doug bush: it's just like a garden snail, except instead of eating your basil and your little baby arugula starts, it's eating seaweed. one shell and a foot. this is what you eat. this is just a big, muscular foot that it crawls arounand holds onto the rock. kristin aquilino: abalone ha a really important economic impact on this state. they supported a lucrative commercial fishery for decades. they also supported a recreational fishery that brought about $45 million to the north coast of california until recently, and they support really sustainable aquaculture in the state. woman: the red abalone fishery was a major fishery, recreational fishery on the north coast for decades and are really critical for the culture of california for at time. we had to recommend to the fish and game commission that it be closed after several years of severe impacts to the kelp forest. lackey: it's definitely affected business, and my tours have been greatly affected for the ab diving. and they estimate that it's, you know, anywhere from $44 to $54 million out of our local economy, just from the abalone, an

. >> we had former bush and obama war czar doug lute on before. and he was talking about how this is a position that then vice president, now president biden has had for more than a decade wanting to end the u.s. involvement in the war in afghanistan. the war is over, but of course involvement with afghanistan's not over because as president biden just acknowledged, there are up to 200 american citizens who want to leave afghanistan and didn't make it out before the deadline. i've been told some u.s. citizens who showed up to the airport before the deadline were left standing outside the gates. they were unable to get in. how are you going to get those americans out? and what was the reason that some citizens could not get in? was it entirely because of terrorist threats to hamid karzai international airport? >> well, jake, i think it's really important to answer your question. to start with the fact that we gave 19 messages starting in march to americans to leave the country. we offered them financial assistance to leave the country. and then for

doug loot who was the afghan czar for the george w. bushinistration and barack obama in 2015 told government interviewers, we don't know what we're doing, we have no clue. we're devoid of a fundamental understanding of what's happening in afghanistan, and he was the guy in charge and so now we get to this point where, you know, none of those republicans are speaking out. and many of the democrats, too, never cared about the steady flow of lies. it was bipartisan. it happened during the obama biden administration as well, joe biden was a part of. we have never had an honest debate, an honest discussion. we're not prepared to look at what's happening. i feel for the afghans, and i think there are questions about the implementation of this policy. we have never given a damn, even the warriors who served who come back to silence without much coverage in the media we're all part of. to see the republicans now trying to exploit the lies, the ignorance, the uncaring just to score political points, well, afghans are truly, you know, in a troubled c

again doug mentioned the friendship that developed between both presidents bush and clinton. you cannot imagine that happening will they are in office or political adversaries. they become involved in charitable work. in effect they graduate from the role of date today polarizing partisan figure to this ill defined roles of elder statesman. it will be very interesting because from what we can tell president trump sees himself certainly as a contender in 2024. he has no intention of retiring to build a presidential library like most of his predecessors. therefore he remains a polarizing figure as the polls this morning suggests. that may or may not give i will say the next pole of historians ranking. >> for viewers on social media who are asking about survey participants, that information available on a website cspan2.org/president survey 2021 is where you can go. we can look up the participants in deep dive and look at the very scores all available at c-span.org. for entering her second hour of the fourth survey. our historian survey and we are joined this morning by our pane

again doug mentioned the friendship that developed between both presidents bush and clinton. you cannot imagine that happening will they are in office or political adversaries. they become involved in charitable work. in effect they graduate from the role of date today polarizing partisan figure to this ill defined roles of elder statesman. it will be very interesting because from what we can tell president trump sees himself certainly as a contender in 2024. he has no intention of retiring to build a presidential library like most of his predecessors. therefore he remains a polarizing figure as the polls this morning suggests. that may or may not give i will say the next pole of historians ranking. >> for viewers on social media who are asking about survey participants, that information available on a website cspan2.org/president survey 2021 is where you can go. we can look up the participants in deep dive and look at the very scores all available at c-span.org. for entering her second hour of the fourth survey. our historian survey and we are joined this morning by our pane

doug, good evening to you. first i want to get to the former president george w. bush and the former first lady laura bush just issuing a statement on the fall of afghanistan. it says in part, the united states government has the legal authority to cut the red tape for refugees during urgent humanitarian crisis and we have the responsibility and the resources to secure safe passage for them now without bureaucratic delay. our most stalwart allies along with private ngos are ready to help. so the bushes have a long history with afghanistan. this is personal for them. >> absolutely. i mean george w. bush has gotten a lot of criticism and rightfully so for his managing of the war in afghanistan. listening too much to dick cheney and donald rumsfeld, but what you just read is exactly right. here ex-president bush is calling it straight. we at all costs have to bring our afghan allies into the united states. these are the people who fought for democracy. they're our friends. and, you know, whether it's 20,000, 30,000, or more, i think history will determine how this all wen

doug is vice chairman of the center's board of directors. he served as undersecretary of defense in the george w. bush administration and had a direct role in planning and executing the early phases of the war in afghanistan. i will note for our live audience that you have a question icon at the bottom of your zoom screens that you can use to post questions. i'm going to begin our discussion today with a question of my own. the focus of this panel is on the future. on what afghanistan is likely to look like after the u.s. withdrawal is completed. and america's on the ground role is children inned and new dynamics in the country and surrounding region take shape. we want to anticipate what might be coming down the road and how that might affect u.s. interests and what we ought to be doing to deal with these challenges. but to know where we might be heading, it's critical to understand a little bit about how we've arrived at this point. so i want to turn to milton bearden and ask him to provide a little bit of historical background. looking back to afghanistan's role in the attacks on 9/11 in 2001 and o

doug brinkley the biden legacy piece of this we won't know for some time. it's messy today. is it not a fact that history books three american presidents, george bushn force? >> absolutely. george w. bush gets low marks in history for his foreign policy. after 9/11 that week after the bull horn moment everyone was behind george w. bush. we went to afghanistan looking for osama bin laden. but bin laden had fled to pakistan. and then we took our eyes off afghanistan, moved to iraq. they were after saddam hussein and became a mess. barack obama inherited it. obama's team credit they went after osama bin laden and got him. that probably is the high watermark of operation neptune spear with the s.e.a.l.s. but obama started to get into drones and searches and we just been stuck in afghanistan. it is a stinkink hole. the british were there in the 19th century. russia tried to save it and toledo the collapse of the soviet union. 1980 was another failure for the soviets. afghanis know how to fight and survive. they have to deal with china and russia around them. biden was right to find a way to extract us from afghanistan, but the way we did it without a pr