who are

otherwise marked for death and their names are not on lists. that's because there's no planning. that line in his speech we planned for every contingency made me choke. and the other line, some afghans didn't want to leave? who didn't want to leave? 18,000 afghans were on years long lists for special visa applications. they're eager to get out. i hope the administration has a plan now for how they're going to use the security that we've brought to the airport itself to get afghans to the airport and out of the country on numerous flights, day after day, we should be there for three weeks now in order to get as many afghans out as we can. >> we should have planes flying in around the clock. and guard the perimeter for as long as it takes. i couldn't agree more. george, based on your reporting

what can you tell us -- what led to the chaos of the past several days? >> i think there was pressure from different parts of the administration for a coordinated evacuation back in may when we first began withdrawing troops. but they kept falling back on wishful thinking, the idea if we streamlined the application process we'd have enough time to get people out. the argument that guam was a u.s. territory, that might create legal problems if afghans were in guam with some legal rights, therefore we would look for third countries while there were no third countries. just a lot of wishful thinking and temp rising, and the main problem is the man at the top didn't want to do it. so whoever was trying to get around him, joe biden refused and so we're left now with this tremendous tragedy that's --

it's a shame. and it's on all of us. this war really was the entire american nation's war for 20 years. all of us are going to bear the stain of this. there are still a few days left before the stain becomes indelible. and as i said, i just hope the administration understands that they need not to get americans out and wheels up. that would be the ultimate shame. but to stay long enough to get tens of thousands of afghans out, we'll sort out the visas, the passports, the processing later on from a safe place. >> i had a veteran say to me yesterday, he wanted me to point out and remind the viewers that the afghans we see in those images at the airport are the ones who have a chance to get out. but as you point out, there are many, many more across the country who helped the united states military over the last 20 years who are isolated, have no way to even get to kabul, let alone to get out of the country.

what's your sense of how many of those people there are and what fate waits for them? they can't get to kabul for a shot to get on a transport plane? >> i think about half of the special immigrant visa applications are outside of kabul. which is directly contradictory to what administration officials told me they believed all of them were in kabul, that was more wishful thinking. i wouldn't know what to say to an afghan in kandahar, or herat. i don't know how we're going to get to the provincial capitals and support those airports. i think kabul is the only game right now. but there are so many people in kabul, including let's not forget it's not just military interpreters, it's civil society people who are going to be marked for death. we need to figure out a way to get them safely to the airport. there are taliban checkpoints all over the city as you're reporting now and the taliban

are going to be looking for people trying to get to the airport and stopping them and wanting to know who are you and why are you leaving? what is our plan for how to get those people to the airport let alone on a plane and out of danger? >> joe, i've been talking to several folks high up in the white house over the past 24 hours, and one of the things that they bring to the table in terms of the thinking here is that, yes, there are 25, 3,000 troops in afghanistan at the time and there hasn't been a death in 18 months but that's not actually accurate, that there would have been more needed, the situation wasn't stable, and that president trump actually sent in thousands more and the situation did not stabilize and so, biden was not going to go in deeper. he wasn't -- he just wasn't going to do it. but they say, they contend, that to say there are just a couple thousand troops there and things

were going well, why topple that, why touch that, is not actually accurate. that they had sent thousands more in during the trump administration and the situation was still getting worse. >> well, we have 35,000 troops in south korea who could be overrun in a minute by the north korean army but they're there for a reason. there is a trip wire. they're there to make sure that north korea doesn't invade south korea. they're there to provide military assistance. they're there to help provide for air cover on a much smaller level, 2,500 troops in afghanistan, no. it's not going to be able to rebuild the country. this is a country that in 2005 we realized three years in we were never going to rebuild this country. but we have, despite what some

people in the administration are saying, we have learned to do a lot with a little. and i keep going back to syria. i would say to them that 2,500, 3,500 troops in afghanistan couldn't do anything. i would remind them that 3,500 troops in syria, in the middle of assad's syria held the syrians, the russians, the iranians, held the turks, and held isis at bay. and when russian mercenaries came after them, they killed them all. so one of the lessons, and george packer, let me bring you in here on this one as well, one of the few lessons that we've learned militarily over the past 20 years is that we don't have to send 150,000 troops into a country to make a difference. if we want to push back on isis or if we want to provide a safe

zone for refugees we can send 3,500 troops into syria and they can make a substantial difference we had david ignatius on talking about that for quite some time. we have learned to do a lot with a smaller footprint, much like we had in afghanistan. >> yes, what you're saying is we failed at counterinsurgency, we could not help the afghans win a civil war against a really strategic and brutal insurgency, but we do know how to do counterterrorism, that's what joe biden was pushing for 12 years ago when he was president obama's vice president and said let's leave behind a small footprint of counterterrorism troops. but in afghanistan we did not or could not create a state or army and those were failures and

illusions on our part. but what we have created is a civil society in the cities where an entire generation have grown up feeling connected to the world with ideas and freedoms and possibilities that they never had before. all of that has collapsed overnight. while we're figuring out how to get some of them out, let's spare a moment for the utter tragedy of what we've done to those young afghans, what promises we've broken. that's why the president's speech yesterday left me feeling a little bit sick. it seemed to spare not a thought for the afghans as if it's all their fault, they refused to fight when afghan troops have taken massive casualties over the years, and not a thought for those young afghans who on the basis of our promises and help have built a civil society there and that civil society has now fallen into darkness under the taliban. >> george packer thank you very much.

we'll read your reporting in the atlantic. let's bring in white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. and former aid for the george w. bush state department, elise jordan. we should start with you. at this time yesterday you were extremely upset, worried about loved ones, friends who were at the kabul airport. what is the update? i know you have been tweeting updates on the people you know there. what can you tell us about the latest you're hearing from on the ground? >> mika, it's horrible. we completely mishandled and bundled the treatment of our allies and left so many men and women who kept americans alive and welcomed us into their country, we left them in the lurch. and so, there was such a sudden, mad dash to try to get on a flight, any flight, even without a visa, that the kabul

commercial airport just became absolute chaos. as you saw from the images. and so i had friends who made it there, thought they were on a flight, thought they were finally safe because the airport certainly it was assumed had to be a safe place because so many embassies had evacuated there. and then the situation just spiralled so out of control. and from what i'm hearing still today from afghans in kabul, the airport, the commercial side is still chaos, and it's still not under control. so i'm so concerned that even if we can get flights to evacuate our people, to evacuate our allies, how are they even going to be able to take off if we have a small force there and we expect 3,000 marines to control a crowd that is simply out of control. >> so jonathan, as you watched that speech from the president yesterday as i said, he stood firm, made the case again that he's been making from ten years ago when he was vice president,

campaigned and now as president that it was time to go. people have said do you think having 2,500 american troops would not be preferable to what we're seeing now. is there any back room talk different from what we heard from the president yesterday? >> i talked to a number of allies and a number of tell me defended the president's decision to leave afghanistan no one is defending the decision how we're leaving afghanistan. this is without question the biggest foreign policy crisis of this president's admittedly young term. and to this point the aides i talked to suggested there's no course correction coming. they sent more troops, another 1,000 yesterday, bringing about 7,000 or so to be there to help with evacuation of american personnel and the afghans who

helped us, those translators and other citizens who sided with us over the taliban, whose lives are at risk. but beyond that there is none, at least not yet. any suggestion of a permanent residence there. the president is forceful about this yesterday, owning the decision and he and his aides made this point yesterday if the u.s. spent 20 years and trillions of dollars putting the afghan security force together what good would it do. and that's a point that others have taken presence with. at least for now, the president hasn't indicated he would want to do so. as a final point, one of his top allies said to me in the last day, in surprise and dismay, this is a president whose hallmark is his empathy. there's no american president who's been able to talk about grief and empathy like joe biden

and there seemed to be very little of that yesterday for the afghan people which came as a surprise and certainly now this is presenting the white house with a challenge in the days and weeks ahead, as they wonder what happens next, including the scenario that afghanistan becomes a safe harbor for terrorists again. >> we heard some $80 billion of american taxpayer money spent and the afghan military stepping aside. that didn't surprise a lot of american military commanders that we spoke to. but those weapons now falling into the hands of the taliban. >> and as for those who need to be evacuated, the white house is saying the flights resumed last night. about 2,000 people have been flown out so far. and we can get more on those numbers from admiral kirby coming up later on "morning joe." jonathan and elise stay with us. there's serious weather to watch in the southeast today even as a second system churns

further south. let's go to bill karins for the latest on that. bill? >> good morning to you. we'll watching tropical depression fred and haiti is dealing with grace. fred first, a tornado watch for the atlanta area continuing through 1:00. the storm is done with florida and now moving through georgia. we have a high risk of flash flooding today, especially in the mountain areas. here's the latest, it's a depression, winds won't cause any more problems. the storm is moving about 14 miles per hour, just slow enough to cause significant flooding problems over the southern appalachians. the forecast path to the right of that is where the heaviest rains will be. millions under flash flood watches. here's the rain forecast. locally could be up to 7 inches of rain today in the mountains and then tonight heads into west virginia and tomorrow into thursday, that heavy rain moves

from washington d.c. through pennsylvania. some of it could be around new york city and the hudson valley as we go wednesday night into thursday morning. system works it way up the east coast. haiti is still under a tropical storm watch. we will see grace pulling away. but the same areas dealing with the devastation of the earthquake are seeing torrential rain right now, it's been pouring the last 24 hours, the pictures out of there will not be pretty when we get them in. the storm will be pulling over jamaica later today and we will not have to worry about grace in the united states, the storm takes a track towards mexico, avoiding areas of texas. we deal with fred and see how bad it is today in haiti after grace exits. >> we'll watch that. still ahead right here on "morning joe," former national security advisor h.r. mcmaster will join us to weigh in on the taliban's takeover over afghanistan and how it impacts

u.s. interests. also this morning, federal health experts are coalescing around the idea that most americans will need covid booster shots. plus pediatric infections continue to rise. a 13-year-old in mississippi died from the virus just hours after the governor of that state downplayed how covid affects children. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. "morning jo" we'll be right back. age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein. without my medication, my small tremors would be extreme. i was diagnosed with parkinson's. i had to retire from law enforcement. it was devastating. one of my medications is three thousand dollars per month.

