We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jaschinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. It is the two year anniversary, as you may
have heard, of our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. On that note, I
am very honored to be joined by the authors of a new book documenting the
scope of that disaster, Cobble, the untold story of Biden's fiasco and the
American warriors who fought to the end. I'm joined by those authors. That
would be Jerry Dunleavy, who actually just left his job at Washington Examiner recently
to become an official investigator on the House Foreign Affair Committee Affairs Committee's Afghanistan probe.
So it's gonna be helping people look into all of this. Wrote the
book in his personal capacity, of course, with James and James. Hassan
is an Afghanistan veteran who received the Bronze Star and assisted in veteran led evacuation
efforts to people who know the story so well, and again the book is
called Cobble, The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors fought to
the end. So I'm going to send you guys a question first, and
you both may have different answers. You may have several answers, but it's
both a big question and the small question at the same time. Was this
book easier to write than you thought it would be or harder to write than
you thought it would be? And I'll toss it open to whichever one of
you guys wants to step in first. I'll take a stab at that.
This is Jerry, So you know I'm going to give the cliche answer I
do. It was both easier and harder, right, I mean, James
and I we have been tracking Afghanistan for years, and as a reporter,
I especially jumped in to really start to cover this as things start to go
south predictably, so in the summer of twenty twenty one, after Biden's sort
of mind numbing decision making, and so James and I came into it,
you know, with a lot of knowledge, me having written about it for
a long time and James obviously having served over there. But man, it
was also harder. I wouldn't say necessarily harder in terms of the process like
putting words down, but harder because of the things that we learned. I'll
just point out one example of talking to the gold Star families of the thirteen
American service members who were killed in an ice k isis K suicide attack on
August twenty six, twenty twenty one, an attack by the way that we
detail in our book. You know, more could have been done to try
to that from happening. But talking to those families, I mean, the
stories are are painful, they're powerful, they're tragic, and you know,
so it was it was it was tough in that way because their their stories
are tough, and you know, they're their grief is just unimaginable. But
I encourage people to to give Cobble a read to see those stories, because
I I think it's important to keep those keep the memories alive of those of
those thirteen, those thirteen young people who you know, whose lives are lost
during this debacle. Yeah, to think back on that, I would say
it was definitely it was definitely harder to write than we anticipated, both a
couple of different fronts. Uh. It was an honor to right for sure.
And when when Garry and I started writing Cobble, we thought we had
a pretty good idea of everything that happened, and we realized that even though
we were paying close attention in granular detail at the time to the extent possible,
we still didn't even know, you know, a third of what we
ended up revealing in Cobble. So in that sense, it was harder just
because there was the scope of everything, of all the mistakes and failures and
their consequences. It's just so broad. But it was also it was also
harder because you know, similar to what Jerry said, Yeah, we spent
a whole lot of time speaking with you know, Jerry in particular, with
a lot of the gold Star families, and yeah, I spoke a whole
lot with Marines are at the Gates eighty second or born soldiers, with you
know, other people on the ground as well, and hearing the stories that
what they had to go through and what they had to experience, which we
document fully and Cobble was it's heartwrenching, honestly, and you know, especially
you know, the marines from to one. It's you're you're asking people to
relive the worst day of their lives, and we're, you know, honored
that they trusted us with that. But even even before that, the things
that they had to do. For example, there are a lot of people
outside the gates that had no connection to the US, and there's no way
that you can just let in. Yeah, one hundred thousand people, we
already evacuated. We did evacuate one hundred and twenty thousand and and so there'd
be people at the front who you may have had sip upthetic stories, but
they couldn't they couldn't let in, and they people would grab the barrels and
their weapons and pull them up to their foreheads and the just shoot me now
because you're you're condemning me to the death, or you know, seeing the
Taliban just beat and then in some cases the execute Afghan allies in front of
their within shot of the US troops over there, or seeing babies trampled,
young infants, mothers desperately trying to save their kids while they were kind of
getting trampled underneath as well, and handing them out via some passing them over
the wire and in some cases and trying to throw them over the wire not
going far enough, but you know the graphic consequences that come from that.
So in that sense, it was difficult, but it was an honor.
