the oh, i use well come to the alex salmon. sure, well we look at the end of the medic has the longest war in afghanistan, 20 years ago at the start of the conflict, colonel larkins wilkerson was at the center of decision making. as chief of staff

to then us sector of state colin powell. no, i distinguished professor william and maybe college was his assessment of america's longest war. he joins alec shortly, but 1st your treats messages and emails and response to actual last week on political pulling between professor john curtis. i'm james kelly didn't. scott said love it opinion for youth and i'm free. doesn't stipulate what the rest of us has got into thinking. i'm, it's not simple monica, i don't know. faith. this is a must watch for all induce supporters. i'm from, responds to james kelly, the parents. teddy says, great sho, get to see you on a gym. and finally, sarah alba says it was nice to see you on tv been, let's have more non virgin kernel lord and wilkerson prepared the un presentation by which colon power justified the invasion of iraq to the international community . he describes it as the worst moment of his professional life. i say,

moved from washington insider to tension critic of the new york on policies of successive us administration. he joins alex, the close of the american intervention in afghanistan. come a lot of the spoke us and thank you so much for joining me on the alex island show . glad to be with you. really this week cover wilkerson, the last american troops, nato troops of left afghanistan. but 20 years ago, you are right at the the center of decision making. what was that amy thought back in 2001. this was a, a conflict of how to engagement might go on for 20 years. i'm really glad you added nato. there. the united states has done its level best to pull nato into out of area operations and therefore justified continued existence, a subject on which i can relax. but to your question, i was there in the beginning,

and i was there when people like colon pals, lawyer himself a former deputy secretary defense william howard taft, the 4th, a very famous name and american politics objected to the war instrument pointing out that we had used law enforcement as our principal counter terrorist methodology for years, only want exception really on legans rate, on libya in april of 1986, which didn't last very long. and there was a lot of sense to that reality politics sense to using law enforcement to continue to use it. the moment we selected the war instrument, we elevated al qaeda and it's like 2 warriors status. we even had extraordinary difficulty coming out with a term to describe them. so the geneva conventions and other things wouldn't apply to them. we lost and we understandably loss. i think because president bush himself

told a group of event jalap goals visiting the white house. my rage is up. please help me, help me restraining my rage. and that was the most telling comment. the then young neophyte inexperience president made. it was all about revenge and secondarily about preventing a 2nd attack. and we thought if we went after the head of the snake, we would prevent a 2nd attack better. but it was an informed decision to decide to use military power. we now are bathed in the matter, sonia and morning of when you give executive unlimited more hours. you are on a dangerous track, a very dangerous track, and we're paying for it. and i've got us down to just one of the debts we owe. but your boss because you are chief of staff to the the safety of state, colon po, a himself knowledgeable but cautious general. was

he advocating the wall instrument? always? he's saying there might be other ways to to bring us some of the lads to book we really wanted to explore as far as possible, getting the taliban omar and others in the council. we wanted to explore that to the ultimate as we did want to explore inspectors back into iraq later in 2002 and 3. and the administration completely blew that out of the water, even as cohen, pow got a 15 vote in the un security council to reinforce that. dick cheney was running the government at that time with regard to national security and foreign policy. so yes, we had some objections. once we knew and understood the political circumstances, let's face it, administration had no mandate, no political mandate. it had demand aid of the u. s. supreme court. there was a lot of fear in those opening days in the administration that the american people

would throw us out for the mistake that we just made. tremendous mistake the causal eyes. so trepidation lasted only a short time. as soon as bush went to new york stood on that pile and said, and those who did this will hear from us very soon, because that one, the american people's following, he got 90 percent on the bowls. then he realized our effective call robe, his political advisor realized affective. that stance was and that it could, as he said, at that time, a sure bush of a 2nd permit office. if he just played the global war on terror correctly. i overheard call roving the indian treaty room at the old executive office building i . our building now say to is henchmen ken mehlman. if we exploit this right, we can be in power for a long time. and that was the political incentive. so war had to be the answer and in power, finally realized that plus, dick cheney told him, essentially putting his finger in his chest. you aren't the chairman anymore,

so don't be advising all war. you advise on diplomacy? not war. so, and i would say if you take other things that happened them, incoming administration as it was like that the chinese biplane crisis of, of april 2001 where the view of colon powell and perhaps george booth senior would be this one she witnessed as an old china hand of caution, the negotiation of agreement prevailed, was at $911.00. and that from attic shop to america, the policy in the hands of dick cheney and the nea cardinal. the for, for the general description is that was the significant thing. that's an excellent point. i've said a number of times that i think president bush was on colon side with regard to the april 10th, 2001 shoot down or not shoot down the collision of the tree and the chinese f. a fighter playing the crisis,