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guys, as we get older, we all lose testosterone. force factor's test x180 works to boost it back. build muscle, increase energy, fuel desire, and improve performance. rush to walmart for test x180, the #1 fastest-growing testosterone brand in america. we turn now to developments surrounding the pandemic. a third coronavirus vaccine shot soon will be recommended for most americans. federal health officials are expected to endorse a booster shot eight months after receiving a second dose of either the moderna or pfizer

vaccines according to two sources familiar with discussion. the boosters would not be available until next month after an application is approved by the fda. officials are planning to announce the change as early as this week. the booster is expected to assist in protection against the delta variant that is causing cases and hospitalizations to serve across the country. mika? >> with an expected surge in covid-19 deaths texas has requested five mortuary trailers from fema. officials told nbc news the trailers were ordered at the start of the month after officials reviewed data about increasing deaths as a third wave struck the state. the trailers will be paced in san antonio and sent around the state as needed. texas has seen a surge in new cases amid the spread of the delta variant. the state's seven day death rate has reached its highest levels since mid march. the school board for

hillsboro county public schools in florida is set to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to consider a mask mandate as thousands of students in its district are in isolation or quarantine. as of yesterday morning nearly 5,600 of the students and 316 staff are in isolation after testing positive for coronavirus or in quarantine after coming into close contact with someone who tested positive. according to the tampa bay times, the case count stood at 731 at midday, nearly 20 times higher than after the first week of fall classes in 2020 a year ago, a mask mandate in the district would violate an order from florida governor ron desantis prohibiting schools from requiring face coverings though that hasn't stopped other districts and mayors from violating his order. then there is this, a 13-year-old girl died of the virus in mississippi. eighth grader makayla robinson

passed away hours after she tested positive. she's the fifth child under the age of 18 to die of covid in her state. she attended classes in the smith county mississippi school district where masks were optional. days before she died and after more than 75 students and 11 staff members tested positive for covid, the school changed course and required masks. makayla's teachers say she was loved by all, she was an honor student and played in the school band. the day before her death, mississippi's governor, tate reeves, downplayed the impact of the virus on children. >> if you look at those individuals under the age of 12, what you find is that it is very rare that kids under the age of 12 have anything other than the sniffles. does it happen from time to

time? sure it does. >> sure it does. that's on him. coming up, pentagon press secretary john kirby standing by. he joins us to discuss what's next for our afghan partners in kabul. "morning joe" is back in a moment. kabul. "morning joe" is back in a moment at usaa, we've been called too exclusive. because we only serve those who honorably served. all ranks, all branches, and their families. are we still exclusive? absolutely. and that's exactly why you should join.

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save 50% on the new sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus, 0% interest for 24 months. only for a limited time. i'm from afghanistan, i'm very upset today. because afghan women didn't expect that overnight all the taliban came. they took off my flag. this is my flag. and they put their flag. everybody is upset, especially women. >> let me say with all respect that i understand. we all understand. the anxiety and the fear and the pain that you're feeling, it's clear and it's evident.

nobody here at the pentagon is happy about the images that we've seen coming out in the last few days. and we're all mindful of the kind of governance that the taliban is capable of. >> an afghan reporter looking for answers from the pentagon spokesperson after the u.s. withdrew from that country and the taliban took over. joining us now, pentagon press secretary, john kirby. thank you so much for being on this morning. >> you bet. >> admiral, thank you so much for being on this morning. obviously you saw that afghan reporter who was upset. i know you've also heard from a lot of men and women in the military, in uniform, who have been upset. a quote this morning from "the new york times" from a sergeant first class, it's a pain i thought i'd gotten used to, i sacrificed a lot, saw death

every year. the guys i served with we probably knew it would come to an end like this but to see it end in chaos makes us angry. after everything we gave, i just wish there had been a way to leave with honor. what do you say to the men and women in uniform, your band of brothers and sisters that you've served alongside with through the years who feel betrayed this morning by the administration. >> the first thing we would say is to thank them for their years of service and sacrifice and the danger they were willing to put themselves in to improve conditions in afghanistan and prevent that place from becoming a terrorist safe haven. the second thing we say is we understand, we all understand. don't think for a minute it's not hitting me personally either, absolutely it is, i lost a friend there. we all understand that each of you, each veteran is going to have to process this in our own way and we respect that. some are going to be angry, some

are going to be sad. there's a range of emotions that all of us are going through as we watch these images and finish pulling out of the country. what's important for us at the pentagon and this is what i say to the veterans and the rest of the american people is that we remain committed to completing this draw down in a safe and orderly way to doing what we can to get as many of our american citizens out as well as as many of those interpreters and translators who helped you do your jobs on the battlefield. we're commit. we we have an obligation to them and we're going to work to get as many of them out of the country as we can. >> we'll ask about that in a minute. but first leon panetta said, it struck me they were just crossing their fingers and hoping chaos would not result. it doesn't work that way. is that a fair assessment given the amount of chaos that americans and people across the world have seen over the past 24

hours? it does not seem that every contingency was planned for. it doesn't seem as if hardly any contingencies were planned for. what would you say to secretary panetta and all those who thought the biden administration was caught flat-footed? >> what i can say is we had been planning for noncombatant evacuation operations since as far back as may right after the president made the announcement he was going to withdraw troops in april. in fact, we held a drill here at the pentagon to walk through what the retro grade was going to look like, the withdrawal, as well as including the possibility for these kinds of evacuation operations and two weeks ago we held an exercise to walk through what it would look like to do what we're doing now, a noncombatant evacuation

operation at the airport. we planned for every contingency at the airport but no plan survives first contact. so obviously we had to adjust in the moment. and it would have been difficult to predict for the level of mayhem and chaos we saw there. we're mindful of the images that -- the graphic nature of them. certainly nobody wanted to see it result like it did over the last 24 hours but now we have more forces on the ground and we have begun to secure the field, the tarmac, certainly the north side of the airport is back up and running again with military aircraft and security seems to be better at the southern side although we'll work on that throughout the day. we planned for a lot of contingencies but no plan is perfect and no plan can be predictive in terms of what factors you're going toda deal with. >> it's willie geist, a lot of people have taken issue with the fact that the pentagon planned

for all contingencies. when you look at the scenes yesterday planning for that, for most people would have looked like getting our allies, those interpreters out before we left bagram air base a couple months ago, before the american troops left. should we not have secured all those people who helped america over the past 20 years before our troops left? >> we were working on the issue of special immigrant visas from the state department from the early part of the spring. that's a process that can be lengthy. but we've been working with the state department, stood up a task force here at the pentagon in early july to feed into the state department's processes. this is something we've been focused on at the pentagon for a while. but there are a lot of them, and there's a vetting process that has to occur. as i said, we are working really hard now to make sure we can get as many out as we can. we've already taken out of the country more than 2,000 some placed here at fort lee in

virginia, others going straight into relocation centers around the country to non-governmental organizations, helping them place them -- >> but admiral, i guess the question people have is why not take care of that and secure all these people and ensure their safety before american troops left, even if it meant keeping that small footprint of american troops there for a little bit longer. >> the small footprint we had was due to be out may 1st and if we didn't get out by may 1st, the taliban made it clear they were going to attack our troops. so the choice was, either i plus up the troops because they're going to come under fire or we observe the agreement and get out. what we got to do was get out but on an extended time line. we had to do that quickly. back to your question on speed. speed was safety here we had to move the troops out as fast as possible because we had to assume the draw down was going to be contested by the taliban

at any given moment. >> admiral, this still seems jarring and hard to understand. what was the worsening situation in afghanistan, how many troops were there that it was still not enough and not stable? because the white house explaining this saying we would have had to engage more and that was something that president biden was not going to do. but it doesn't seem to merit what we saw yesterday, chaos at the airport, people hanging off planes, falling to their deaths. >> look, again, those images are disturbing and heartbreaking, no question about that. i'd be lying if i said we perfectly predicted the level of panic that was going to happen at the airport. we had a small footprint on the ground, 2,500 when the administration came into office and they were doing a very good job at helping with civility, security, and advising and assisting afghan national security forces but they weren't coming under attack by the

taliban because of doha agreement, if we busted that agreement we couldn't have counted on that, after may 1st those troops would have been in harm's way, much worse than they were, and we believed that would have required a plus up of troops. you can argue you can plus up troops forever and stay in afghanistan forever but the commander in chief determined that was not sustainable, acceptable, so we began to draw down and we had to do it in a quick way because we couldn't trust the taliban, couldn't trust their word they wouldn't attack us, so we moved quickly to get the troops drawn down. >> press secretary john kirby, thank you for being on. still ahead, how congress is reacting to president biden's defense of the troop withdrawal. plus republican ben sasse is comparing the fall of afghanistan's government to the fall of saigon while others are fund-raising off the situation there. "morning joe" will be right

back. there. "morning joe" will be right back

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our troops promised them that the u.s. would never just turn tail and cowardly have another saigon-like event. this is worse than saigon. what is happening at the karzai international airport today is a more shameful moment in u.s. history than saigon. and president biden comes out of his bunker and attacks the people at the edge of that airport because we promised them security. they fought with us and we said they would be secure. and his administration undermined the confidence of those people fighting and they didn't believe they were going to have air support and we bizarrely in one of the great blunders in military history

