Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann joins us now, conducting coordinated task force pineapple, author of Nobody's Coming to Save You, a Green Beret's Guide. And it's a five-year mark since the Afghanistan withdrawal that resulted in many things, including our reputation, but also the bombing at Abbey Gate. Colonel, welcome back. And of course, you also have your one-man show. Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.
Which is what is the latest on that? This is your second show. This is a second show. The first one was Last Out Elegy of a Green Beret, which was also about Afghanistan. But this one is adapted from Operation Pineapple Express, the book.
I do 24 characters in 90 minutes, and it's called 11 Days: The Story of Operation Pineapple Express, and it's touring the country. We're in New Jersey tomorrow night, the anniversary, the five-year anniversary of Abbey Gate. in Carteret, New Jersey, honoring the thirteen who fell. And Gary Sinise is going to be there to help us honor and remember, and it should be a very powerful show.
So how do you get tickets? If you go to tfpineapple.org, Tf pineapple dot org, you can get tickets there. What are your reflections of the disaster which was at the Afghanistan pullout? Oh, man, I mean, I don't know what you're hearing, but because we travel with the play, Brian, and I do so much work with veterans in the talk backs afterwards, I've traveled all over the country, more than 40 cities, and I'm listening to what they're going through. And these are amazing humans that volunteered multiple times, gold star mothers, gold star spouses.
And they're honestly wondering, you know, five years later, did what we do matter? Did it matter? Did we make a difference? Because the page was turned so quickly. I think that's the biggest thing right now is that we're doing with this play is to remind them it absolutely did matter.
It did make a difference. You kept us safe for 20 years, and we're never going to forget it. And also, Al-Qaeda has been wiped out. You're talking about generations of their leadership, and ISIS been beaten down. And we got a looking glass view of what it was like in that terror-torn region.
And you gave them 20 years to get a sense of Western culture, a chance at education, women's rights. You cannot prop up another nation. Infinitely, but the way we left just made everything worse. Just the way we left, and I think that I do believe you're right. I think that the chapter has not been written on Afghanistan.
I think there's still a world where they rise back up on their own, and I hope they do. The other thing I think, though, is also just the moral injury that was inflicted on a lot of our veterans with their value code, just the betrayal. You know, just leaving your allies like that in a lurch. That's something we were raised not to do. And the way that our government did that, it really put these veterans in a place where they've been on the phone with these people for five years.
Some have cashed in their pensions, their retirements, their mental health is in the toilet. And so I think that's the other thing we're trying to do with this play: to just help Americans remember that there's a whole generation of warfighters that are still feeling this, much like our Vietnam veterans did, and we don't need to just turn the page on. Here's hit General Frank McKenzie, who has owned up to mistakes. And I've enjoyed his insight. I've never met him, but I enjoyed his insight in other things.
But when, in my view, when he was told by Joe Biden that you're going to have to leave a certain amount of troops, he just said, no, we've got to totally leave. He should have stood up and just said, it's impossible. This is going to be a disaster. Here he is explaining the pullout, Cut 41. We believe that Kabul would fall if we pull out our troops.
It was just a question of when Kabul would fall. And we have been saying that really since the fall of the year before. That had been a consistent position of Central Command, our subordinates in Afghanistan, that if we leave, they're going to collapse. And they did. Yeah.
And they're on the Yeah, and there were a lot of us who just asked, you know, why didn't you put your stars on the table? You know, and it's five years later. And, you know, look, these general officers are feeling a lot of the pain, just like other people do as well. And I don't want to take anything away from that. I do think, though, it's time for the leaders of the military, veterans and active duty, to come together and really do some work on crystallizing the lessons learned from this.
What went wrong? What went right? What do we need to do differently next time? Because we're getting a habit, Brian, of bailing on our allies. And that's what I worry about a lot having a kid in the military.
I don't want to see my children have to go and try to build rapport in a place because we've eroded our reputation for sticking with our friends. And by the way, Ukraine, too. 100%. I'm 100% with Ukraine. They deserve to be supported.
They'll fight like warriors, like Spartans. That's right. And you will never find in modern history an insurgency that stands on its own without outside support, including the United States, right? When we revolted against Great Britain, we had outside support. It's called France.
That's right. And for us to just sit by and watch Afghanistan and Ukraine flounder like that, to me, it's not just bad policy. It's immoral. And so one of the things that we're trying to do with our storytelling, with our plays, is to help Americans understand that when you make a commitment, when you make a promise, you break it, you buy it. You've got to honor it.
You don't just throw young men and women into the fray. Have them make these commitments and then just turn the page when it becomes politically inconvenient. That's not who we are as Americans, and we're better than that, whether it's Republicans, Democrats. And so that's what this play is about. It's me testifying for 90 minutes as 24 characters in a House Foreign Affairs Committee testimony that was just political theater.
This time we're testifying for real.
So how much of an aide has been Gary Sinee since he understands the military as much as anyone can as a civilian, and he's a fantastic actor? You know, he is. And by the way, he started his own theater company. He is amazing. Everything you see on him.
