we have washington post foreign columnist and msnbc contributor david ignatius with us, and foreign adviser to ash carter and retired u.s. navy reservist mark jacobs, and we have mark rahash who is trying to get his parents out of afghanistan, and we will have courtney kube who is going to be joining us later. and so, mark, the president said something, and then on a follow up from mark detro who tried to clarify it, and he said that he knew of no circumstance of where american citizens are trying to get to the airport in kabul and can't get through and then he constant talks of the u.s. and taliban, that they have been able to get through, and because of the talks that you have had with people in country, and does that hold up? what is happening on the ground? >> great marks to the president on the clarification, because there is a big difference. the taliban checkpoints, and the people that we are working with to get through are able to do so if they have the u.s. passports, but the taliban are harassing the persons with green card and those are u.s. persons and really going after the peo

david ignatius, let's keep the focus on the president here for a minute, and i want to read to you back something you wrote from your latest column where you say in part, biden is being played both for his decision and its sloppy execution. many of us had without a transition plan he was unwisely ending a low-cost insurance policy against a disaster now unfolding. biden owns the final decision, for better or worse. david, i wonder if you think this decision will follow him for years or whether if this airlift will go well, the forgotten war as afghanistan was so long known as just goes back to being forgotten in a year or two? >> so far, garrett, this is the landmark decision of his presidency. it was one taken because he had such intense, strong views. he overwrote objections from his military advisers and has been building in joe biden since 2009 in which he was almost alone saying our being in afghanistan should be to counter terrorism and preventing a 9/11 attack. many people think biden was right back then and he he lost that fight and we added 30,000 more troops in 2009. the probl

i understand where david is coming from, and much too polite to know that david ignatius himself wento harvard. he knows whereof he speaks. but i think if you try to explain this in terms of, you know, people who lyndon johnson would have said, too smart for their riches -- that comes from a top that lbj had with sam rayburn in 1961. he was saying how great all these people under jfk were. and sam rayburn said yes, they all sound very smart. but i sure wish, lyndon, that one of them had run for office. the people that you had mentioned have not run for office. but joe biden has. and joe biden has a national political career of 50 years. and as you and i know, there's a lot of failure there. a lot of tragedies, personal tragedy. he has lost four president on several occasions. at least the first time that he ran in 87. he didn't get to run beyond a short period of time. so i think the fall does not lie in a president who does not lie in being overeducated or doesn't have enough emotional punch. >> this is unfair to limit you to 45 seconds, but i must. what has more staying power? to re

david ignatius, as well sourced as anybody outside our friends there. the likelihood we're going to have some uneasy semi positive diplomatic relationship with the taliban in the next year, what's that likelihood? >> so i wouldn't use the word diplomatic, chuck. i think the u.s. deliberately withholding that idea of diplomatic recognition, the ideas to watch and see what the cobb does, create an inclusive government, i void the civil war that may be looming by taking in other ethnic groups. what we already are seeing and i think the u.s. would very much like to continue is a kind of security cooperation. it's been extraordinary since the initial contacts between general frank mckenzie, centcom commanders as kabul was falling, that there was a sort of informal, i don't want to call it partnership, certainly cooperation about security. messages were exchanged about isis-k threats. i can remember two years ago being in kabul with then commander scottie miller, u.s. general who talked then about his hopes that there would be at least a de facto alliance bet

david ignatius disagrees with that. susan glasser reports and mark stands by the comparison to rwanda. i'm not debating whether or not we go. frankly both candidates for president of the united states of america agreed on very, very little. but they were both for a complete withdrawal from afghanistan. i think we're here today talking about how we leave. and whether it is honorable or disgraceful, rick? >> i mean, if you agree that we need to leave, and you agree that the mission was accomplished long ago, that we're not there to nation build, then i don't understand what is dishonorable about it. is it happening faster than we would like? yes. but it is still the right decision and i think the american people regard it as the right decision. i don't understand the question. i don't see the analogy to vietnam as comparable. >> let me play for all of you. >> rick -- >> go ahead, mark. >> i'm sorry. rick, i think you're missing something here and it is hard for me to disagree with you. but there are -- >> everybody else d