evacuated bagram air force base in the night. why would we have evacuated bagram air force base? republican senator ben sasse of nebraska not mincing words as he criticizing president biden's decision to pull troops from afghanistan. some house republicans are fund-raising off this. in an email blast last night paid for by the congressional committee, brian mask called on republicans to defeat biden. he is a veteran from afghanistan and lost both of his legs in 2010. the email says in if part, joe biden has sentenced thousands of afghans who were our friends and allies to death. he has not learned the most important commitment to our soldiers, we do not leave men or women behind. last month, the house voted to expand the number of visas from allies, the only no votes came

from 16 house republicans. but the fact remains that's not just a republican issue by veterans disgusted by what they're seeing out of the government right now. >> it's not just republicans who have been horrified by what they've seen over the past couple of days, it's democrats who served in uniform, independents who served in uniform. it is hard for anybody to understand exactly why things happened the way they did. we had richard engel at the top of the show talking about how he was bicycling down the runway at bagram air force base when we showed that package back in june, maybe july, we sat there going wait a second, we abandoned our allies in the middle of the night, ripped out the equipment, didn't let them know we were leaving, they woke up and everything was gone? it's not the way you do things. by the way, for people going how dare republicans fund raise off

of something like this, i guarantee you democrats would have fund raised off of something like this if things are gone the opposite direction. it's the way it happens in politics. take a guy like brian mask who lost both of his legs in kandahar, yeah, i think he'd be especially hot this morning. >> this is such a bigger question than political parties. it's a question of who we are as americans and the moral stain of what we've done. you can be terrible in war but you can also be terrible existing war and the way we're doing it is just god awful. i have been talking to friends over the last couple of weeks who are so desperate about visas to come to the u.s. i don't know why joe biden dared to say afghans didn't want to come. has he spoken to one afghan who is afraid of the taliban coming to take power? i don't think so based on what he said. but the desperation and the state department not responding

to these visa inquiries. if we cannot figure out a way to make right the situation, to secure the air base, to get the airport secure enough where commercial flights can come in and where we can process our afghan allies and activists and civil society leaders who are going to be persecuted because it didn't have to be this way. it did not have to be this way. >> yeah, it didn't have to be -- >> it's just past -- >> i was just going to say, jonathan lemire, it didn't have to be this way. you're going to hear from a lot of people at the biden white house we're certainly hearing from a lot of viewers, this was donald trump's idea, this was donald trump's deadline, donald trump was attacking joe biden for not getting out quickly enough. pompeo had promised that we would be out by spring of 2021. most of the criticism coming from donald trump and people close to him against biden was that biden didn't leave soon

enough. so that's out there. it's all in writing. it's why donald trump doesn't have any room to say anything or pompeo or any of those people that were pushing to get us out even more quickly. that said, the buck stops with the president of the united states. he said that yesterday. and for people who want to know why this happened, that aren't just looking at this through the ideological lenses, you know, we talked about it on the show for six months now. this is a guy who hated karzai back in 2009, famously got up, threw his napkin down and said this dinner is over and left when karzai was president because of the rampant corruption. because of the fact we were spending billions and billions of dollars, tax dollars to try to build up that country, build up that military and it was all being squandered and people were getting extraordinarily rich.

but that said, again, we recognize that, but at the end of the day, how effective is this pointing at the guy who was the last president -- how effective is that going to be politically for joe biden when he himself said yesterday, the buck stops here? >> first you're right to point out the hypocrisy of donald trump and his allies on this issue. this was trump's deal originally to get out of afghanistan. but joe biden himself, president biden is not trying to shift this onto donald trump, not really. there are plenty of things that the trump administration did that biden tossed aside. go through examples of places that trump had a policy that biden broke on that first day in the oval office by executive order. this is one he didn't. he delayed the departure by a few months yes, but he honored this agreement because he believes in it. this is something he believed in

for more than a decade. he believes it's time for the american presence to leave afghanistan. this is something he firmly believes in. he doesn't want another son or daughter american life lost over there. how it happened, how the evacuation went down, that's another matter but there are few people defending it. the president said yesterday i'll take criticism on this because it's part of his convictions. >> it is definitely just past the top of the hour on this tuesday, august 17th. and president biden addressed the nation for the first time since the taliban takeover of afghanistan, expressing surprise it happened so quickly, but defending his decision to end american involvement after two decades. nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander has more. >> reporter: rushing back to washington as images emerge of chaos in kabul. president biden defiant and without regret.

>> i stand squarely behind my decision. >> reporter: the president acknowledging he was wrong about how swiftly afghanistan would fall. >> the truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. >> reporter: just last month he dismissed a quick taliban takeover. >> the likelihood there's going to be the taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. >> reporter: while the president did not express the u.s.'s responsibility for the chaos, he put blame on afghan soldiers for giving up. >> american troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. >> reporter: focussing on the long-term justification for the u.s. exit, not the deteriorating crisis on the ground. >> the buck stops with me. i'm deeply saddened by the facts we now face. >> reporter: still, critics are accusing him of incompetence. >> what we have seen is an

unmitigated disaster. a stain on the reputation of the united states of america. >> reporter: before the last week's events, nearly two thirds of americans backed president biden's decision to withdrawal all u.s. troops from afghanistan by 9/11. the president honoring the sacrifice of service members but many veterans want more done now to evacuate afghans who helped the u.s. >> i have received messages that are effectively good-bye messages. i'm going to die. i received one that said, if something bad happens to me, i will see you in heaven. >> peter alexander reporting there. for years the united states military provided rosie assessments of america's progress in transforming the afghan army and police into a professional fighting force. here's william caldwell in the summer of 2011. >> we made strides, progress in

the last 20 months as i watched the mission unfold from when we first stood up the nato training command. we fielded over 100,000 new police and army soldiers, they're probably the best trained, best equipped and the best led of any forces we've developed yet inside of afghanistan, they only continue to get better in time. >> that was a decade ago. our next guest says despite those assurances, u.s. military officials privately harbored doubts for the duration of the war that the afghan security forces could ever become competent or shed the dependency on u.s. fire and money pour. joining us is craig whitlock, author of the afghanistan papers. also with us amna navase, mike barnicle and eugene robinson.

good morning to you all. craig, let me begin with you, for all the shock we're seeing publicly from public officials right now about what's happening in afghanistan and how the afghan army frankly stepped aside and let the taliban roll across the country, as you point out and you've reported for a long time, privately there were beyond doubts, there were assurances this might happen whenever the united states left. >> yeah. as you heard with general caldwell, in public the generals at the pentagon told congress, the american people, that the afghan army and police were making strides, they were capable of defending themselves, they would fight for their country. but all along, dating back at least 15 years, u.s. military trainers internally saw this as mission impossible. trying to build and create an enormous afghan military, 350,000 soldiers and

paramilitary police, trying to build this from scratch. more than 90% of the soldiers and police were elite rat, didn't know how to operate u.s. weapons systems. we tried to create an army in the image of the u.s. defense department and it was fated to fail from the beginning. >> we're talking about 20 years and $85 billion worth of taxpayer money going into training these forces, they have an air force. what happened at the end of the day, in the last two weeks, why did they roll over so easily? >> there are a number of reasons. one to say the afghans weren't willing to fight is true at the end. but the afghans had been suffering terrible casualties the past several years. their losses were so bad that the pentagon classified the number of people getting killed because they were afraid it would demoralize the afghans so we don't know how many people they lost. they didn't want to fight and

die for their own government, they saw it as a corrupt government, many afghans did, they didn't see it as a cause worth fighting for. afghans also have a long history of being very good at putting their finger in the air during a conflict and see who's winning and quick to switch sides and change allegiances depending on which way the wind is blowing the i think the taliban is well placed, they planned all this, set it out, particularly since february of 2020 when they cut this deal with the trump administration for u.s. forces to leave, ever since then, the taliban had been waiting for this day for what's happened the last couple of weeks. they really planned this out really well and set it in motion. it just happened much quicker than the biden administration expected. >> i guess the question, craig, is the same things you said

about the afghan army, that they couldn't -- had trouble reading, they had trouble using u.s. weapons systems, the question is, why were they so inept and why does the taliban, why do they seem to be so efficient? they certainly weren't trained at west point, didn't get post grad degrees at harvard. why was there such a difference in skill sets between the two sides? >> that's a question, joe. it's a great question. it seems like a very obvious one. it's one that our commanders, u.s. military commanders didn't ask often why are the taliban committed to their cause and the afghans not committed to what they're fighting for. that's something that needs asked but it gets back to the afghan government was seen as corrupt, not legitimate, not

taking care of its people. the afghan soldiers, pay was stolen by commanders and they didn't have food at the end. u.s. taxpayers have been spending billions of dollars a year to train and pay the salaries and pay everything for the afghan army yet they had police and soldiers for months that would go without food, ammunition, it was being stolen by their own commanders, who would fight for that, right. who's going to give up their life or feel like they're committed to a cause like that. of course nobody would. and yet, the taliban, in contrast, they see their mission as trying to expel the foreign invaders, their propaganda is very good, very effective at finding recruits willing to kick out the u.s. super power from their country. people are always willing to fight for a cause for their country. i think the taliban was more willing to fight for their

country than the afghan military was willing to fight for their government. >> so many echos of what happened, the difference between the south vietnamese and the north vietnamese during that war. finally, craig, i would guess after reading your book that the numbers that we saw on the screen before, the 62% of americans supported biden's withdrawal a few months back and only 29% opposed it, i would suspect even more would probably support the withdrawal after seeing the 15, 16 years of mistakes and cover ups that you document. do you think joe biden made the right decision? >> i think joe biden's made the same decision that trump and obama tried to do before him. they've all been trying to end the war for 10 years this goes back to 2011 when we started withdrawing troops during the obama administration, ever since they've been trying to find a

way out of afghanistan and it's difficult because of the fears that the afghan government, in the end this puppet government, there was worry they would collapse, and that's what happened. it does get back to that old saying it's easier to start a war than it is to end one. and we've been trying to end this one for at least a decade. it looks like that's finally happened but look at the scenario, it's awful. it's awful to see these images from afghanistan. nobody wants to see that. at the same time i don't think there's any public appetite in the united states to stay there or go back in. >> or to step up. "the washington post" craig whitlock, thank you very much for your reporting and being on this morning. amna i know you're covering the people stranded in afghanistan and at the airport, those who wanted to get out. the white house reporting about 2,000 people so far have been evacuated. what's the status?