he was on power side because he understood the importance of china a wal mart that's just a, you know, of sort of general comment, simplistic as it is, but it says, hey, without china, we want to have a very good domestic economy so bush knew that, so he sided with in that instance rochelle and cheney wanted a war at best. they wanted a cold war. they wanted to open relations with taiwan in a significant way and tried to do so. so you got a good point later on though powell has lost some of his ability to influence the president. not only because it's not china issue, it's something else, but also because rove and cheney were working on the all along sir repetitious. li, as well as alone in the office to ensure that he really power was potentially the most powerful candidate in 2004 and contest his 2nd term.

and this was not something the president forgot. study this with every president since war war 2. and it is stunning to my students when they find out how domestic politics and particularly the president's desire to be successful. influences faithful decision making, where boys and girls die in conflict overseas l. b, j is decision, and $65.00 to go the rope. the road in vietnam and go 250-0000 troops. is a good cation point. a lot of people don't believe domestic politics has that much impact on american presidential decision making, but it does. it's often the most decisive factor. and with bush, he was war and he was worried about pal. but from your estimation, as, as a military minus event on the vietnam is a helicopter pilot, would have been possible to extract some of the latin in particular from afghanistan with to the all the for all of the taliban government?

well, of course we didn't do that. we got a lot many years later and we didn't get him and i've got time, we got him in pakistan. the godfather of it's all about that. all of us did not start and condo, har is common wisdom has it. they started and they started as a tool of the ios on the inner service intelligence, the cia, and focused on in order to keep it after i've got to start and roiled in stable so that pakistan would have strategic depth against its principal, enemy, india. and, and take a great strategist to figure that out why they're doing that. i even had a conversation one time alongside president sharp about that very thing which drew a smile from the general and the president august eyes behind the taliban. it's still behind that alabama. one wonders where that's going to go because it might be the thing that on seats the civilian government and then loma bought eventually,

as this terrorist element began to become more infectious in pakistan itself. but it is, it's a, it's a dangerous set of circumstances that we're leaving. and i'm a mixed mind about our leaving because that the jail strategist and me, which is what i trained as a military was educated as says we shouldn't be leaving. regardless of the minimum cost we actually were paying for staying there, we shouldn't be leaving. and then the soldier in me, consulting many marine and army veterans tells me yes we should because they say don't stay, it's a miserable failure. it's a failure that as many causes most prominently that i've gotten standard, not a state, it's a group of tribes. it has artificial borders, many of its citizens, so to speak, live in by lucas on or in pakistan proper or in northern iran, or as in but it was beckett on and don't see

a border. so it was an impossible mission from the start, but it shouldn't been a state building mission. it should have been a mission of national security. of course, the want to ship if america hadn't divested the wall and into a rack. could afghanistan have been a success or was it all was due to failure? excellent question. when i was serving power, when he was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, i knew that we had told president h w bush that we could not do to regional contingencies. at the same time, and the reason for that was because we were cutting the military by 25 percent. the president knew that and was willing to buy that risk. didn't think there was that risk, very terrible in the future. so we did it. and then along came clinton and we cut another 3 percent. so by the time we get to the point where we're contemplating really seriously doing a rack and it was much sooner than the breast indicated,

bol is again putting on his german set and saying, mr. president, you can do and you can. and cheney as again putting his finger and bowels jess and tell and we get out of the military business because we had people like colonel mcgruder telling newt gingrich telling don roseville that 50000 troops could do iraq. and indeed, that's what tommy franks called and told him he was having to deal with in terms of the war that was being contemplated. $50000.00 troops would be all nonsense. in other words, but that was what we were dealing with. and at the end of the day, your question is answered by saying yes, i can say and became an economy of force theatre, meaning minimal troops. the taliban were able to recover significantly so significantly that the $100000.00 plus up by president obama did nothing to arrest them. and ultimately though, you have to look at the,

the task and the challenge. even if you put a half 1000000 troops in afghanistan and stayed there and routed out, everybody, you possibly could maybe even eliminated half of the population. you still have the problem. i indicated earlier. it is not a state, it is not an actual entity. and it has partners as it were all around it don't like the idea of a stable functioning state. we're going to see now how much that has changed. i think it's changed or the wrong. i think it's change with those back on. i'm not sure about pakistan. i think it's changed with russia. i think it's never been that way, but got that way and now is change with china. so the neighbors are going to determine the future of us county's time. now i think plus the nature of this new and i emphasize new taliban government. coming up after the break, alex continues his discussions with cardinal lawrenceville, kristen, we'll see that the,

the the welcome back. alex is discussing the end of engagement in i'm gonna start with kernel lauren's wilkerson, the former chief of staff, to general colin powell terminal. so i'm not sure question which you're probably a better place than what slammed else in the planet cancer. where in

