your enemy. >> the hand of our enemy. >> smith: so you objected. >> correct. >> afghan president ashraf ghanily relented. >> smith: but under major diplomatic pressure from the u.s., ghani acquiesced. >> the president has issued a decree for the conditional release of 5,000 taliban prisoners. >> smith: with the release of the prisoners, the taliban were finally willing to talk to ghani's representatives. >> the afghan government and taliban met today in doha, qatar, for the historic negotiations aimed to form a power-sharing government. mike pompeo was on hand... >> smith: u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo arrived in doha to kick off the intra-afghan talks. >> seize this opportunity. protect this process. respect each other, be patient. remain focused on the mission. we're prepared to support your negotiations should you ask, but this time is yours. this time is yours. i pray that you will seize the moment. ♪ >> the afghan government was there, as well as the taliban. it was a big ceremony, many ministers were present there. so it was a significant achievement that for the first time in 40

a lot of blame for the trump administration and ashraf ghani . um, what do you make of the us withdrawal? obviously, hindsight is 2020, but we were on this show having experts like you. i don't i don't think you and participate in case but people come on and say, if we're if we're leaving, then we need to start getting afghan allies and others out as soon as possible and getting key weapons out as soon as possible. a lot of stuff that didn't happen. yeah, well, obviously i haven't read the report, jake. but you know when you are the commander in chief you're responsible. you're accountable. and you can't blame the guy that came before you so again, as i understand that this report is really a lessons learned, which is different in terms of reports and an accountability report. but may knows make no mistake about it. you know, somebody should be held accountable for this evacuation. now i will agree with john kirby on a couple of points. one. you know, you cannot deny the incredible heroism and courage of the soldiers, sailors, airmen marines that

actually, i heard it first from ashraf ghani, when he was, uh, finance minister., and he said, "john, you realize you americans "are paying the salary of a soldier, and he doesn't exist." and that's what it was. we would be paying the salary and somebody else would be taking the money. usually a corrupt bureaucrat. >> (shouting in non-english language) >> smith: in his summary findings, sopko reported that the u.s. paid more than 300 million dollars a year to soldiers that may not have existed. so where does the money go? >> to the generals, to the commanders, to the defense ministers. to buy houses in california, in, uh, virginia, in, uh, germany, in turkey. all the defense ministers, all the chief of army of afghanistan. none of them is in afghanistan and they are all having very cozy life. very nice life, very comfortable life in europe and middle east. >> you know, it's a disgrace that we don't have an accountable system, and here's all this money being stolen. i commend you on your work. we just got to figure out a way to, to stop this. >> smith: throughout 2

what was going to be made very clear was that the afghan government of the day, led by president ashraf ghani and that is deeply annoying. and it seems to be that the afghan military was not being consulted either as to what could a withdrawal mean for them and how it would be carried out. and what we had was this agreement between the americans and the taliban that the americans would withdraw their troops and equipment as swiftly as possible. and there was, i think, the military, the us military nato, a lot of diplomats were all hoping for a more staggered withdrawal, perhaps over three months or six months or a year even. but what was the result of president biden�*s decision was a very quick, hasty withdrawal, which, of course, created panic in afghanistan, strengthened the taliban and allowed them to sweep through the country and telling the government soldiers that they should leave or be prepared to be killed. i'm just going to bring in congressman myer. i mean, peter, the fact is that then this report comes out, 12 pages are pointing the finger of blame on donald trump and his adminis

, another thing that we haven't talked about in afghanistan is that the president at the time, ashraf ghanint to washington, if you withdraw, it is game over for me. it was hard to listen to ultimately he, by the way, said, we will fight until the last soldier of course, then he got on a plane and left the country jen, your question is an important one because it is a lesson we've learned in lots of places iraq, afghanistan, vietnam the russians are learning it in ukraine right now. the lesson is simple and, somehow, we forget it all the time if you have a military presence in a country that doesn't really want you there, i don't care how strong you are i don't care how many billions of dollars you spend on your military or how many f-16s or f-35s you have ultimately, if the people on the ground don't want your military there, you're going to have a very, very bad time of it. by the way, i make that point so that we learn from that. also, the chinese who are maybe thinking about, do we go or not go into taiwan if the people don't want you there, you are going to have a very hard time of it