what's the latest? >> that's right. that 2,000 is, of course, just a drop in the bucket of people now vulnerable and could be targeted, previously been threatened by the taliban, i apologize i'm holding my phone because i have sources on the ground checking in confirming they are safe they made it through the night. this is day two with the taliban in charge. and nobody knows exactly what that's going to look like. there are conversations, talks going on in doha about what the government could look like. but on the ground in kabul is a disturbing situation. not just what we've been seeing in the chaos and tragedy and desperation at the airport. but in the rest of the city. what i hear from sources on the ground is there's basically taliban patrolling forces. big cars, heavy machinery driving around all the time. they have set up checkpoints, checking people's bags, laptops, going through phones, breaking into cars, checking license

plates, stealing them. no one knows what it's for. and most of the people i talked to, many of whom afghans who fled as children when the taliban came into power and returned years later after the u.s. invasion because they wanted to be part of rebuilding their country, they're now targets they worked in education, agriculture, infrastructure, all of those things they never had before, that work now makes them targets. they tell e me they are hunkered down, and many of them do not qualify for the priority visas. so they're doing everything they can to explore the options to get out. it's as much about how we got here, this surprise by this administration being caught off guard. i you we need to ask the administration how far are they willing to go to press the taliban, the incoming government, to make sure the rights of all of those people

are protected on the ground. >> listening to craig whitlock, gene robinson, was just chilling. the comparisons you can draw between what's happened in afghanistan and what's happened in vietnam. i haven't drawn those connections much over the past 15 years on the show, but craig talked about an effective fighting force that was pushing back against an outside invader, fighting a home-grown force that wasn't willing to push as hard, an incompetent fighting unit that wasn't as willing to fight as hard for a corrupt government. it sounds like we're talking about the difference between south vietnamese government and the vie yet cong fighters. i remember ken burns in his documentary, they had a clip of a sergeant they asked back in

'67, '68, a news reporter, what do you need to maintain this outpost? and he said, i need 30 of their guys. i don't need 100 of ours, i don't need 1,000 of ours. all i need is 30 of those guys and i'll take over the entire country. here we are in 2021, same story. >> here we are. the taliban, a bunch of guys in jeeps rolling around the country side. they were motivated. they believed in what they were fighting for, they were motivated and willing to fight to the death for what they believed in, and the other side wasn't. and the afghan army simply wasn't. i urge everybody to read craig whitlock's work. because it is incredible and illuminating. and it shows that the u.s.

military saw the weaknesses in the whole afghan system, the afghan government, the corruption, the rottenness in the afghan military, yet kept telling us the opposite, that they were standing up this great fighting force that was, you know, second-to-none. turned out to be second to the taliban. that's for sure. look, you can, you know, everybody can be horrified and -- at and deplore the scenes we saw at the airport and you can question the way that u.s. forces left or abandoned bagram air force base. all of those sort of tactical decisions can and should be

questioned. given the chaos that we're seeing. but the question is, you know, on the big point, how do you -- what's a graceful way to lose a war? what's the honorable way to lose a war? because that's what we did. and that's what we've been doing for the last um teen years and that's what three successive presidents recognized. that we had to leave. that we were not -- we were fighting for an afghanistan, a modern western-leaning afghanistan that the afghans were not willing to fight for. and that many afghans didn't believe in and didn't want. and it is a tragedy for those who did -- who do want that and who do believe in that future of a modern afghanistan.

and -- but that's the fact. that's the way things are. and so, the alternative to this is, what, you know, lowering the flag in a surrender ceremony to the taliban? i don't think that would have gone down any easier than this does. it's a tragic situation all around. but there was no graceful way to leave. this is a particularly ungraceful way that we're leaving but there was no graceful way to do it. >> "the washington post" has an op-ed this morning making the case for a small american footprint to stay there and perhaps prevent what we're seeing today. general david portrayis said this, we have to ask ourselves if having 3,500 troops on the ground with no battlefield losses for 18 months with a manageable situation was not

preferable to the catastrophe we're seeing unfold right now. what do you make of the president's remarks yesterday saying i stand squarely behind my decision despite these images we're watching right now? >> well, willie, it was a strong speech, it was a disciplined speech. and it established basically what for -- for lack of a better phrase, the biden doctrine. we are getting out of afghanistan. there are multiple problems with that as we see and have seen each and every day, in the last 24 hours especially. but you know, part of the problem is, and joe was talking about this, gene was referencing it, craig whitlock was just on. this was an old problem and a tragic problem for the united states. sure the images are reminiscent of the fall, the collapse of saigon. but there is not the collapse of

saigon. the south vietnamese army fought ut for two years. finally the government fell. and finally this government fled in afghanistan. what we don't do as americans, the american military, the american intelligence community, the american political community, what we don't do and have rarely done, is stop and ask yourself and think about the question, you do realize afghanistan is not our country. vietnam was not our country. people fight for their country. and we see people fighting for their country now. unfortunately it's the taliban fighting for their country. it is inexcusable that right now at this moment and perhaps it's happening, i pray that it's happening, that there are further reinforcements of american troops being sent to that airport in kabul to secure that airport and maintain safety

and security for as long as it takes to get as many people who assisted us in the course of 20 years of warfare out of that country. and certainly get every american citizen, every american state department employee out of that country safely. i pray that it's happening, i don't know that it's happening, but we need more security, more personnel. but we also have to take a look at the big picture. this war was built on a notion of myths, of falsehoods, knowledge of the corruption of the afghan government. we knew this and how in the course of 20 years and four presidents, and multiple secretaries of defense, multiple heads of our intelligence community, how did the reality never filter up to the top so that a president, whether it was barack obama, even donald trump,

and now finally joe biden did it, recognize the reality we cannot win this war. when people and soldiers will not fight for their country, why should we fight for them? >> it's a tragedy that we witness every second. >> and president biden stood firm on that. he seemed fed up with the afghans and their unwillingness to fight as we put it. but what about the innocents caught in the middle of this, the women, what does this mean for the women of afghanistan? >> mika, we've now had a generation of afghan women who know what it is to go to school as girls, who have been able to go to university and college in higher numbers than recent history and to have occupied the highest offices of government as well. and they are all now targets. we know in places where the taliban was able to take control of some provincial capitals in

the country in the many months not just the last couple weeks but in the months they were gaining ground, they put into place the regime where they kept girls 12 and over from going to school. we don't know what they'll do in the future but it does not look good based on history. many of the afghans who we worry or wonder why they didn't rise up and fight, we have to ask what they would be fighting for. the american government continued to pour money into this country as everyone had pointed out knowing the government was corrupt, the army was not getting the resources it needed. this wasn't a brutal battle by the taliban city by city. in many places they walked in, negotiated with the local leaders and continued to march on. the days, weeks, months ahead i think the biden administration owns what is happening on the ground and the question remains what exactly are the taliban going to do with the power now that they have it.

>> thank you so much for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest says what we're seeing in afghanistan is an intelligence failure on the same level as iraq's weapons of mass destruction and downplaying the rise of isis. republican congressman peter m meijer joins us next on "morning joe." joins us next on "morning e. in the race to succeed, does somebody always have to fail? let's give everybody a fair shot. because when that happens, we've all made it. ♪ ♪ ♪ because when that happens, we've all made it. i had the nightmare again maxine. the world was out of wonka bars... relax. you just need digital workflows. they help keep everyone supplied and happy, proactively.