We hope people read it. No, that's very interesting because sometimes you find,
you know, the problems are fairly straightforward and the reporting process, as
you guys know, if you're both great at this, we'll just sort of
flow naturally. But other times it's overwhelming, it's emotional, and the scope
is incredible, as I think is the case with this book. So I
was really curious to just hear a little bit about the process on the front
end. And actually, there's something so important in the subtitle of this book,
the Untold Story, and that gets to it. Both of you just
said, basically, is you know, even as closely as you followed this
story, what you learned as you dove into this with research and sourcing was
in some ways revelatory and people should buy the books. So don't give it
all away here, guys, But what are some of the big takeaways that
really changed the story as you started to dive into it. Let me talk
a little bit about Bogram. So Bagram Air Base was a very strategic air
base in Afghanistan, and you know the Biden administration, President Biden put the
US military in a position with the troop cap that he had put in Afghanistan
where it was very difficult and perhaps impossible to follow President Biden's troop level orders
and to keep Bagram Air Base open. So what this resulted in, of
course, was US having to do an evacuation of the tens and maybe hundreds
of thousands of people that we would have had to get out of Afghanistan.
President Biden's decision making didn't take into account putting together a plan to get Americans
out, to get Afghan allies out. He didn't have a plan for how
to keep the Afghan military fighting at least long enough to keep the Taliban that
base so that we could get Americans out and get our Afghan allies out.
And we shut down Bagram Air Base. And everyone that we talked to US
troops on the ground, and even the command sergeant major who was charge of
a shutting down Bagram recently testified to Congress about this that everyone involved knew that
if you're going to do an evacuation from Afghanistan, you have to do it
from Bagram, a defensible base. It would have been safe, it would
have been orderly, We would have been able to continue to have strategic support
there. We very likely would have been able to keep the Taliban at base,
certainly keep them away from Bagram, but also potentially stop them from being
able to take Cobble, which they ended up doing unfortunately, but they probably
wouldn't have been able to if we'd maintained Bagram. But another important thing that
I always point out, and something that we nailed down in this book is
that the terrorist who was able to conduct this attack at Abbygate that killed the
thirteen Americans, he was a prisoner at Bagram. So his name is Abdul
Rochman Alighari. He's a member of ices K obviously now to cease because he
can conducted to suicide attack. But he had been captured when he attempted to
carry out a suicide attack in India. Indian intelligence and the CIA worked together
to capture him and his crew in India handed him over to the United States,
and so he was in Bagram in a prison there called Parwan. And
so there are a lot of reasons to hold on to Bogram. That would
have made an evacuation much safer, much more orderly, potentially could have stopped
to Taliban from taking Cobble. But if we had held on to Bagram,
that suicide bomber, the member of ices K who conducted this successful attack,
still would have been in prison. But instead we abandoned Bagram. Taliban get
two years ago yesterday, and the first thing that they did when they took
Pogram was they freed those prisoners ices K, thousands of them, dozens of
members of al Qaida, hundreds of Taliban fighters. And you know, President
Biden and other people in the administration when we were relying on the Taliban for
security at Kapo Airport, you know, they like to point out that,
you know, well iceus K and the Taliban or mortal enemies with each other,
kind of suggesting that we could trust the Taliban to stave off any ices
kate attacks. But this suicide bomber, he was freed by the Taliban.