2003, did the intelligence come from that suggested the wolf weapons of mass destruction in iraq to justify the iraqi to vege. richard bruce cheney vice president, united states who orchestrated the office of special plans through rum spell and douglas fight, and the pentagon and others whom george tenant, the director of central intelligence, coerced in france, jordan, germany and other places. and when i say coerced, it's not that hard to do because if you're sharing intelligence from such sophisticated national technical means as the u. s. possesses with your allies and they don't want to stop that shared and make you angry enough to possibly curtail lecture. they will go along with your war slides, and that's what people did today. people talk to me about dominic ban and france and shamrock in their opposition. i could tell you that the french were right in

there when power was preparing for his presentation at the you in those french that tenant aloud. in saying that we were right, that there were aluminum tubes, for example, that indeed they had spawn some in their own laboratories, and they spot them 298000 rpms without visible deterioration. clearly not rocket shielding or mortar shielding, clearly metal for centrifuges. so we had reinforcement from the your names from the israelis from the french, from the germans. and we all know about curveball. now the germans were at the, in the b and d at the end was saying things like, well, maybe you shouldn't trust me. but 10, it was paying no attention to the tyler drum hell or the european representative of the say. yeah, you told me afterwards said he actually registered twice, complaints about law power was going to say at the un with john mclaughlin tenants, deputy and with george candidate himself. and it didn't, it didn't wash. in fact,

john essentially said the tyler is to trace too far down the track now. so there was a combination of people who colluded much the way they colluded for ronald reagan in the early eighty's to report the soviet union as being 10 feet tall. so that ronald reagan's arms build up would be politically sound. they concluded to make sure the summer saying had to do the power. and i did not see through that is my greatest lifetime professional site. and was that growing realization let you go and pile the world had been sold the opposite were it was not the reason that you left administration and developed into a strong critics of neo colon approach to, to what all politics actually the motivation for me was torture i knew that the united states military had tortured people in the philippines and tortured

people during the indian wars from 186-5890. they would have tortured people in world war one and more work too. but i knew also that no president had ever officially authorized as a matter of policy torture. george w bush did, under the pressure from dick cheney and our ansel george w bush did. that's what really turn me off the administration off us policy and company to be outspoken about that policy. you described the intervention afghanistan as being compatible to the, the great game of the 19th century with the protagonist. now, effectively being the main protagonist, the united states and china, it is not a valid comparison. do you think that's where we have no, the gamma stands still. if that strategic significance there, between the,

the 2 dominant. what'll power i think central asia is and i've kind of just happens to be central, the central asia, if our playing the grand strategies, i would say forget state building, forget nation building. all those things are culture months of your presence there . and maybe you can do some things for women and education and so forth. really are there for geo political and geo strategic reasons. and you just described them briefly. you're there because you're right next door to the potentially most unstable nuclear stockpile in the world. that of pakistan you want military hard power to be able to seize that stock. number, sir, you're there because your cheek and jail with the most well funded chinese base road, initially in case it turns out to be as antagonistic to our interest as some of the neoconservatives and others are saying it is. and you're there because you have a tiny little border with the largest province in china, bigger than france, you're getting province where some 2012000000 we're you live who don't like the hon,

chinese. so if you want to cover ca, covert operations in china, the way we try to do against, wow, in 1950 to 152, and on. then you want to be in afghanistan. and you want to use those wagers as part of your tools there, all kinds of strategic reasons to stay in the great game as it were. but we don't seem to understand strategy anymore. so given that and that america may to not, there was no for afghanistan, what would be a government decision to withdraw as they made the withdrawal has been effective for, for afghan stop. the best solution i can think of is the china and iran. and i noted on ron's foreign minister, even this new group of hard line people into iran are doing this or trying to do this. turkey rush, others. note,

even india suddenly realize that it isn't good to have this instability in their midst and began to help. whatever results in the taliban government and gobble to get his act together and to be more like a modern state and more like they would wish to be in terms of stability, help in acknowledge, financially and so forth. i. i don't for a moment think they will all in unity do that, but i think of russia and china may be focused on holds off a bit if that happens, then there is a chance that it could become more stable, that the united states might, as usual after this, geostrategic failure have to reinsert itself at some time, is clearly possible, particularly of some of the things i just described as reasons to stay suddenly become near existential nuclear weapons. really bother me today. arms control is