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owned the fact that as he put it the buck stops with him. >> i hope he gets to own their deaths too. i feel i watched a different speech than the rest of you guys. i was apalled. there was such a boldfaced lie in that speech, they planned for every con tin jen --

contingency. i sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. nobody listened to us. they didn't plan for evacuation of our war allies. they're trying to conduct it now. they got what they were most concerned of by failing to do what was right when we could have done it. we had all the people and equipment in place to be able to save these people months ago and we did nothing. i'm appalled that he thinks we need to only take 2,000 people. there's 86,000 people in afghanistan alone. we identified all of them for the government. i have no idea why he claims that people don't want to leave afghanistan. i have a list of 14,000 names right now of people who want to get out of afghanistan. >> that was matt zeller veteran and cofounder of an organization focused on helping interpreters from iraq and afghanistan

resettle in the united states. trying to help those who helped our men and women in uniform for so many years at the risk of their lives. let's bring in republican member of the foreign affairs committee congressman peter meijer of michigan, was deployed to iraq before working in conflict, analyst for an ngo in afghanistan. congressman let me just start this morning by thanking you so much for your service to this country, your service in uniform. we so greatly appreciate it. i want to get this right, though. i've been saying for a couple days this wasn't an intel failure because we all saw it coming a mile away. at least we've been talking about it on the show. but you do think part of this was an intel failure. can you explain to our audience what you mean by that? >> absolutely. we had a cascading series of failures here from the

operationals to the strategic and on the intelligence side as well. on the intelligence side it was missing the regional and mid level contacts between members of the government and security forces and the taliban, their shadow colleagues in the taliban structure. that's how you go from the taliban not holding a capital to sweeping into the presidential palace in a span of eight days. we missed it. >> yeah. so how did we miss it so badly? and how did our military overestimate the strength and force of our afghan allies over the past 15, 20 years? >> simply put, this is what happens when you have an intelligence analysis and decision-making process that is divorced from what's happening on the ground. one of the biggest challenges we have in the federal government right now is the fact that on the that intelligence analysis side that is solely the

president's responsibility. he has the appointment authority over the different entities within the intelligence community and we have a legislative branch, we have congress, reliant on reports coming from individuals reporting to the president. so all of that analysis, that information that we are engaging and involving in our decision making is being shaped, crafted, the potential to be manipulated by individuals loyal to the president. and not necessarily out of a cynical reason, but you end up toting the party line, you want to support the policies that are there and we engage in confirmation bias. that's how we have these astounding changes and ways in which we're caught entirely flat-footed. it's unacceptable but it's the way the process is. >> you support the withdrawal, you wanted america to leave afghanistan but you call the

execution of it a horrible embarrassment so how should this have gone? >> this is what the negotiations in doha were for and the assurances we had on the sidelines, it was to use what leverage we had in order to institute a power sharing agreement in order to have some faction of a blended power government in kabul with probably reduced authority and more authority in the provincial areas, greater regional autonomy. but that went out the window. as soon as that ball started rolling and the taliban started seizing capitals and capturing war lords or having various war lords flee the country, there was no going back and our leverage disintegrated in days. what we built up in 20 years collapsed in days. that shows you there wasn't a lot underpinning it but that doesn't mean there wasn't

anything, that doesn't mean we couldn't salvage something. >> was it naive or insane to think the taliban was a good faith negotiating partner that they were going to share a government or as president trump said at the time, had a common interest in reducing violence in the country. >> you rely on superior fire power, rely on having ways to bend your opponent in just things that can't be denied. not having to rely on the goodness of the taliban's hearts. the challenge here, we saw this, matt zeller in what he was saying about our allies trying to get out. how we had been so slow on this, we had been working with the administration in a bipartisan way since april on the issue of interpreters and other afghan allies, yet we chose to remove our military forces first rather than expedite that time line.

i think -- again, this is where i say it was cascading failures. once the ball starts rolling it's in the hands of the administration. it's an operational and decision making process. right now the decisions need to be reviewed thoroughly, we need congressional hearings on how it unfolded the way it did and work to make sure it doesn't happen again. >> mike barnicle has a question for you. >> those congressional hearings will be held, there will be a forensic autopsy on how this happened, how this catastrophe occurred in front of the eyes of the globe as we watch it each and every day. but right now today, in terms of the airport in kabul, in terms of the thousands of afghans who worked for us and are desperately trying to get out of the country, and, of course, the american embassy people who are still at the airport, is it a good thing or wise thing for the united states to begin to engage

with saudi arabia and the united arab emirates in order to get them employed in the diplomatic pursuit of making sure the taliban understands that in order to get those people out, united states military forces are going to have to be on the ground for two, three weeks, maybe a month, who knows, but do we need an intermediary to make sure that happens? >> i don't know that we need an intermediary, you want to have as many points of influence assuring things as possible. one of the open questions right now is how strong the linkages are between the taliban and individuals on the ground, those negotiating in doha and those in pakistan and other tribal areas. so how they liase with the guy outside the gates of kabul airport is a question. how other countries have degrees

of influence is a question. we shouldn't turn any of that away but our priority right now is maintaining security at the airport, getting as many flights out as possible and getting as many allies out as possible. this will be a massive task. one we should have started months ago, one we told the administration to start months ago, but it's one we cannot fail. it's zero fail mission here. >> eugene robinson of "the washington post" has a question for you. >> i want to get at the question you just posed, which is what is the relationship between the high ranking taliban who were negotiating good faith, bad faith, whatever, and those on the ground? is it your understanding or do you have any knowledge that the united states, on some level, has an inkling of what's going on inside the taliban or is it just a black box to us at this point?

can we have any confidence that the doha negotiators speak for the taliban, what their intentions are going forward, or do we simply not know? >>, you know, i think it's -- it's evolving and i don't want to say i trust in the assessments i've had. this is a region i lived in from 2013 to 2015, a lot of the individuals that have been involved in many different aspects of the process, people i know, not on the taliban side, so i think there's an open question on the taliban, there's an open question on the influence of the senior leadership that has been out of the fight for a while. there's the question of the control of the provincial shadow governors. we've seen some hopeful signs in a few different areas of agreements being struck that are not the hard line way. again, it is early. anything can happen here and we have to be expecting and planning for the worse. but i think right now the

question of the degree to which the doha negotiators speak for the taliban. you don't trust anything, you verify everything. that is what we need to be doing. but the challenge is when we have depleted and our intelligence mission from the beginning underplayed both improving the legitimacy of the afghan government, those efforts took a backseat to whatever other mission, counterterrorism, counternarcotics, nation building. all of that went out the window to invest and ensure the integrity of the afghan government was not in the top five priorities now we're seeing the consequences of that with how the taliban maintained their legitimacy while the afghan government depleted whatever was there. understanding the taliban from the intelligence perspective was never a true operational priority it was always in pursuit of targeting.

>> congressman peter meijer, thank you very much for bringing your incites this morning. coming up, our next guest is taking stock of america's 20-year war on terror and how its devastating effects overseas have obscured its devastating effects here at home. that conversation is next on "morning joe." "morning joe."

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welcome back to "morning joe." it's 7:46 here on the east coast. joining us now, contributing editor for the daily beast, spencer acreman, the author of the new book "reign of terror". in it he contends a politically divided country turn it had war on terror into a cultural and

then tribal struggle first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to concur the republican party. good morning, it's great to have you on the show. i want to dig into the book but first ask you about the scenes you've been seeing along with us the last couple days out of afghanistan which mark the end of this 20 year period that you talk about starting on september 11th. >> it's horrific. what can't really be ignored is the human suffering not only of the desperation of people grabbing hold of c-17s, falling out of the sky, reminiscent of the way we saw people leap to certain death in the burning towers on t 9/11 but also the horror and neglect of the united states considering people who didn't serve the u.s. war is being left behind. we're talking about an evacuation of people who helped the wars and that's an

obligation of the united states, but it's sort of a moral core that's functioning as a moral ceiling. the biden administration isn't doing things necessary like increasing gps access, letting in refugees by the millions to escape their certain fate at the hands of the taliban. >> so you talk about 9/11, the atrocity, the horror of that day, you talk about the national unity that surrounded the country in the weeks and months after that, but then you begin to trace some of the cracks in the unity and where it led over 20 years. where did things, in your estimation, spencer, begin to turn? >> right from the start there was a deliberate inpercision in defining the enemy. to see it in distinction, this wasn't defined as a war on al qaeda. the bush administration didn't do it that, it defined it much

more broadly, taking the impetus away from attacking a specific enemy, which would have perhaps raised the question of whether there needed to be any kind of war against that enemy at all, rather than this enormous expansive commitment once the united states made that decision, two important things happen, first the enemy starts being defined civilizationally, as a threat not from a small band of murderous religious fanatics but instead an entire islamic civilization. that takes the paranoia not just at home but against more muslim neighbors in the united states and secondly the architecture of american national security starts getting transformed in a much more authoritarian direction than before, mass surveillance, torture, the placement of law enforcement informants inside places of

worship and the treatment of immigration as a national security threat rather than a mechanism for making more americans. all of these things started immediately after 9/11, and i would also contend despite the fact we heard that we were all united as a country, that wasn't the experience of muslim americans from the start. a tremendous amount of fear swept through those communities. >> spencer, gene robinson has a question for you. gene? >> spencer, what's the alternative universe then? what's the alternative way that the bush administration could have proceeded after e9/11? let's just take the case of afghanistan, for example. al qaeda attacked us, al qaeda was in afghanistan we went after

al qaeda. we decided we needed to get rid of the taliban government, and here we are, 20 years later. what's the alternative way we could have proceeded? >> the alternative way is to separate al qaeda that attacked the united states than the al qaeda that harbored them. rather than simply attacking al qaeda after 9/11. remember that in december 2001, after the taliban gets driven from kabul, after the taliban loses control. the islamic emirate falls, what happens after that is the taliban sue for peace with the united states and its allies. a peace that hamid karzai was prepared to accept. donald rumsfeld instead refused that peace and demanded unconditional surrender. you can debate whether or not the taliban would have, in fact,

abided by that deal, but everything that happened afterwards, over 20 years, made the taliban stronger, made u.s. leverage weaker, and the exact terms of that negotiation, laid out arms, enter into a power-sharing deal with a successor government, was what the trump administration rightly, to my mind, sought in 2019 and secured in 2020. we had that in 2001, and the scenes that we're seeing right now would not be happening. there is a sense in washington that what's happening right now is a result of the united states ceasing to fight the war. in truth, these are the wages of the war. the longer the war persist, the stronger the taliban got. this is the result. this is not the alternative. >> we're witnessing how the taliban honors or does not honor its peace deals.