afghanistan frankly got to this point, i'm joined by "the washington post" foreign columnist david ignatius and kristin roust. david, i would love to start with you, because some people are saying that they're surprised by the speed of the taliban takeover, and yet others are saying we really shouldn't be. >> there having intelligence warnings, predictions once the u.s. began to withdraw, that there would be a kind of tipping moment, and there could by quick integration of the government. it's as if a 20-year war ended in a day. it's a startingle images. while it's so jarring to see they images sitting in the president of afghanistan office, where he warmed the chair only hours before it does appear a bloody battle has been averted, so it would be what that led to ghani leave. the it's has wanted ghani out, in truth, for months, seeing him as an obstacle to any kind of effective stable transition. what comes next, no one can predict. the biggest fear i have is whether there will be a wave of reprisals against afghans who helped the united states again people who were part of our war effort,

columnist and editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. pentagon correspondent, helen cooper. author, richard hass. and former chief of staff to the dccc adrienne. richard, i'll start with you, because all of this was so foreseen, what was the gain here politically, strategically, geopolitically, geo strategically, what was the gain for the united states? >> absolutely none. what's so interesting, mika, unless i missed it, i didn't notice people voting in 2020 based on afghanistan and where people were going into the streets protested, it was about police and george floyd not the american involvement in afghanistan. so i didn't see the pressure to come out. what's so ironic, when joe biden became president, he inherited a situation in which the united states had a modest investment in afghanistan. we had come down from 100,000 troops to 3,000 troops. our role had been severely circumscribed. there hadn't been a fatally the since february of 2020. so why was it this president and the previous president both felt so compelled to leave afghan

this is david ignatius, part of a very difficult piece. failure can shatter the trust and consensus of any team and that's a danger for the biden white house. this group has been extraordinarily close and congenial during biden's first seven months but you can already see the first cracks in fortress biden. liberal democrats, especially activists for women's rights, are genuinely raining that biden didn't do more to protect afghan women and human rights. those fissures will widen. what are your thoughts on morale and cohesion? >> it's not great. we've seen criticism come from the president's difficult allies, not just democrats in congress. former obama officials within the administration. we have seen a lot of finger pointing at each other. i think this is still early days. and there is some upside potential here. there is a sense in the white house that they can turn things around. certainly, an acknowledgement that this is a fragile, ten with us situation and no one really knows what will come next, if they'll control the airport. what

in fact, there was something written in "the post" yesterday by david ignatius that i wanted to reade writes it this way. the reversals in afghanistan are confounding for a biden national security team that has rarely known personal failure. jake sullivan, the national security adviser, went to yale, oxford, yale law school. antony blinken, secretary of state, attended harvard, columbia law. these are america's best and brightest, who came to the messy end game of the afghanistan war with spotless resumes. that's one of the parallels to the vietnam war, where a similar group of brilliant policy makers who had rarely experienced failure was confounded by an obdurate enemy from another century. and michael, this is a direct callback, reminding everyone that with the death of jfk, lbj inherited all of those advisers and cabinet members. he used to call them the harvards. and certainly it can be said that during his youthful years in texas, he never met anyone named mcgeorge until he got to the white house. >> and maybe later on he felt that that was not a bad thing since he and mack bun

. >> and to that point, to both of you, ben and helene, very briefly, david ignatius wrote today that evoking the images of 1975 in saigon, that last helicopter leaving the embassy and that's exactly what president biden wanted to avoid. helene, first to you. i think he did want to avoid it, but i think it's inevitable and we're at that point now. they've announced an evacuation of the embassy. i can't stress enough how much i agree with what ben said about not putting roadblocks, bureaucratic roadblocks after they worked with us getting out of the country. the state department and she says that they're trying and they're a former, i used to -- as a former liberian citizen, i'm now american, but i know what getting a visa to go to the united states can be like and the sort of roadblock and the hurdles that people are used to having to jump through and i'm not convinced at all that we have removed enough of those hurdles considering how close things are getting to the wire. >> and ben, is this a failure of military intelligence? >> i think across the board. it's a demonstration of the

