Biden's New Global Agenda

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President Joe Biden: We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Morning, everyone. That, of course, was President Biden yesterday announcing that he will withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by or before September 11th, the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. It's a poignant and somber exit date, one that honors the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day, but also admits that American militarism can only go so far in healing that loss and preventing others like it.

It's been 10 years since American troops rooted out Al-Qaeda and killed Osama bin Laden. Since then, we've tried to help the Afghan government build a civil society and stave off the Taliban. Neither venture has succeeded, so what did we lose? Are we admitting that the Afghan army is untrainable in 20 years, to compete with the Taliban for dominance or to stop them from being a safe haven for terrorists again if they choose to? What happens to girls' education and other women's rights that we at least to some degree took it upon ourselves to protect? Does the US have any influence left on human rights without troops? Did we have any even with?

Here with me to go through some of these questions is David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for the New York Times. We'll also get to a few other big national security stories, the recent cyberattacks on Iran and Biden's nomination of Christine Wormuth to be the next secretary of the Army. She would be the first woman to serve in that role if confirmed by the Senate, and this morning's announcement of new sanctions on Russia. Hi David.

David Sanger: Hey, Brian.

Brian: Been a while. Great to have you back on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

David: Good to be here.

Brian: Can you remind listeners about how former President Donald Trump paved the way for this Afghanistan decision. He wanted to get troops out by May 5th which is now the date that Biden said troops will begin to leave. Are there any differences in the Biden and Trump versions of the exit?

David: There are some differences. Although I would have to say that we are in a situation where the question isn't just the date, but it's how you pull out and what you do along the way. May 1st was the date set in the agreement that was signed with the Taliban more than a year ago during the Trump administration. President Trump at various moments showed modest interest in this agreement, but mostly what he wanted to do was invite the Taliban to Camp David, imagine that for a minute, with the agreement precooked and sort of announce it. When everybody told him no, it wouldn't be seemly for the Taliban to be coming to Camp David after their role in aiding and abetting Al-Qaeda.

By the way, we only know about this because President Trump tweeted out the idea one weekend. He canceled that thing and basically lost interest in the peace process, but was very interested in being the president who pulled all American troops out. You may remember that even after the election, he basically tweeted out something that said, "We'll have everybody out by Christmas," which wasn't the case.

What Biden is trying to do is get the troops out, but do it in some coordinated way that both protects them on the way out, and gave some notice to the Afghan government that they were going to have to come to their own accord with the Taliban, which they are not eager to do because they can't imagine a situation in which President Ghani would remain in office in some kind of government that is put together with the Taliban. That's the big problem right now, which is come September 11th, who's there to support the Afghan government? If the Taliban simply wait us out, wait for the last American troops to leave, and then try to take Kabul, do you get a sort of Saigon 1975 kind of scene?

Brian: Why couldn't the US train the Afghan army? Why couldn't the Afghan army train itself? It's the government's official military to compete with the Taliban insurgents in all this time.

David: It's really interesting because President Biden mentioned in his speech that seven years ago, the US and the NATO allies had all reached an agreement with the Afghans in which they would take full responsibility for their defenses. That didn't happen seven years ago, and it didn't happen six, and it didn't happen five, and he basically said, "We can't continue to do this," which is called the conditions-based withdrawal. In other words, we pull out as the Afghans are ready to step up forever.

He basically said one point, "If you live with conditions-based withdrawal, you never actually withdraw because the Afghans will never be ready." This is a sort of throw them into the pool method of teaching them to swim. Some Afghan units including some special forces units are very good, but the ordinary Afghan military is underpaid, undertrained has a very high defection rate, they can't seem to keep their aircraft in the air, they can't do the repair, the maintenance, and all of that. The US has struggled with this as have other NATO allies for many, many years.

What's going to hurt the Afghans, in this case, is not as much the US withdrawal. We have only had 2,500, 3,000 troops there, all of whom have been pretty well confined to base. We forget that the NATO allies have probably two or three times as many troops on the ground as we do, and they're coming out as we're coming out, under the everyone in everyone out together theory, and because the US provides some essential transport and intelligence, so the Europeans don't want to stay there without us.