>> indeed. >> so, spencer -- spencer, let me ask you, skimming your book, i haven't read it completely yet, do you think that if in october, november, of 2001, if we had gone into afghanistan, chased osama bin laden, and found him in the tora bora mountains, killed him, and then left afghanistan, do you think the world would be a safer place today that the terrorist threats would not be off the charts, as they are today? >> that's exactly what i think. the way the terrorism charts went off the charts is because the opportunities that the endless war provided them. think of isis. how did isis come to exist? the isis came to exist because of the occupation of iraq. isis came to exist because al qaeda found an opportunity to come into iraq and then became

the vastly more violent, nilistic and successful franchise that would over time and over opportunities created by the war on terror morph into what we saw take over territory where 6 million people live in iraq and in syria. we have never allowed ourselves to consider that not fighting an expansive, destructive, devastating war the thing that makes america safer. because the united states does not want to consider that its actions have true, real, deep, and enduring historical consequences. consequences that have only made the problem worse. >> and just to spencer, get to your final point here, how does this connect with donald trump? >> all of the forces that we've just been talking about, unleash after 9/11, the suspicion of

your neighbors. the fear that there is a civilization threat out there. all of that is a doorway for the ugliest currents of american history. the most nativist, the most violent currents to once again reassert their power, this time in an atmosphere of national security emergency. this is how every time we see a community center in lower manhattan transmogrified in the minds of the paranoid into a ground zero mosque. this is how we see bills to ban so-called sharia law from replacing the u.s. constitution take hold across statehouses across the country. this atmosphere of paranoia, particularly when combined with the disaster of the wars to prompt a constituency to go seeking ever-more punitive and ever-more closer to home

explanations for how this happens. and that's what donald trump speaks to when he descends the golden elevator at trump tower. >> the new book is "reign of terror: how the 9/11 error destabilized america and produced trump." spencer ackerman, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning and sharing. and still ahead on "morning joe," retired u.s. army lieutenant general hr mcmaster issued a stark warning yesterday when it comes to afghanistan. he tweeted this, the humanitarian crisis is just beginning. jihadist terrorists will grow more dangerous and it will take years for our reputation to recover. the former national security adviser joins our conversation ahead on "morning joe." "mornin. washed your hands a lot today? probably like 40 times.

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there are some very brave and capable afghan special forces units and soldiers. but if afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the taliban now, there is no chance that one year, one more year, five more years, or twenty more years of u.s. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.

and what i believe to my core, it is wrong to order american troops to step up in afghanistan's own armed forces will not. >> president biden more adamant than ever that america's sustained military mission in afghanistan is over. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, august 17th. and we're going to begin this morning with the chaotic scenes from kabul's international airport, where thousands of afghans surrounded planes in a desperate attempt to escape taliban control. nbc news chief foreign correspondent, richard engel has the latest from kabul. >> reporter: tens of thousands of afghans swarmed into kabul airport, desperate to leave at any price. they burst through security, climbed over walls, and spilled on to the tarmac, searching for

any airplane that would take them far away from afghanistan, away from the taliban. so many managed to cram into one plane, the pilot refused to take off. people onboard refused to disembark. but it was a cross of barbed wire divide where it turned really ugly. on the military side of the airport, american troops trying to evacuate u.s. embassy staff found themselves overwhelmed, suddenly battling crowds, firing warning shots. this was not the mission they came for. the pentagon says u.s. troops shot dead two armed afghans, but still the crowds didn't disperse. instead, they ran along and clung to the undercarriage of a military transport plane as it taxied for takeoff. one u.s. military official told me it was a hundred times worse than the humiliating american pullout from saigon. afghans are running from the taliban, now in full control, setting up checkpoints with the

very weapons american taxpayers bought for the afghan army, which collapsed instead of fighting. after the u.s. pulled of bases and left them without air support. and the u.s. didn't see this coming? we reported on the tremendous security vacuum created when the u.s. left bagram air base two months ago, leaving it so undefended and empty, i was able to bike down the runway. the warning signs were there. and this weekend, kabul was taken without resistance. and the afghan president fled. still in the country are tens of thousands of afghan interpreters, marked for death by the taliban, who were taking their meals in the presidential palace, settling in, celebrating their victory. as we drove through kabul, it's clear the taliban's hard line islamist rule is creeping back. this was a popular beauty salon, styling women's hair and make

makeup. the taliban ban salons along with education for women and girl. so when the taliban returned -- now they've painted over the beauty shop people know what the taliban want and expect. we watched a man tear up the beauty parlor sign, in line with the taliban's wishes. a 20-year war, the longest in u.s. history, ended in disgrace. the u.s. leaving behind a country its citizens are too terrified to live in. the administration maintaining it was taken by surprise. >> richard engel reporting from afghanistan. in the face of growing criticism from democrats and republicans alike, president biden returned to the white house from camp david briefly yesterday, to address the nation and defended his administration's decision to withdrawal american troops from afghanistan. >> our mission in afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. it was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized

democracy. our only vital interest in afghanistan remains today what it has always been, preventing an terrorist attack on american homeland. i stand squarely behind my decision. after 20 years, i learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw u.s. forces. that's why we were still there. we were clear-eyed about the risk. we planned for every contingency, but i always promised the american people that i would be straight with you. the truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. so what's happened? afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. the afghan military collapsed. sometimes without trying to fight. if anything, the developments of

the past week reinforced that any u.s. military involvement in afghanistan now was the right decision. american troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. so i'm left again to ask of those who would argue that we should stay, how many more generations of america's daughters and sons would you have me send to fight afghan stan's civil war, when afghan troops will not? how many more lives, american lives, is it worth? how many endless rows of headstones at arlington national cemetery. we'll continue to support the afghan people. we'll lead with our diplomacy, our international influence, and our humanitarian aid. we'll continue to push for

region pal diplomacy and engagement. we'll continue to speak out for the basic rights of afghan people, of women and girls, just as we speak out all over the world. i've been clear, the human rights must be the center of our foreign policy, not the periphery. but the way to do it is not through endless military deployments. i'm now fourth american president to preside over a war in afghanistan. two democrats and two republicans. i will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president. i will not mislead the american people, by claiming that just a little more time in afghanistan will make all the difference. nor will i shrink from my share of responsibility from where we are today and how we must move forward from here. i am president of the united

states of america and the buck stops with me. >> so, joe, not flinching there. president biden saying, i stand squarely behind my decision to withdraw. there are a lot of people in this country who voted for that idea. there are a lot of people in this country who agree with that idea to withdraw, but no one agrees with what they're seeing right now on that screen. c-17s swarmed by people trying to get out of afghanistan, some of them falling from the sky as they cling to those planes. >> you're exactly right, most americans did support a withdrawal from afghanistan. an april showed 75% of americans supported that withdrawal.

i obviously didn't. we had 3,000 people there that were able to do their job, just like we had 3,500 people in syria that were able to hold back the iranians, the russians, the syrians, isis, iran, and for some reason, donald trump decided to yank those troops out of that country. and this idea that there's never a good time to withdrawal? well, the commander in chief is right. there was never going to be a good time to withdraw from afghanistan. and i would argue that if we have 50,000 troops in japan since 1945. 45,000 troops in germany since 1945. over 35,000 troops in south korea since 1945. and if we have just a fraction

of that, 2,500 troops in afghanistan, and an american troop hasn't been killed in the past 18 months, it seems like a false deadline to me. and i swear i can't find a military person who thinks this was the right thing to do. but that being said, joe biden ran to be president of the united states. he ran to get america out of afghanistan. people voted for him. i don't think they voted for him to get the troops out of afghanistan. maybe a few did. but it's not like he didn't promise that he was going to do this. so there's never a good time to withdraw, but joe biden had promised the american people he was going to withdraw from afghanistan. but there's a right way to withdraw. and the president can say that he planned for every contingency. but he knows that's not true.

the white house knows that's not true. and the american people know that's no true. and that's how a 75% proposition has devolved into a political disaster for this white house. they need to turn things around and the first thing they need to do is they need to save those who helped save our troops over the past 20 years. we just can't keep abandoning allies in the field. donald trump abandoned the kurds. we're abandoning our interpreters in afghanistan. we just can't keep going in, having people risk their lives, and then leaving in the middle of the night, like we have here. coming up, mary trump's reckoning. the niece and frequent critic of the former president joins us ahead on "morning joe." former p ahead on "morning joe.

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announce the change as early as this week. the booster is expected to assist in protection against the delta variant that is causing cases and hospitalizations to surge across the country, mika. >> and with an expected surge in covid-19 deaths, texas has requested five mortuary trailers from fema. state officials told nbc news that the trailers were ordered at the start of the month after officials reviewed data about increasing deaths as a third wave struck the state. the trailers will be based in san antonio and sent around the state as needed. texas has seed a surge in new cases amid the spread of the delta variant. the state's seven-day death rate has reached its highest levels since mid-march. willie? >> the school board for hillsborough county public schools in florida is set to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow as thousands of its

students are in isolation or quarantine. as of yesterday morning, nearly ,600 of the students staff were in isolation or quarantine. according to the tamba bay times, hillsborough's case count stood at 731 midday, nearly 20 times higher than it was after the first week of fall classes in 2020. a mask mandate in the district would violate an order from florida governor ron desantis prohibiting schools from requiring face coverings, although that hasn't stopped other school districts and mayors from violating his order. a 13-year-old girl has died from the coronavirus in mississippi. eighth grader mikalah robinson passed away on saturday, just hours after she tested positive. reports say she is the fifth child under the age of 18 to die of covid after the positive. the week before her death, she

attended classes in the smith county, mississippi, school district, where masks were optional. just days before mikalah died and after 75 students and 11 staff members tested positive for covid, the school changed course and required masks. mikalah's teachers say she was loved by all. she was an honor student is played in the school band. the day before her death, mississippi governor tate reeves, downplayed the impact of the virus on children. >> if you look at those individuals under the age of 12, what you find is that it is very rare that kids under the age of 12 have anything other than the sniffles. does it happen from time to time? sure, it does. coming up, former national security adviser h.r. mcmaster says the cost of failure in