So just something to really keep in mind there. This was likely preventable in
a number of different ways, did not have to happen the way that it
did, And you know it's on President Biden. Anything to add to that
James. Yeah, I think I would. I would add just in terms
of you know what kind of Gary said, I had more of a global
thought about the way that this all kind of unfolded. And you know,
one of the reasons that they didn't eat baby, that they instead decided to
try and conduct an evacuation out of a single strip airfield in the middle of
a dense urban center with high ground all around them, was that President Biden
made the potical calculation that he didn't want, you know, more than a
thousand troops in the country. He withdrew it, drew the number down to
six hundred and and he didn't and if you're going to hold Bober, you
need a few thousand troops. And because he arbitrarily set what was a politically
advantagious number, yeah, modern became in feasible. And she did that over
the express objections of the military brass And you know, to speak to the
second angle of problem, it would be the State Department's complete unwillingness to even
accept the idea that there might be the need to be an emergency evaculation in
you know, roundtable meetings beforehand they would say military officials and bring up the
terms called NEO. It's non from Batan Evacuation operation. The NEO is the
acronym military jargon for it. And it would start talking about a NEO and
they get shut down by members of the State Department said, don't don't say
NEO if we if we're doing one of those, then we fail. And
the military was trying to as a writing was on the walls, trying to
get the embassy particular to reduce its footprint so that evacuations weren't next to impossible
and that we didn't have a repeat of the embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in
nineteen seventy nine, and the embassy wouldn't do it. In fact, the
acting ambassador at the time said, we're going to keep having an embassy here
even if the Taliban takeover, because we can't advocate for democracy under a Taliban
government if we don't have an embassy. And just for the staggering amount of
nitta, you know that encompassed in that single statement is a good indicator all
of the different terrible decisions and lack of planning from sixth leven, and those
two just didn't really set the space for everything else. The Watchdolto on Wall
Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between
politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. With crime and drug
addiction continuing to skyrocket, the US as the highest rate of central parent households
in the world. Lbj's Great Society resulted in and reliance on social welfare programs
and destruction in the family unit. Is there a direct correlation whether it's happening
in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed.
Check out the Watchdolto on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That is incredible and it does seem
to be so representative of what went wrong. And that actually brings me to
a question that your book gets out a little Just as you were discussing the
culpability here of the State Department, the culpability of the Pentagon and military leadership.
You know, it's at some point, how do we apportion the blame
between leadership and we could even include the White House and this as you're right
about, where can fingers be pointed? Not just for the sake of Catharsis
or anything like that. But for the sake of actually preventing similar problems in
the future and holding people to account who left lives on the line, and
in fact, some of those lives were lost, I think a lot would
blame. I mean, the ultimate blame goes to President Joe Biden. I
mean I noticed that. You know, I think a questions get raised about
President Biden's age, his fitness, is he really running the show entirely in
the White House? And I think often those are like fair questions to ask.
But everyone should read the book Cobble that we wrote, because we demonstrate
that when it came to Afghanistan, when it came to this withdrawal, when
it came to this debacle, this was ultimately President Joe Biden. This was
his decision, These were his arching orders. He didn't listen to anybody else
around him. This was on him. Now in terms of the people below
him, the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, deserved a ton of the blame
here because the State Department did not do what it needed to do to make
sure that we'd be able to get our American citizens out and to get our
Afghan allies out, and you know, we ended up leaving many, many
hundreds of Americans, well over a thousand and tens of thousands of Afghan allies,
the people that were our interpreters, the people that worked alongside US troops
for decades. We ended up leaving those people behind. Despite President Joe Biden's
promise, his promise, even after the Taliban took over Kabble, his promise
that we would stay until we got all Americans out. And a lot of
the reason why we weren't able to do that successfully was because the State Department
did not plan for this. There was no plan to deal with something like
this. And you know, they they because of that, because of a
total lack of planning, because of their blindness the situation, because of them
ignoring the realities on the ground. You know, Americans are left behind,
Afghan allies were left behind, and you know there's there's still you know a
number of Americans who are currently being held hostage by the Taliban. Of course,
I think that the military brass you know, share some of the blame
here as well. Now, to their credit, every single military leader in
general, it seems, told President Biden, if you do this, if
you do a conditionless withdrawal the way that you're planning on doing it, this
will end in disaster. Do not do this, and he ignored them,
but they're they're likely was more. I think that the that the military could
and should have done, and you know, we point out in the book
just one example of this is uh General Mark Millie. He and President Biden
and others in the Biden administration would constantly inflate the size of the Afghan military,
saying, you know, the Afghan militaries three hundred thousand strong. I
think it really at one point said that, like when you combine their military
and police, it's three hundred and twenty five, three hundred and fifty thousand
strong. But this constant mantra was that the Afghan military was three hundred thousand
people strong, totally untrue. I mean, the Afghan military was much smaller
than that, probably one hundred thousand people smaller than that, probably more than
one hundred thousand people smaller than that. Because they were conflating the size of
the military and combining it with the size of Afghan local police and stuff like
that, which you don't do in any other country. When you're measuring the
size of the military. On top of that, everybody knew that there were
what are called ghost soldiers, which is basically people that just existed on paper
born really Afghan soldiers. Everybody knew that that was the problem in the Afghan
military as well. On top of that, as they're continuing to make this
three hundred thousand person, you know, military size claim, the Afghan military
is falling apart in front of our eyes. Everybody can see it. The
Taliban onslaught is coming forward. We have cut the Afghan military off from US
troops, logistics, I SR contractors, and the Afghan military is falling apart.