Brian: Which as a side note reminds us that as Donald Trump was threatening to withdraw the United States from NATO as if we only give to them, they're the ones who have stepped up the other NATO nations and provided troops and put their lives on the line to mostly protect US interests after the attack on the United States on 9/11. That's definitely a two-way street between the United States and other

members of NATO. Listeners--

David: You never heard him mention the fact that when Article 5 of the NATO charter was invoked, that's the charter that basically says an attack-- Part of it says an attack on one is attack on all. The only time it's been invoked has been to come to the aid of the United States after 9/11.

Brian: Listeners, I want to get first priority on the phones in this segment to anyone who has fought in America's longest war, the one in Afghanistan. If you've been stationed in Afghanistan at any time since 9/11, I'm curious-- I'm sure our listeners would like to know how you are reacting to this news. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. If you've been stationed in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.

I saw one report that suggests that troops are generally glad the US will not send anyone more there, but you tell me, how do you feel about this decision and about the ways that this was fought over the years and what you sacrifice for and people you know died for? Was it worth it? Could it have been done differently? Could there have been a different outcome? 646-435-7280 and is Biden doing the right thing now by drawing a line, drawing a date, the poignant 20th anniversary itself of the September 11 attacks by which all US troops and NATO troops will be out 646-435-7280.

We can also take phone calls from anybody who has family in Afghanistan or in the region. If you're from Afghanistan originally or that's your heritage, how are you reacting to the news, and what might come next? 646-435-7280 for troops who fought there, for people who are from Afghanistan or with roots there, 646-435-7280. David, why do we leave troops permanently in some countries? We have troops in Germany, don't we to this day after World War II, South Korea?

David: Japan, South Korea, absolutely.

Brian: Bosnia, since that war in the '90s.

David: Yes, it's called forward deployment, and it's worked pretty well. I mean the theory of keeping troops in Germany during the Cold War was to stop the Soviets from coming through the Fulda Gap and other places and harassing or invading Europe. In the post-cold war, it's become increasingly important after a number of years where we drew the numbers down given Russian activity, including what you've seen against Ukraine now. We've begun to use those bases to go run regular exercises in Poland, in Ukraine, and all the places that you would expect the Russians to operate.

In Japan, it's a main intelligence location to watch both the Chinese and the North Koreans. I was based in Japan for the Times, for six years, and I can tell you that the country is laced with pretty sophisticated electronic surveillance bases. It's from there that we run our nuclear sniffers, off of the coast of North Korea for when they conduct nuclear tests. It's from there that we are working on missile defense issues for Japan and for South Korea. In South Korea, obviously, It's a trigger force to keep the North Koreans from coming over the border again as they did in 1950 and show

that there is backup for a very capable South Korean military and its intelligence-gathering.

Usually, those countries, particularly, if they are wealthy like South Korea, Japan, Germany, pay a good part of the cost and what something that President Trump always seem to have a hard time absorbing, I discussed this with him during many interviews, is that it's frequently cheaper to keep US troops in those host countries if the host countries are paying for a good part of that cost than it is to keep them in the US, but more importantly, it puts them where they need to be and so that's the reason.

Now, in Afghanistan, it was as a training and intelligence mission to continue helping the Afghan government. The Pentagon's argument to President Biden was, "Look, we haven't taken any combat casualties or many in a long, long time, and the mere presence of this group reassures and backs up the Afghan government." That was the argument for keeping them there. The argument against keeping them there, the one that Biden ultimately moved to is, "We haven't accomplished any of our goals, any of our strategic objectives, other than ousting Al-Qaeda from Taliban territory which happened immediately after the American invasion 2001."

In the past 20 years, we came up with a rolling number of additional mission creep objectives, create a stable democracy in Afghanistan that was one of President Bush's. Making sure that Afghan girls can go to school, a very noble objective, and one that has worked by and large except in those areas the Taliban has taken back, trying to help the Afghans build a real justice system, helping them with their economy, with learning how to do more efficient farming, with eradicating corruption, eradicating the poppy crops, and so forth and so on. Those are all things that are reasons for the US to have stayed, Biden simply said 20 years is enough.

Brian: Did the US presence do anything to ensure girls' education and other women's rights?

David: It did. First of all, you see a number of women in the Afghan government right now, in their parliament, and so forth and so on. In those areas where the United States or Afghan government troops were present and controlled the area, they made sure that schools were reopened for girls and that the girls were able to go to school safely. You heard President Bush repeatedly the years after the Afghan invasion talk about that and he'd get big applause for it, and rightly so.