just falling apart other than new start. we don't really have any more in the world and we have new nuclear powers like north korea and of course israel, which, which have never been in there. we need a massive effort amongst all of us in the west to bring arms control nuclear arms control back to the front burner. and to do something about securing these nuclear weapons that are essentially like climate change, existential at the end of the day, only in a very short, shorter time period. i'm hearing generals today, flag officers in the united states military talk like they talked in the fifty's, the early fifties, that nuclear robins do have utility. now that we can make them small and we make them tactical and we can even shoot them off ballistic missile submarines. and that they are war instruments that are feasible. this is nonsense, so damaged as the president and the shot town hall will his longer town decision be

justified? i think it depends almost completely on how he handles this very difficult and challenging domestic agenda. he has called on clouds. you had said something really smart. i think and book a aware of the vividness of translating the german correctly beware the vividness of transient events while that's what the media lives on. of course, and cobble is a transient event, it will only become extremely important if some of the things i just talk about materialized, that transit event will be forgotten by the american people hel, substantive events are forgotten by the american people within 48 hours. and i'm looking at the polls now and i'm looking at what particularly democrats are saying, and i'm seeing 5560 percent, ultimately grudgingly in some cases in favor of biden's decision. not, not happy about the way it was executed at the end. but happy about the overall

decision, so i don't think it's going to damaging failure in this domestic agenda arena will devastate him. iran. so any possibility there might be a change in the american policy. it was around a country in the middle east, which actually has, could be described. this is genuine elections. so any prospect might be a, a rethink about sarah. that's an excellent question too. i have often said of late the 3rd of the accuracy in jerusalem. that bothers me more than are seen to rod for i see a lot of reality, t and a lot of real security, national security, regional security, international security. good thinking and they're all connected. we would have had it, i think. and president obama and i met and the roosevelt room to talk about this along with john carry a sector stayed in november of 2015. we would have had

a much better path towards a better solution that ripple tomorrow. even with iran, have we not left the j, c, p o, a nuclear agreement that trump did that and that my palm pale was his instrument in doing that and continuing it and amplifying and making more profound . the repercussions of lat, cancellation, or that backing out of that treaty may have made it almost impossible to get back into. so that's your point is well taken and it's a case i grew and regret. every time i look at it because they were our hedge, human, our, our power for 26 years, when the job was in charge, we recognized that this was the most powerful, potentially and, and really geographically and so forth in the, in the region. and now we just disregard their at our peril and come a welcome military man, but, but not

a distinguished professor. a your answer to your brand of republican politics, a liberal republican world view. is there any hope for that time to see what the republican party is going to be a revival of that sort of attitude or as the last and gotten forever if it is reliable, it will take another decade probably. but there are people working. there are young people working, i've been all over the country, all 50 states. i've talked to some of them 40 and under. and they're every welcome life, their financial investment, people, their bankers, their farmers out west who are sick and tired of republicans, for example in boise, idaho, polluting their water and ruining their rivers and so forth. and these fires have just added to that. will they be able to co here and bring about a new republican party that i think is the domestic political question of the our

here? because if not, we only have a single party system and that's dangerous kind of a lot of welcome. thank you so much for joining me on, malik simon show. thanks for me. i really appreciate it. it started with the head of state ridge ended with a terrorist. i think all kinds of tact, the twin towers. i says, killed more than 118 cobble. after the expanding of floods of blood and treasure american, his allies, her finally left of guns on the key or to can bloody nature of the departure should provoke much soul searching. let us hope that it looks deeper than the above manner of leaving but into their view. rationale for staying there for these 20 long years . colonel wilkerson is of the view that the great game which took him p o britain twice. and so i'm gonna start and then century is still being played with the only difference that america and china have replaced britain and russia as the main

protagonist. if so, with over 200000 days, it has been a very expensive match. and so for me, alex, myself and all that sure is good bye for nice, stacy. i'm hope to see you all again next. ah me . ah, when i would show the wrong one, i'll just don't the rules. yes. to see out the thing

because the kid an engagement equals the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common ground. the . the news i was begging to go to montana because what i've seen and witness in background was so destructive to this day. i haven't gone to sleep. the 1st of it in depth investigation into the victims of america's brutal war on terror with a line drawn by the us pull out from afghanistan, former guantanamo detainees, as beg shares the horrors he enjoy.