But they continued to talk about this three hundred thousand person military figure.
And the why why this is important it is because they were whether they knew
it or not, and I tend to think that they probably did. They
were misleading the American people about what the facts were on the ground. They
were trying to make it seem like this Afghan military is going to be able
to keep the Taliban at bay, don't worry about it, and it just
wasn't true. And I think that part of what that resulted in was,
you know, Americans who were in Afghanistan. Hearing while the Afghan military is
huge, they should you be able to fight off the Taliban just wasn't true.
And it's just one example of many about how even people like Millie,
who I think probably do a bide in good advice about not doing the withdrawal
the way he did, he still ended up joining in some of the messaging
that was incorrect and misleading and ultimately, you know, dangerous. Yeah,
I'd like to add to that, but saying I completely agree that, you
know, the buck stops with the commander in chief, and as we lay
out in Cobble time and time again, Joe Biden's decisions at a very direct
measurable connection the disaster that unfolded. But to go down the order, I
would say Secretary B. Lincoln deserves a large share of the blame as well.
The Embassy wasn't showing any urgency in processing SIDS, the special immigrant visa
special interest visas for the interpreters who in some cases have been alongside Americans in
two thousand and one, and despite veterans groups and other advocacy groups highlighting the
glacier case of evacuation or of those visas getting granted they didn't even fly out
the first planeload of SIVs until you know, the first week of August,
right before everything collapsed. There was no way that you were going to get
everyone out. And even if you kept things on the timeline that they had,
and by some miracle the military hadn't collapsed entirely, it would have taken
months, if not years, before they ever got all of those people who
served alongside of us and whom we promised to take care of in a turn
out of the country, to say nothing of Americans. And and that that
failure from the State Department also just trickled down all the way through. They
were at most thirty six consular officers there to help process paperwork at the airfield,
and that was that was at their strongest. There were several days when
there were only a few and they would have well, the Marines were at
the gates working in ships twenty four seven, barely getting an hour to sleep,
a lot of nights surviving on you know nigteine and caffeine and you know
whatever MRI is there, Yeah, you're probably them to this shift. The
counflor officers, State Department officials would come in for about four or five hours
and then you know, clock out and all of a sudden, now you
can't even bring people because especially in the the day's leading up to twenty six,
the twenty first, twenty second, twenty third, people had to have
their paperwork approved by someone from the State Department said yeah, you belong here
before they could get full entrance to the airfield, which enraged the Marines to
no end and ultimately probably led to a lot of people being left behind who
have to be And with regards to the American citizens left behind, there's yeah,
there's a direct connection between the number who didn't get out of their own
volition beforehand and the reassurance statements that both you know, the Pentagon and the
State Department we're putting out about how they didn't anticipate any kind of collapse happening
soon. A lot of them were working for NGOs, their aid workers,
were they you know, we're naturalized citizens who've gone back to visit family members
and then all of a sudden, you know, and the point when I
that narrative lapses overnight as it's called, and are driving through the gates and
these people are caught behind enemy or but even after the fifteenth, and Jerry
will probably fill in the specifics here. For several days, the State Department
was still charging US citizens money for their flights to leave the country, which
is just a domination. And Jerry, you want to build on the specifics
of that, yeah, I mean, I'll just add to that. It
just shows how totally unprepared the State Department was for this, and they were
doing what the State Department and the National Security Council, we're still doing meetings
on August fifteenth. August fifteenth, the day before the Taliban took Cobble,
they were still doing meetings trying to figure out basic things like who should we
prioritize in terms of you know, getting out, and once we do this,
we'll do that. Okay, well we'll meet again, yeah, aprevating
countries. Yeah, yeah, I mean. And so they hadn't figured out
basic things on the eve of the Taliban takeover and they're like, okay,
well we'll have another meeting tomorrow, and then the Taliban takes Cobble, and
you know, to to the point that James brought up, it's so clear
that we were so unprepared for this that the State Department when you're when you're
an American filling out your form to get out of the country, the talent,
the State Department was still making you sign a white promisory note to like
promise to pay for the cost of your flight out. And despite the Taliban
literally having taken over the entire country and including Cobble, and that just goes
to how unprepared they were that like, it took them a while to like
update their basic forms to the stop charging Americans the cost of having to flee
Taliban rule. And there's just so many examples of that, and it's just
it just goes to show the State Department was not prepared for this, and
it had a devastating and sometimes deadly effect Americans laft behind and Afghan allies left
behind, and you know, some of those some of those Afghan allies who
were left behind have now been hunted down by the Taliban. It's staggering.