On TV, he's exactly that way. You know, he sponsored Last Out in 2023 for us to tour around the country. He has come to the show. He has been there for us at every turn. He is our generation's Bob Hope and then some.
And when I called him and I said, Hey, Gary, on August 26th, we're going to honor the 13 fallen. We're going to honor all those who served and even the veterans who stood up. He said, I'll be there. He didn't even blink an eye. And even after losing his son, Mac to Cantor and trying to get his music out into the world, Gary's kind of hitting the pause button to come be with us for one night and put his arm around all these veterans and tell them that they matter.
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So, um, assume. And you might not know, but I know you know a lot of people involved with the Pentagon today. Do they understand that a lot of those officers were asked to do a job and they're not political? It seems like anyone that helped with Afghanistan had been fired. Yeah.
And it's not politic. If they told Lieutenant Scott Mann to help out Barack Obama's administration, you're wearing a uniform. That's it. It doesn't mean that you voted for him. Yeah, no, I appreciate the intellectual honesty on it.
I honestly. I got to believe they know that. You know, I've got friends in that building. But what I will tell you is that I kind of scratch my head when I look at that because it's.
So many people gotten fired. Yeah, a lot of people have. And my thing is, every single officer and leader has to make up their own mind in those moments of moral choice. You know what I mean? Like you have to decide if you're going to put your rank on the table or not.
But I will certainly tell you that the men and women that were implementing on the ground, executing, they had no choice. They did the best they could with what they had. What does bother me, Brian, is that all these years later, five years later, we still have not had an effective after-actions review on what happened, what went wrong. How can we keep this from happening again? Because the best way out of a moral injury to moral recovery is to go over what went wrong and put assurances in place that it won't happen again.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Manner, yes. Scott, I know people that did the report that Joe Biden wouldn't hear. First, they said he won't sit through a half-hour demonstration. They go, what about he'll hear an oral report?
So he did it. Then they said, well, he'll do 10 minutes. Then he said, the 10 minutes is canceled. But the reports have been written. Oh, and they're exhaustive in detail.
I know exactly who you're talking about. He's been a huge asset to Pineapple Express as well, post-report. And he told me the same thing, that he couldn't even get an audience with President Biden's chief of staff. And that's my point. I think on both sides of the aisle, our senior leaders are so far removed from what went down there and, more importantly, what our men and women are feeling right now.
That's what I worry about. And if they're feeling that, and this is two generations. Vietnam and Afghanistan. We can't continue this. A volunteer army is not an entitlement, it's a social contract that has to be preserved.
Well, also, look, I don't hate generals. Uh I mean I I look at uh Chris Donahue. Had a chance to get to know him over the last five years. Everybody who talks to him, it's a reputable reputation, it's got this unbelievable reputation. He gets fired because he's the last man out of Afghanistan as if it were his idea to leave.
Yep. And, you know, Chris Donahue, Scott Miller, Ed Reeder, a lot of these humans who carry amazing loads on their backs, they did everything they could for years. They gave more than most of us will ever be able to fathom. And honestly, in the beginning, I was hard on him too. When I wrote the book, I asked questions that were hard questions, but I felt like I was asking questions that the men and women wanted to know.
But at the end of the day, no, I'm the same way. I think it's about time we come together and find ways to address what went wrong, crystallize the lessons learned, and let's tell the story so the next generation of warfighters doesn't inherit this.
So why is recruiting up?
Well, look, I think a lot of what's going on.
Well, first of all, Americans have short memories. I mean, all you have to do is look at the institutional multi-decade abandonment of our country. We forget it. We turn the page like it never even happened, Brian. And you see it over and over again.
And Americans are always kind of focused on what's going on in the here and now. I do think the Pentagon has done a good job of basically changing the focus of the world. Making it cool to be in the military again. I like to be able to do it. It's cool to be in the military again.
However, I think that we've turned the page on a chapter of a 20-year war. Without reading the chapter. That we didn't read the book. We just turned it. We said, you know what?
Those kinds of wars are not for us anymore. We're going to focus on China and Russia.
Well, we know from experience that when you do that, that kind of stuff follows you home. And if we don't learn these lessons, my fear is al-Qaeda, ISISK, they reconstitute, and we have an October 7 on our own shores, not another 9-11 if we don't learn these lessons and learn how to be better partners with our country. It's coming up on 25 years since that day. 11 Days, the story of Operation Pineapple, a nationwide tour, right?
now and one more time for tickets yep carterette new jersey august 26th tfpineapple.org tfpineapple.org all right scott great to see you again thanks brian did you know fox news has a wine shop did you also know you can get a head start on your christmas shopping that's right check one more gift off your list with the fox news wine shop advent calendar featuring 12 festive wines inspired by the holiday magic of fox square you can reserve yours for just a 1999 deposit we'll deliver it free right to your doorstep in time for the holiday season quantities are limited so visit foxnewswineshop.com today