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i also want to acknowledge how painful this is to so many of us. the scenes we're seeing in afghanistan, they're gut wrenching, particularly for our veterans. our diplomats, humanitarian workers. for anyone who has spent time on the ground, working to support the afghan people. for those who have lost loved ones in afghanistan. and for americans who have fought and served in a country, serve our country in afghanistan. this is deeply, deeply personal. >> that was more of president biden's address to the nation. in his latest column for "the washington post," entitled "20 years of afghanistan mistakes, but this preventable disaster is on biden," max boot writes in part, the words that biden uses

to describe the delta variant, a largely preventable tragedy that will get worse before it gets better, apply to his handling of afghanistan. one more year or five more years of u.s. military presence would not have made a difference if the afghanistan military cannot or will not hold its own country, biden insisted. that's only true if it was inevitable that the u.s. military would pull out. but u.s. forces a still present in far larger numbers and countries such as germany, japan, and south korea, after more than 70 years. joining us now, former u.s. national security adviser, retired army lieutenant, general h.r. mcmaster. and joe, i'll send it to you, but that was the argument that we were making, talking about this yesterday. there are troops all over the world. >> general, i guess that's what we don't understand. we've had the last two

presidents running around with their hair on fire, insisting that 3,500 troops in syria, that were pushing back on the iranians, pushing back on the russians, pushing back on isis, pushing back on the turks, that some of 3,500 troops in syria and 3,500 troops in afghanistan was somehow an endless war, when we've had over 35,000 troops in germany since thim. we've had 12,000 troops in italy since that time. south korea, as you know, over 25,000 troops since the end of the korean war in '53. the question is, why can't we keep residual forces of 3,500 troops -- not to rebuild the nation, but to kill bad guys when they step out of line and try to torture girls, torture other people, trying to build a civil society? >> yeah, that's what's so sad about this, joe. this is wholly unnecessary. if we were ecuador, it would be

tough to keep, you know, 35 3500 troops or 8,500 troops in afghanistan. and what they were doing was enabling the afghans to take the brunt of the fight against the enemies of all civilized people, right? so the present speech, i found profoundly disappointing in connection with his disparagement of afghan soldiers, right? afghan soldiers, tens of thousands of whom gave their lives to preserve the premiums they've enjoyed since the end of taliban rule, but they were fighting for us on a modern-day frontier between barbarism and civilization. >> general mcmaster, let's talk about a bigger problem that we have right now in this country. i believe, politically, we don't have politicians that can explain why american remains the dispensable power. and that we've learned from a lot of mistakes over the past 20

years. we can't rebuild iraq. we can't rebuild afghanistan, but we can put a small footprint, a light footprint, a sustainable footprint in syria, in afghanistan, and they make a world of difference, to security and stability across the globe and to our national security interests. >> yeah, i'll tell you, joe, this is really important. the president used what is now a dirty word, nation building. and of course we're not going to transform societies on our own in our image. but afghanistan didn't need to be denmark, joe. it needed to be afghanistan. and it was going to be a violent place. and we decried corruption in the afghan government. well, do you prefer the criminal leadership of the taliban? it really is a travesty. and i think what we've forgotten is that, hey, the consolidation of military gains to get to

sustainable political outcomes that are in our interest, that's never been an optional phase of war. you mentioned south korea. we kept hundreds of thousands of troops in south korea in the immediate aftermath. and it was a pretty bleak picture in south korea. you had a corrupt government. you had a country ravaged by decades of war. you had an illiterate population and a hostile neighbor. and we didn't give up on that. and in fact, people forget, between 1967 and '68, kim il-sung sensed weakness in america and initiated a major insurgency in south korea. 300 attacks, 15 americans died in that year, 65 were wounded. far more than the casualties we suffered in afghanistan in recent years. and of course, every casualty is a tragedy, but another tone in the speech that i found, the disquieting, maybe disappointing is that soldiers don't want to be pitied, right?

what soldiers want, soldiers want political leadership that will help achieve a sustainable outcome that is worthy of the risk that they take and the sacrifices they make. and i think we actually engaged in self-defeat in afghanistan. we've deployed almost three times that number, just to deal with the catastrophe that we helped to precipitate with our withdrawal, and by the way, joe, empowering our enemy on the way out and delivering psychological blows, you know, to the afghan security forces and the government. so, this was preventable with a sustained commitment, but heck, this is three administrations in a row, joe, who have said, hey, to the american people, it's not worth it. and then the opinion polls, well, the american people don't support it. three presidents in a row said, it's not worth it. now we see that it was worth it. we see that the small commitment of our military forces and our

diplomatic efforts and our intelligence efforts, what it was doing. it was preserving the freedoms that afghan had enjoyed since 2001, against a brutal enemy who has some external support in the form of al qaeda and other external ageagents, the shadowy intel arm of the pakistani army. >> and we go back ten years, and i was one of them. so many of us wanted to get our troops out of iraq. we thought, you know, what, by 2010, 2011, we had done enough. everybody got out. isis filled the boy. that's not a political talking point. that's a reality. then we had to go back in and i just fear, like you said, we're sending more troops now in to clean up the mess than we had in the first place. one more thing and then i'll patch you on and let other people ask you questions.

one of the things i find so destructive in the debate that we have in this country about america creating stability across the globe are the words "forever war." if you have 2,500 troops in that is somehow a forever war. if you have 3,500 troops in syria pushing back on putin, pushing back on the iranians, that is a forever war, and we have to yank those troops out. talk about how we, our politicians, our leaders have to reset expectations for americans and say, if we can handle 50,000 troops in japan for 57 years, we're okay with 3500 troops in syria or 2,500 troops in afghanistan. >> absolutely, joe. what's really important about this term of ending endless wars and so forth is how self-referential it is. this is what i call strategic narcissism. to define the word only in relation to us and to think what we do or decide not to do in

terms of disengagement is decisive towards achieving a favorable outcome. but what happens in afghanistan, is to say that our enemies have a say. the taliban, al qaeda, they don't look around and say, the americans are gone. i guess we'll just stop. it's not an endless war, it's an endless jihad that they're waging against all humanity. and that demands that we remain engaged with them. you alluded to the covid analogy at the beginning or mika did. i actually think it works, problems and threats to our security that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. and we learned that with 9/11. and as you mentioned, how about learning from our most proximate historical experience in afghanistan. this is when then vice president biden called up president obama and said, thank for allowing me to end this goddamned war. less than three years later, you

have baghdadi walking up the steps of the mosque in moscow. you have isis becoming the most destructive terrorist organization in history, in control of territory the size of britain and inflicting humanitarian catastrophe on the people in syria and in iraq. and as you mentioned, we had to go back, right? so i think we have to make the case i think to our leaders that, obviously, you know, there are no short-term solutions to long-term problems, but what we need is an integrated approach to these problems, that kbins combines what we're doing militarily to what we're trying to achieve politically. we did the opposite in afghanistan. we said, we're leaving. here's our timeline for departure. let's negotiate an agreement with the taliban. how the heck does that work? it doesn't work. it cuts against really the very nature of war, and war especially as a contest of wills. >> good morning, general, it's willie geist. good to have you on the show. i want to ask you about who these afghan people are that

we're trying to help out. we've talked about interpreters. who are these people, what did they risk, and do you think we owe them? >> we owe them the best chance to get the hell out of there and to get out from under taliban rule. we talk about interpreters. it's much more than that. it's really anybody who took action to build a better future for generations of afghans to come. these are women, professional women, judges. these are journalists. these are students in afghan universities. and what is heartbreaking about this is we could do more. we're the nation that did the berlin air lift, right? secure the damned airport. get the whole airport open. secure safe quarters for passage for people to get out and put them on the planes. willie, it hasn't been reported that much, but there's a huge private sector effort, international airport waiting to

help afghans. they've pre-enrolled women afghan students and universities and other universities in third countries. they're not even going to require passports or other documentation for the people we could get out of there. so we need to get more, you know, more avenues open for gavins who are fleeing this horrible, you know, taliban regime and what's certain to be murderous repression of anybody, who tried to build a better future for the country. >> and you're right, there are private groups who have lists of tens of thousands of afghans who need to be rescued from the country and taken out of there. they're just waiting for some help to get it done. you had left, general, the trump administration, by the time the doha agreement was signed in late february of last year. president trump took a direct phone call from the leader of the taliban, talked about how they had a great conversation and common interests and he said that the taliban was also interested in ending the violence inside afghanistan.

what do you make of that assessment now as you watch what the taliban is doing in the country? >> it'sself-delusion. this is a key element of our delusion that the taliban was going to share power. who the heck thought that was going to be the case? the other aspect of this, there's this bold line between the taliban and al qaeda. numerous u.s. leaders across last three administrations thought we could partner with the taliban against terrorist organizations and we know these organizations are completely intertwined, especially al qaeda and the taliban. and finally, this idea that the taliban, well, maybe they'll impose a more benign form of sharia. what does that look like? mass executions in the soccer stadium every other saturday? every other girls' school bulldozed. so i think the first part is try

to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe. >> general, mike barnicle has a question more you. >> general, you grew up in a household where your dad fought in korea, you've had a distinguished military career, a distinguished political career. you wrote a great book, "dereliction of duty," but my question to you is twofold. one, if you are the national security adviser to this president or any president right now, today, would you have recommended keeping a complement of troops, a platoon, a company, a battalion, 2,500, 3,000 troops in afghanistan today? and if so, what are your feelings about the fact that we live in a nation where less than 1% of the population really knows anybody moist in the american military. what do we do about that?