It seems to in some ways validate the thesis that a lot of people have
about, you know, such a wealthy country, a powerful country, the
most powerful military in the world, not being able to perform basic functions.
And in this case, you're talking about the State Department but just a byzantine,
massive, well funded, powerful department the most powerful country on the planet
and can not handle basic tasks, has a naive perspective or expectation. Intelligence
seems to be bad about what's going to happen in the near term. And
you know, I think a lot of people look around and just ask how,
how is this possible? So I'll toss that question of both of you
with the added question of just does the are you still worried going forward?
I mean it does. Did writing this book make you sort of fear for
the future because it seems as though these problems are so now deeply rooted.
It's almost like there's a decadence that like, well, we'll spend millions of
dollars on silly initiatives, virtue signaling initiatives, etcetera, etcetera, but we
won't do basics to protect the lives of American service members. It's just incredible.
And so does that scare you going forward? Having looked so closely at
it as you were writing this book? Yeah, it's just fregn everybody,
frankly, and a Cobble has there two chapters at the end of Coble and
talk about how China and Russia and Iran have absolutely exploited this to their advantage
and that you know, for example, by recruiting and debriefing Afghan commandos who
has served alongside the United States about you know, how does the US military
and Special operations community claim permissions? What are their capabilities and what are they
you know, how do they react in X y Z situation, which from
an intelligence perspective, it's a massive liability. But but secondly, they also
took you know, the message from this that that America is weak, that
they can do whatever they want. That that's going to have I think disastrous
consequences for Taiwan sooner rather than later. But but just from an institutional perspective,
which is kind of the basis of your question, yes, I absolutely
it scares me. I think it's scare everyone. And just the systematic and
systemic failure that a really catalog and in cobble it will be easily repeated elsewhere.
But yeah, yeah, I think that's that's it's a great question as
one that we definitely tried to address, you know, and all that I'll
really all that I'll really add to that is, you know, you brought
up the issue of the US government seemed to be able to be unable to
perform these simple but very vital, important tasks. And what I would say
to that is it's often true, just because it's a massive government bureaucracy that
it's difficult. But in this instance, the reason why things went so badly
is because decisions were being made based on politics, not based on reality.
They were being made based on decisions and orders from President Biden and not based
on what was actually happening on the ground. And so when you have this
willful blindness, and when you have the Taliban enemy sweeping forward as US troops
withdraw, and when you have the Taliban sweep through the country because we hadn't
planned for this, and because we hadn't done what needed to be done to
get our Afghan allies out, to get Americans out, to keep the Afghan
military functioning and on the field. When when that happens, and when the
Taliban is now controlling the entire country and you're stuck in a tiny airport because
you've given up Bagram, it's really damn hard to to do very much and
to do very much good. And you know, to the credit of the
US Service, members who are on the ground. They did incredible work with
the strictures that they had, but man, they were put in. They
were put in in an impossible situation, a dangerous and chaotic situation, and
you know, it's it's just to the to their credit that they were able
to do as much good as they were able to because it was an impossible
position and them having to make life and death decisions. And in terms of
the future, you know, like James said, we have we have a
couple of chapters at the end of the book that we talk about sort of
the immediate more global repercussions from this. You know, we make a pretty
good case, I think, and everyone should read it and cobble that Vladimir
Putin, I mean, he's wanted to invade Ukraine for a while, and
he invaded part of it, you know, years ago, but he's wanted
to do a full invasion of Ukraine for a while. But the chaos in
Afghanistan and in Kobble, and the way that the United States and NATO were
just in total shambles. I think that we make a very good case that
that was the final push that Putin needed to think that he'd be able to
you know, win a decisive victory in Ukraine because the US and NATO just
looked like they were falling apart. And when it comes to China, you
know, the Chinese immediately seized on this Chinese state media and their propaganda.