let me bring in david ignatius. i want to play a quote from president biden yesterday.ctually think there's a lot of analysis of the speech that he was casting blame a lot of directions, but this part of his speech almost absolved anybody of some blame. take a listen. >> the events we're seeing now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure afghanistan. known is history as the graveyard of empires. what's happening now could just as easily happen five years ago or 15 years in the future. you have to be honest. >> this is to me the challenge of analyzing the president's speech yesterday. yes, he put himself in position of i have been right all along and everybody else was wrong, see, i told you so, and at the same time as much as aides want to say the trump administration tied his hands to do x, y, and z, that's not the president's stance. the president is coming out saying no matter when we withdrew, there's never a good time, essentially saying it is possible this would have happened no matter what scenario you would ha

i'm going to read a little from david ignatius' piece in "the post." here's what he wrote.mprehensive. the structure of the kabul government has been rotting from within for all 20 years of the united states war. every u.s. commander knew its weakness. they worried about the corruption and incompetence of the government, devised elaborate strategies to fix it, kept convincing themselves they were making progress. president biden rejected the advice and pulled the plug. u.s. combat troops left and in six weeks it crumbled. that rested with me because the other thing pointed out is that biden has always had this belief, even when president obama reluctantly agreed to send in more troops. biden was the one guy saying don't do it. you can't nation build. let's get out. so what is surprising is that people are acting like he hasn't had this position for a very, very long time. it is not surprising once you read that piece. your thoughts, ben. >> no, look, joe biden has been very consistent in afghanistan. since i first started working with him back in 2009 during the debate arou

the situation and the potential vacuum is worse. >> jessica, we've got a question for you from david ignatius> jessica, i want to ask you about "eagle down," your new book, and special forces fighting the forever war is your title, sub title. tell us a little bit about what these wars have meant for the special forces? they bore the brunt of so much of the difficult fighting. do you think they've been permanently damaged? what do you think they're feeling now as they look at this tragic ending in afghanistan? >> i think the problem is that all of this was avoidable. in the special operations community it's well known that these soldiers have been all that has really held afghanistan together for the past few years and that's very much the subject of the book. i'm looking closely at what the soldiers have been doing on the ground, starting from the first operation, since then the soldiers have been constantly out there on the front lines, haven't received any credit or acknowledgement from the government and this has been frustrating for them for two reasons, one of them is because policies in

let's bring in editor for "the washington post" david ignatius. it's good to have you on, david.e cities and towns are being taken over, what is happening to the people? what does this look like on the ground? >> mika, this is a rapid collapse of the government's authority in this case in five provincial capitals over the last weekend. since the united states announced that it was planning to pull its combat troops out of afghanistan in april, more than half of the 400 districts in afghanistan have seen taliban sweep to leadership and control. what does that mean in the streets? it means radio stations are shutdown, any radio station that plays music is forbidden to do so. any women's voices on radio are banned in most of these district capitals. it means people are frightened and fleeing across border to the north, to the south. it means there is a sense of fear beginning to be panic in many of these afghan cities. the united states has, for so long, been seen as the backstop of the afghan military that the military simply hasn't been able to push the taliban back. they're stret

. >> clint, david ignatius at the "washington post" has interesting information on how the taliban have been working with the u.s., what it means for us going forward. i want to read you a little bit of it. the value of a security relationship with taliban became clear last week as u.s. officials were bracing for a possible attack from islamic state terrorists on the kabul airport. u.s. and taliban officials in kabul exchanged information about the threat. according to a source familiar with events. senior taliban officials in dohar, qatar, are said to have been involved in the discussions as well a. defactor u.s./taliban alliance was outlined to me more than two years ago by general austin scott miller, the last u.s. commander in afghanistan. miller and his colleagues described operations where u.s. counterterrorism forces had killed top islamic state leaders and taliban forces had then consolidated control on the ground. ignatius goes on to caution working with the taliban won't be easy. is there a possibility? what is the relationship, the working relationship, with the taliban going

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

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