The question came over time though, is it the right use of the US military to basically be keeping schools open and escorting kids there to make sure they got there safely and assure that the schools were open on a gender-equitable basis, or is that actually got to be an Afghan government function? The Afghan government over time wasn't able to do it in territory that they couldn't hold on to.

Brian: What about preventing the Taliban from offering a safe haven to future terrorist organizations or current terrorist organizations planning future attacks? For people who weren't even alive and listening right now or not paying attention yet on September 11, 2001, part of the backstory there was that Osama bin Laden and his

minions were able to hide out in caves in Afghanistan protected by the Taliban. Oh, we said, "Caves." It's probably sophisticated office buildings near caves you tell me. They were able to have safe haven there while they planned this horrific attack from all that far away.

I was never sure if just stopping that coordination in one country, Afghanistan, in particular, where we've devoted so much blood and so many resources would ever stop ISIS or Al-Qaeda or anybody from doing something like that. Again, there are many, many places where they could set up a little compound, and we can't send thousands of troops into every single country. How much did it ever do over the 20 years to prevent another 9/11 as they say and how much additional risk of one do you believe that we would be at from pulling out?

David: It's a very good question, Brian. A big part of the Biden policy review and even of their description of his decision yesterday rested on the fact that the terror nexus has morphed. In fact, he said as much, he said, "It's metastasized." That was the word he used in his speech and that our bigger terror threats right now are not really based in Afghanistan, they're in parts of Africa, they're in obviously, in places where the United States right now has been conducting operations in an effort to disrupt ISIS around the Arab world, around the Middle East. They are in lots of different locales of which Afghanistan is not even the biggest worry.

His argument was what made sense in 2001, when Al-Qaeda used Afghanistan in the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 to base there, just doesn't make sense in 2021 and that we need to be a lot more flexible and able to move all around. Of course, the Taliban and to some degree terror groups had access across the border in Pakistan. Obviously, that's where Osama bin Laden was found when the US killed him. Afghanistan itself became a little bit of a remnant of what the problem looked like in 2001 rather than what it looks like in 2021.

Brian: Let's take a call from an American Afghanistan war veteran, Edward in Manhattan you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in Edward. Thank you for your service.

Edward: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, David. I think it's time for us to go. As the President has mentioned, as you and David have both mentioned, this is not 2001 anymore. To be fair, I think the Afghan elites, the political elites, are as much to blame for the mess that we're all in as the Taliban. I'm not equating the two, of course, but I think that 20 years of corruption and siphoning off money meant for the Afghan military. We all know that the private soldiers are rarely paid and are under-equipped and that's not from a lack of resources.

NATO and the US have been pouring resources in there for 20 years to the tune of almost a $1 trillion. It's just their ministers, their generals, the elites keep siphoning this money off and they do it. We remember the central Afghanistan Bank scandal a few years ago of how many was it hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Corruption is endemic, and if you recall corruption is the reason that the Taliban were able to rise in the first place because they got rid of the warlords, they got rid of all

the, again, the corruption.

I think that it's time for us to go. There are many Afghan patriots and we wish them well. We need to have some sort of a strategy to take them with us or support them, but we can't stay there forever. It's a beautiful land. I hope someday we can all get past this so that my generation, a lot like the Vietnam generation can go back in 20 or 30 years and view this beautiful land because it is a beautiful land and they've got such cultural richness and natural resources and an industrious people, and I hope they can get through it, but it can't be our responsibility forever.

Brian: Edward, thank you for your call. Very much appreciated. Let's take a call from another Afghan war vet, Wesley in Brooklyn. Wesley, you're on WNYC with David Sanger, New York Times White House and national security correspondent as we talk about president Biden's announcement that all US troops will be out by September 11th. Hi, Wesley. Thanks for calling in.

Wesley: Hi, thank you so much. I'm pretty conflicted on all of us as I was there in 2011. I'm a purple heart recipient, have lost a couple of soldiers there, but more when we came back. I just have a few questions. It's just what's the difference between this negotiation then the one that was offered by the Taliban in 2003, I want to say. I heard a couple of things that talked about the eradication of the poppy seeds. Well, anytime I was around poppy seeds, it seems like we were just guarding them from some taking them. It didn't even seem that we were burning them down or anything like that. About schools in May 2006 May 15th and 16th, we had this mission in Charkh district.