They call it the Kabble moments, the Kabble moment, and basically they immediately
started telling the Taiwanese, see what happened in Afghanistan, See how America didn't
you know, protect its friends and didn't get all of its allies out.
Well, that's going to be the reality for you if you, you know,
if you tried to depend on the American because you know we're coming for
you and the US isn't going to be there, so you know, don't
bother fighting, it might be adds one add one more think my to my
answer, just to build off of some of what Jerry just said. Yeah,
there were absolutely politically driven and politically oriented decisions which, if there's no
accountability, are almost certain to happen again. There was also a very dangerous
level of just ideology and group think and to borrow your term from for you
know, perhaps a virtue signaling in that for example, the US embassy and
COBBLEM went on lockdown in June, and so you had plenty of and they
stopped providing them served because of COVID. People stayed in their rooms except for
going outside to exercise alone for you know, a few hours a day or
along in one. And because of that, you had SIVs who were waiting
for just their final interview and approval so they could leave, and never got
their visas because by the time they had new appointments. Yeah, after the
embassy reopened, I believe it was early July or late June. Their new
appointments were scheduled for augustly keen of August nineteen and by the time there was
no embassy. So it's just it's it. Truly the book has to be
read to be believe. But the failures are mind boggle. We tried to
the catalog one couple I can't imagine. That actually brings me to one question
I really wanted to ask, which is, and James, you'll have insight
on this, what has if any effect, What has this had, if
any effect, on morale in the military, and and maybe you have a
a beat on what morale is like at the State Department but I'm especially interested
in the military and for people like Hugh James. I cannot imagine people who
served in Afghanistan, veterans of that war, what this felt like when you
guys were reporting the story out, Jerry and James, what did you find
about how this has affected morale among veterans and current service members? Yeah,
I can speak to that. Yeah, that was never a diplomat, so
I you know, I have less of a be as much morale the State
Department, other than the individuals that we spoke to thereis wasn't great. But
I can say for the military and veteran communities this was for to begin with
veterans, it was you know, I can say personally and for everyone else
I knew it was. It was a punch in the gut, Uh,
it was. It was just very difficult to see and to process. And
and then for the individual soldiers and marines that we spoke to, unsurprisingly,
a lot of them, after what they've just experienced and what they're you know,
going through and healing from, there are a lot that are you know,
a lot of the ones are now as left the service, did not
realist or continue their service as officers. But those those who stay it's been
you know, incredibly demoralize it because you know that the toughest thing I think,
or especially some of those a lot of those marines, was the you
know what what they described or what they proceed that as whitewash completely of the
investor, Advygate and everything else. And basically to see the administration and to
see senior penant On leaders say, okay, well this tech can have been
prevented. But this whole mission was basically you know, success. We did
everyone, and you know they're left dealing with or you know, especially we
planned for this. That was That was a line that the UH administration used
quite frequently, and you know, that's impossible for them to reconcile with their
experiences of everything I can describe at the beginning of this podcast, just with
the horrors that they saw, you know, the chaplain for that marine to
twenty two one. I told them at the beginning, before they started shifts
at the gate, you're going to see things that no humans should ever have
to see. And they did. And then to yeah, see the yeah,
the administration with Mayer and Sheet you know, all the way down the
line. Actually, yeah, yeah, this is how things we're supposed to
be is just that that has been incredibly damaging. I mean, I think
James nailed at the the you know, the thing that the the service members
that I talked to that I have talked to, the ones that served during
the evacuation at Kabble and that were there at the at the airport as the
Taliban is beating people in front of them, killing Afghans in front of them,
with with those Marines and those soldiers unable to properly respond to stop the
Taliban because of the situation that Biden and the military leadership that put them in.
The phrase that that a lot of them use is to phrase moral injury.