>> mike, for your first question, heck yes, that's what i would have recommended. but the job of a national security adviser, i believe is to provide the elected president options, plural. to cooperate developments so the president can make the best decisions, based on the best analysis and multiple options. what's sad about this that's when i did. that's what i worked with colleagues to do for president trump, who you might recall was predisposed towards this kind of precipitous withdrawal from afghanistan. and we forget that actually in august of 2017, he made a much different decision for a sustainable commitment, with no timeline, with no limit on our time there, with a much different approach to pakistan. correcting a lot of the fundamental flaws that underpinned our strategy for so long, but he backed away from that and doubled down on the mistakes of the obama administration by opening up this taliban political commission in doe harr, qatar. and the biden administration then doubled down on the mistakes of the trump

administration. and it's really regrettable. and i think, really, i am worried, mike, about this disconnect. the disconnect between, you know, between our warriors and those in whose name we fight and serve. and i think it's really important, because i think americans have skewed perspective of service now. i think what this shows you in afghanistan is american warriors and also warriors and humanitarians. they're humanitarians because they were engaged against the enemies of all humanity. they were helping to prevent the horrors we're seeing in afghanistan today. i think america ought to be very proud of its warriors. they're warriors and humanitarians. but also, i think, warriors don't want pity. i think evoking the image of headstones in arlington, i think that that was offensive to many veterans. what veterans want, i think, is they want leaders who will help achieve that sustainable

outcome, consistent with the sacrifices they make and the risks that they take. and also, i think, mike, there's a misunderstanding of our veterans. i think popular culture kind of cheapens and coarsens the warrior experience and tends to view veterans as fragile, traumatized human beings. our veterans are extraordinarily resilient, capable people. and many of them have been through quite harrowing experiences. but they bring back to our society a tremendous commitment to service and a tremendous base of experience. so i'm glad you're focused on this, mike, but i think we have to do everything we can to better connect our warriors with those in whose name they fight and serve. >> former u.s. national security adviser, mr mcmaster, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. and still ahead, with we're going to go live for cnbc for a look at what's driving the day on wall street. business before the bell is next

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it remains under pressure today after a bigger drop yesterday. the electric vehicle maker is now the subject of a formal investigation by u.s. regulators who are looking into the safety features of its self-driving or autopilot. the national highway traffic safety administration or nhtsa is looking at eleven crash incidents, involving first responder vehicles. the probe covers around 765 tesla model s, x, y, and 3 vehicles between 2014 to now. the 11 crash incidents resulted, by the way, in 17 user and one fatality. most incidents, by the way, took place after dark, where the tesla autopilot features were engaged while approaching stopped emergency vehicles, where there were flashing flare. yesterday was another set of record highs for the stock market overall, by the way. the s&p 500 has now doubled in

value since the covid pandemic lows last march. it took just 354 trading days to hit that milestone, which makes it the fastest doubling off of a bottom in a bull market since world war ii. and just on context, on average, it takes over a thousand day for that kind of thing to happen. and it was the 49th record close of the year for the s&p 500. and we'll finally end on u.s. health authorities. they are expected to recommend covid-19 booster shots for americans eight months after receiving their second dose of the pfizer or moderna vaccines, according to multiple published reports. an official announcement could come as early as this week and later more johnson & johnson's vaccine. it is likely that nursing home residents, the elder, and health care workers would be among the first to receive those boosters. just yesterday, pfizer said it submitted early information to the fda in order to get its shot

fully authorized for everyone 16 and older. right now, they're only approved on an emergency basis. >> cnbc's dominic chu with business before the bell. thank you so much. up next, mary trump joins us with her candid new book on the nation's reckoning following her uncle's presidency. keep it right here on "morning joe." keep it right here on "morning joe. at usaa, we've been called too exclusive. because we only serve those who honorably served. all ranks, all branches, and their families. are we still exclusive? absolutely. and that's exactly why you should join.

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there's an urgent effort now in haiti. the death toll has driven to more than 1400 people and fears that number will rise. gabe gutierrez traveled to haiti to the epicenter. >> reporter: mangled misery. this is the largest town to bear the brunt of the monstrous earthquake. this used to be a massive five story hotel, untold number of people died here. the search and rescue mission is over. and demolition under way. it was more powerful than the 2010 catastrophe. this one hit a less populated area, five hours south of port-au-prince. the haitian government says more than 1400 are dead, 6,000 injured. many crushed by collapsing

buildings. so many families displaced with more than 37,000 homes damaged or destroyed. now as tropical depression grace hits haiti, so many communities are already cut off. >> reporter: this hospital is overwhelmed, they set up beds outside with men, women, children hooked up to ivs under the hot sun. some still searching for family members days after the quake. the children are perhaps most striking, anguish matched only by their parents' confusion. patience is thin and so are medical supplies. this woman cries as she says her daughter is in pain next to her and rescuers pulled her grandson from the rubble alive. this man with a broken arm hopes he is evacuated to port-au-prince. the coast guard is helping with that, constant flow of the

injured. she said her cousin's home collapsed. the future uncertain. >> we have to stay strong. we have a reason to be here. >> reporter: gabe gutierrez on the ground in haiti. agonizing scenes again out of that country. turning to the previous president and a scathing new book by his niece, mary trump. she earned her ph.d. in clinical psychology and says after four years with donald trump in the white house, the state of our union is traumatized. mary trump joins us now. her new book is "the reckoning." thank you for being on the show. first, the trauma, is it behind us or still going through it? >> we're in the middle of it and

will be for the foreseeable future. >> so describe to me the reckoning, not just that you went through but you now say our country is going through. >> mika, when i first thought of writing the book, i was really focused on fallout from covid in terms of our mental health. i knew we would be staring down the barrel of the worst mental health crisis we had seen, but wouldn't be able to assess it until we emerged which we haven't yet done. then i realized it would be more helpful if we try to figure out how we got to this point in our nation's history where we were so vulnerable to corrupt incompetent leaders like donald. what about our past have we not reckoned with that led us to this place? >> and would you consider the inflection points of the trauma, i'm looking at covid as a huge one, where it also shows the

massive disconnect in the country between those who have sort of fallen for a cult leader and those who have not, and also january 6th. >> absolutely. before january 6th we were look at the covid crisis, the ancillary economic crisis, and crisis of our democracy, all three of which have been and continue to take their toll. the problem is that all those things were worsened after donald lost the election decisively, yet still pedalled the big lie that somehow a free and fair election had been stolen from him, and republican leadership did nothing to stop him which led to his ability to stoke his followers to commit armed insurrection against the government, now they're trying to perpetuate the second big lie, which is either that the insurrection was a result of

some deep state agenda against donald or that it wasn't a big deal. the problem is nothing has been done about it thus far. >> so in some ways, the country has become incredibly divided or disregulated. how does the country regulate its emotions after the age of trump. i guess it is hard to answer that when we're still in it. >> that is the problem. and i don't know that we can right now in part because as you said earlier, we're kind of enthralled to a vier u length minority that keeps flouting science, putting the rest of us in danger. those of us that did the right thing for a year and a half, sacrificed, especially front line workers, who got the vaccine, wore masks, now we're almost right back at the beginning because again, it is not just the people who have been sucked in by the dangerous

rhetoric of donald and other republicans in power, it is because republicans in power are now allowing this to continue and it is really dangerous. >> mike barnicle has a question for you. mike? >> mary, wouldn't this reckoning, this recovery occur much quicker if we just simply stopped talking about him, stopped paying attention to him, stopped writing about him, stopped focusing on him, each and every day still. >> mike, i wish that were an option. after donald lost. >> it is. >> he should have been rendered completely irrelevant. it is the republican party that keeps him relevant though. he does continue to have an outsize influence because republicans are still going down to kiss his ring, get his

endorsements, and it is not going to end until the republicans get repudiated for continuing to perpetuate donald's agenda and donald's dangerous rhetoric. that's the problem. i wish we didn't ever have to speak about this person ever again. unfortunately, he is still very much in the mix and we ignore him at our peril. >> the book is "the reckoning." our nation's trauma and finding a way to heal. mary trump. thank you very much. as we close the show today, i wanted to go for some final thoughts. joe, especially starting with you on where we stand with afghanistan right now. >> well, the last 24 to 48 hours have been a tragedy for the afghan people, a tragedy if you love this country and our reputation across the globe, but

everything is still fluid and we still have an opportunity to secure the perimeter of the airport and to keep it secure until such time we bring everybody home that we possibly can who helped protect and defend our troops for 20 years, so let us pray that this administration will do that and will help those that helped our men and women in uniform for so long. willie, final thoughts. >> the taliban has taken control of the country again. we know what that means for citizens of afghanistan, particularly for women and girls. we can have big debates as we had this morning how we got here, what policy was right and which is wrong, the here and now is there's a big group of people that helped the united states, risked their lives to do so, it is imperative we help get them out of there to safety. >> in the next few hours, we're going to hear from top pentagon officials about what is happening now, attempts to get

people out of the country and to safety and the latest numbers with all of that. stay with msnbc for the latest from the pentagon as it pertains to the ongoing crisis in afghanistan. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up coverage right now. hi there, i am stephanie ruhle. it is tuesday, august 17th. we start this morning with fast moving developments out of afghanistan and the ripple effects across the world. any minute, we expect the secretary general of nato to address the situation from brussels. european union officials will have an emergency meeting in about an hour. all of this coming as crowds are gathering once again at the airport in kabul. these are new pictures from this morning, showing people being held behind barbed wire outside the airport. so far, we are not seeing the chaotic scenes