RCEs, they just built the school. Americans haven't been there for a while besides the engineer Corps. We took fire and when we did, we went straight to the school and by the time we left there that school was destroyed. A lot of it just because we were taking fire there, but then also like we did not cover at all. Like the previous caller said, it's a beautiful place, beautiful people. I got injured from a suicide bomber that attacked our base. I hold no fault to him because we're strangers in his land. He woke up one day and that was the best option that he had and that's incredibly sad.

Brian: That's an incredibly generous point of view on someone who attacked you. You said, suicide bomber, right?

Wesley: Yes.

Brian: It sounds, Wesley, you think the United States did not do a very good job over there. Maybe even was on a questionable mission over there. You tell me if I'm over-interpreting you, and that maybe we could have gotten out on similar terms offered by the Taliban even almost 20 years ago.

Wesley: That's the question I have for David, is it the same? I was in seventh grade at the time, I'm not too familiar with what the terms were back then and whether it is the same or if not. If it's different then that's okay too. A lot of lives, not just American lives, a lot of Afghani lives were for no fault of their own because being born in a country that somebody wanted to stage out of but wasn't even there when they got

caught. I was there when Osama Bin Laden was killed, I remember being on mission. Somebody came over the radio and just asked like, "Are we done here?" We all just laughed. Like, "No, of course, not." It wasn't even in Afghanistan.

Brian: [crosstalk] it was in Pakistan that he was killed. With all the ambivalence that you're expressing Wesley, do you wonder if the US did more harm than good rather than more good than harm, in Afghanistan overall over the 20 years?

Wesley: Did more harm. For all my injuries that I have and all of the battles and I totally screen it. It takes me four hours a day to basically wake up, clear my head, and deal with pain management before I leave the house. The VA isn't the greatest, but at least I have them, there's plenty of kids that have been-- They're dealing with the trauma of war that we brought. Where are their therapists? My friends that lost legs, it sucks, but they have all of the equipment that they need. What about these kids that suffer the same thing, but they're--

Brian: They're over there and they don't have these resources. Wesley, thank you so much for your perspective. We really appreciate it. Obviously, for your service and sacrifice. David, can you answer his question about that long time ago Taliban offer? I don't even know what that is.

David: First all, I think both of your callers, it's remarkable what their service was and what their sacrifice was. In Wesley's case, obviously, he's dealing with pain management four hours a day. That is the continuing legacy for him of a war in which so many went over and served so well. Unquestioningly about what the American objectives and whether there was a real strategy here. I think the essence of Biden's message yesterday was there was an initial clear objective, which was to get Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, that was accomplished early on.

He basically was making the case that everything that followed, which would have been at the time that Wesley was there, weren't actually accomplishable American objectives, and we weren't getting very much done. You heard that in what Wesley said. That, we would do what used to-- Remember the phrase, "Clear build and hold," well, we managed to clear out areas that were occupied by Al-Qaeda or more likely the Taliban.

We managed to build those schools, but we couldn't hold it because we couldn't stay forever. Yes, you can burn down poppies, you can keep other people from getting access to it, but if you're not there, they're going to be regrown the next year. We didn't have a long-term strategy, and the experience that the US had in Afghanistan in the '50s, that the Soviets had in the '80s, that the British had in the 1830s and 1840s, suggests that the outcomes are always the same here, which is the outsider gets tired and eventually leaves.

The Taliban did at various moments make some offers, but we weren't in the mood talk to the Taliban in the first years after 9/11. We were much more on a war footing than a diplomacy footing, and then we went more than a decade of being unable to go talk to them. Then an effort began in the Obama administration then, much more

strongly during the Bush administration, which resulted in that agreement. There are some things that we're losing Brian by not being there.

I was it was particularly struck by the testimony that William Burns, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave in front of the Senate intelligence committee when he did the worldwide threat briefing yesterday. Burns is as you know a little longtime diplomat, he was ambassador to Russia, he was the Middle East negotiator for the United States. He negotiated a good part of the Iran deal. He was deputy secretary of state under Obama's time. When he said, here's exactly what he said, I kept it on my screen here. When the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government's ability to collect and act on threats will diminish.