This is a moral injury, and it's it's one that's long lasting and
maybe for some of them is going to be permanent. And you know,
again, it just didn't it didn't have to It didn't have to be this
way. It didn't have to be a horror show. But a series of
bad decisions compounding on each other just ended in just total disaster. Right.
Well, one question, just as we're sort of winding down, this is
actually I saved. I don't want to call it the best question, but
it was one of the questions when I heard you guys were working on this
book, I wanted to ask the most because the media was sort of memorably
puff on Biden. People remember those White House press conferences in August, just
two years ago, as the withdrawal was playing out in real time disaster Usterously,
the press didn't spare Biden, wasn't necessarily pulling punches. But that said,
you, you, as we said earlier, have called this with the
untold story. And I have to imagine that as people who have poured so
much time and energy into telling an accurate version of the story and a full
version of this story, that there is contrast with the people who purport to
be writing the first draft of history and what you discovered to be the real
story as you look back on it, How does the media coverage hold up
now that you've you've put so much time and energy into researching what actually happened
in couples at that August. Well, sadly, the you know, whatever
media toughness there was on the Biden admin in August twenty twenty one very quickly
dissipated and went away. And the problem with that is that, you know,
being tough in the moment for a little while is easy. But finding
out the truth and pursuing accountability to make sure that this never happens again,
it's it's hard, and you know, it might not be fun for people
who are politically inclined one way or the other. You know, this this
debacle took a hit, I think a permanent hit on Joe Biden's approval rating
and really just took the shine off of him and sort of punctured this idea
that he was competent, punctured the idea that he was you know, truly
empathetic, and you know, it's a it's a damaging story for him and
and and rightly so, because this really was a disaster. There were broken
promises, and they're also on answer questions and things that you know, that
we learned and that we're talking about here, Like, like I said,
the suicide bomber his name and his story, his imprisonment at Bagram, which
we then abandoned, and his being freed by the Tali Dad which allowed him
to go out and carry carry out this attack. Biden administration refuses to say
this guy's name, and that's because this is a this is a damaging story
to them. And I will say we didn't write the book with the purpose
of damaging Joe Biden. Just the facts are that this is on him.
Did you have anything to add on that chamber? Yeah, I muted myself.
That happens to me all the time. And then I had what I
thought was a very outcod point I did not desentirely, Uh, you know,
come all the way through. You know, what I would say is
that it was it was nice at first, you know, during those first
days to see that would be at those briefings holding the White House accountable in
terms of, you know, how many people have we gotten out, what's
the situation? You know, how does the square with your previous statements.
But the best word that or best phrase that I could use to describe me
a coverage of this entire tobacle, which you know it was unparalleled in modern
American history in that you know, a blue passport used to be a most
valuable document of world because it meant that you know, if you from terrorist
group has you, if you're stuck behind any lines, or even if you're
a disaster zone, the United States government will come to get you out.
And you know that that kind of promise was just shredded, and we left
thousands of Americans behind. So, you know, to see that curiosity and
that kind of willingness to explore and reveal the whole story just dissipate the kind
of left cobble. Uh you as a passenger on the last flight of the
cobble once once we were out of the country, that was it. So
the best phrase that I would use to describe it would just be willfully incomplete.
And that's one of the reasons why Jerry and I just spent you know,
a year and a half honestly better part of two years researching this and
telling the story and Cobble because the administration is not going to hold itself to
account, and if the media is not going to do it, that somebody
does. M that's an excellent place to leave it. I just want to
congratulate both of you on the release of this book. It is an achievement.
The book is called Kabble, The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the
American Warriors who fought to the end. We're joined today by Jerry Dunlevy wrote
this book in his personal capacity and is now actually left Washington Examiner heading over
the House Foreign Affairs Committees Afghanistan Investigation. James is an Afghanistan veteran who received
the Bronze Star and assisted in veteran led evacuation efforts. James and Jerry,
thank you both for coming on the show today. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Emily appreciate it, truly our pleasure. Again.
The book is called Cobble. You can get it now. I'm Emilijashnsky,
culture editor here at The Federalist. You've been listening to another edition of Federalist
Radio Hour. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, the lovers
of freedom and anxious for the Fray