He said that while the militant groups' capacity to attack the US were diminished in these recent times, that the CIA and the US military would not be right on-site, and while we'll have to act from across the border, and we may miss some things. It's not like this is a risk-free decision. It's just the decision-- The objectives that the US set up for itself over time rebuilding the country proved not to be accomplishable. President Biden has basically always argued that or at least argue that for the past dozen years, he was always overridden, and now he came along as the man who could actually make the decision himself and this is what he did.

Brian: When he was vice-president under Obama, he was more in what's generally called the dove camp. Hillary Clinton and others were more generally in the build-up to accomplish the goals camp. One more phone call. Nadeer, originally from Afghanistan in Montclair. Nadeer on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Nadeer: Hi, Brian, big fan of your show. First of all, I want to thank all the veterans that have served, especially my sister who's no longer with us. My question is just thinking about it. Why are we not addressing the 800-pound elephant in the room? How is it that we've given over $8 billion to Pakistan in direct military aids since 2001 and that money ends up in the hands of the Taliban?

They continue to be a thorn at our side. Why do we continue to give money to Saudi Arabia to protect them and yet warlords are landing in Dubai with millions of dollars? Karzai's brother landed in Saudi Arabia, has a site on there. How does the US justify the fact that we keep giving money and it's siphoned off and it is back in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan?

Brian: I'll have David answer your question as we're about to run out of time in the segment, but, Nadeer, I'm curious from you. How much do you agree with our previous caller? The veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan, that not only did the US not accomplish all its goals there, but that we did more harm than good on balance with respect to the Afghan people.

Nadeer: I agree with him 100%. I think ever since the British in 1800s, going to the Russians, he saw what happened to them and what's happening with the US everybody wants to plan Afghanistan and be the interloper and have their hands dirty, a little hands-on everybody's countries and yet when they get bored, they walk away.

Brian: Other other people would say versus the incredibly harsh, murderously sexist and everything else, rule of the Taliban before we went in, how would you answer that?

Nadeer: Well, it went in because we put people in power that allowed it. We took an American ex-patriot who works for Dick Cheney in the name Hamid Karzai put him in power. What did he do? He made side deals with everybody.

Brian: They were before 911.

Nadeer: No Karzai, actually went to-- [crosstalk]

Brian: No, the Taliban was in power.

Nadeer: I agree that the Taliban was in power, but the point is we should have stopped out a long time ago by giving Pakistan money. The biggest reason the Taliban is powerful now is because they live in Waziristan and we're giving billions of dollars to the ISI and Pakistani intelligence as well as the Pakistani government who continue to funnel money into them.

Brian: Nadeer, forgive me. I have to leave it there because our time is up. David, I do want you to answer his question. He raises such a significant concern. Nadeer, call us again. Is the US while pulling out of Afghanistan also empowering the Taliban and its allies by continuing to fund Pakistan and particular Arab countries in the way that we do?

David: This has been a continuing issue for the past 20 years. You may recall that a few years ago the US cut off the military payments to Pakistan, in part, because of concern about where that was going. We've long been concerned that the ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service is in fact helping to keep the Taliban going. That's the problem with when you spread money around, which is that your ability to control where it goes is often not great.

We also did a whole lot of construction in Afghanistan, that ended up being mired in corruption. There's a whole Afghanistan special inspector general office that for 10 years now has been turning out report after report of programs that went bad. I think the concluding thought that I leave this with for you, Brian, is this that if we can go back to Afghanistan 20 years from now, and we asked the question, what is lasting from the American presence in this country, separate and apart from ousting Al Qaeda from that territory, what institutions have we built?

What democratic traditions did we leave? What ability to have people educated to improve their lives? What is it both in physical structure and institutional structure that we see? I'm betting we're not going to find much. Just as you don't find much as you walk through the ruins of American-style suburbs that were built there in the '50s under the Eisenhower time, and which you can only see some water canals left now.

For that, we need to have a really big discussion in the United States about the purposes of American interventions because we got to a point with Afghanistan

where we move beyond what was in direct American interest to what made us feel good about spreading democracy around the world. It ended up to be a lot more complicated just as everyone warned us than we thought it would be.

Brian: A reality check from David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for the New York Times, and from our callers who served or came from, served in or came from Afghanistan. David, thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Brian. Great to be with you.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC much more to come.

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