Biden Defends Afghan Withdrawal by Blaming Others

This is Logan Sekulow today on Sekulow. We're discussing the historic speech from Joe Biden yesterday as he defended his Afghan withdrawal by blaming everyone else.

Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. The choice I had to make as your President was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. So what's happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow.

This is Logan. I'm joined by Will Haines and Colonel Wes Smith in studio. You just heard that clip where President Biden said, you know, essentially American troops cannot, should not be fighting in a war. The Afghan people do not want, don't be willing to fight for themselves. That being said, breaking right now is that at least 4000 plus more troops are having to go to Afghanistan right now due to the chaos that has erupted.

We talked about it yesterday. You've seen the pictures of the aircraft flying thousands of people out at a time, refugees from this regime. All while a speech happened yesterday afternoon from President Biden where he pointed a lot of blame at different places. And look, I think we can all admit and I'll say mistakes were made pretty much through every presidency in terms of Afghanistan, starting with Bush, Obama, Trump and to Biden. There were always issues. This was never an easy war. This was never a necessarily a winning situation in terms of the big plan that no one really expected, which was the nation building part of this.

But I've seen it now and look, I'll give them props. CNN, MSNBC, most of my hardcore liberal friends, which I have plenty of, all had pretty much had enough after yesterday. They were all pretty upset with not only the imagery they're seeing outside of Afghanistan, but also the lack of empathy, the lack of care and the in the general. Yeah, we did what we said we were going to do feeling that came from President Biden's speech yesterday. And I feel like we probably have a lot of people, a lot of similar views here. Wes, I'll let you as a military expert, I'll let you kind of take your thoughts of that. Yeah. Yeah.

So much to say. This is chaos, unnecessary chaos. You know, there's that old military saying that says, you know, no plan lasts past first contact with the enemy. You had to be prepared for contingencies because things don't go right. And when the President spoke yesterday, instead of talking about the things that happened and how that was out of control, he defended the decision that almost no one disagrees with.

Almost all Americans agree that we should get out of Afghanistan. But it was the chaos and the crisis of humanity there that he either did not address or he simply blamed it on someone else. The discussion we had in our radio prep meeting was what could have been done, what can be done, what does the future look like? We're going to discuss all of that as well as go through, let's say, highlights of the speech from yesterday throughout the show. I'd love to hear from you. What are your thoughts of the speech from yesterday and the just troubling and horrifying images coming from Afghanistan? I'd love to hear from you.

1-800-684-3110. As President Biden stands behind, squarely behind, his decision in a way that, like you said, nearly 80 percent of people said we should be getting out of Afghanistan. And about 80 percent of the people said this was just bungled mess and was handled incorrectly. Now it's complicated. This is why we're working on a lot of different projects to help explain this and get a lot of points of view. It's not necessarily full consistent on what we could have done, what should have been done better. But there's a lot of different points we're going to address here today on the show.

But again, I'd love to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. Visit ACLJ.org for more information and to support the work of the ACLJ. Right now, donations are doubled, so if you give $10, effectively it becomes $20, so on and so on.

We'll be right back with more on Sekulow. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support. For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

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This is Logan joining you live in studio with Wes Smith and Will Haynes. I want to first start by letting you hear from President Biden himself. You know, we titled this that he was kind of laying blame to a lot of different people and not necessarily taking it himself. Let's hear by eight. Let's go to and then follow that by me.

Let's start by date. When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. The choice I had to make as your President was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season. So, again, that one playing blame at President Trump and then later on pointed some blame not only at, again, someone like a President Trump, but also at the Afghani people.

And I think we're going to bite to bite 11. So what's happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight.

If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. So at that point, placing blame on not only the people of Afghanistan, but their own soldiers who we all know have had a lot of corruption and a lot of issues and and not as something we've discussed, not necessarily an inherent patriotism as we have here. They haven't grown up with it. There's been generations of chaos there, so it's different. It's hard to think about.

And we heard some people, Wes, and I wanted to get your thoughts on this. And I know that it's weighing on you and weighing on a lot of people who whose family fought in Afghanistan, who are people who are veterans or people whose families are going there, even right now, that this is not worth it or this was not worth the sacrifice. I want you to address on that. Yeah, especially after Osama bin Laden was killed when I was still at Dover Air Force Base. You all know that I spent three years in casualty affairs dealing with the grief of family members up close and personal, receiving bodies from Afghanistan and then Iraq earlier who were killed in battle. And the grief is palpable when that happens.

And you're right. There are people right now that those those haunting questions of didn't did my loved one die in vain? Come back to them.

This makes it real all over again. Did my son or daughter die in vain? My husband, my wife or whatever. And and I think we have to be sensitive to that. I appreciate what Will said yesterday, that if you know people that are grieving family members or veterans because of what's going on now, reach out, check up on them. You know, but when that when I get asked the question, I was asked it a lot at Dover. But I've been asked it in the last couple of days by other people to did my loved one die in vain? And that's a tough, tough place to be.

But part of my answer is and this is not to gloss over the pain. But part of my answer is when evil is confronted and fault, it's never in vain. And when we went there for the first 10 years until Osama bin Laden was killed, first nine years, we were there to to degrade Al Qaeda and to find and kill Osama bin Laden. And both of those things happened. The last 10 years, you know, we had mission creep.

We lost sight of our goal. And there are a lot of things I know we're going to talk about regarding that. But your loved one, I just want to say to these people, did not die in vain. And we bless their memories and we pray for the grieving families and loved ones, too.

Yeah, absolutely. We definitely pray for everyone who every family who isn't involved, people, they're American citizens and non-American citizens, everyone who is suffering from this. Or like you said, someone who sacrificed their life or even just their mental stability to go fight a war in good life and limb. I mean, we have so many people who've come back physically, horribly wounded from that war.

Yeah. And we don't want to lose sight of that. And as those of you who are watching people of faith, most of you are who listen to this broadcast. I encourage you to pray for those families. And like Will said, reach out, find someone that you know. We all know somebody.

Talk to them, check in on them, make sure they're doing OK in this sort of. Again, we're seeing the imagery firsthand. Imagine how it feels if you actually have been there, seen it, lived it.

It was your home. I saw a person on the news this morning who said these were people we were going up to in the street saying we are here for you. We are going to reform your country. We're going to end in promising making promises that sadly could not be kept necessarily. The big picture, at least the the idea of turning Afghanistan into this democracy or republic. It's just it's like you said, it's not necessarily in the in the fabric of the region of the country.

No, the DNA, the political, social DNA, that's simply just not there. And that's where we really, really went astray as a country and as an international community. You know, with President speeches today, I'll give credit where credit's due.

There were some things that I really agree with what he said. For example, you know, our mission was there to degrade Al Qaeda and to kill Osama bin Laden. The mission should have been counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency. It morphed from counterterrorism into counterinsurgency.

That was a mistake. It was not supposed to be nation building. I agree when the President said there's corruption there and a lack of a will to fight on some of their soldiers. And he said no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, unified, secure Afghanistan.

Absolutely true. So it wasn't that all of the content was bad. It was he was defending a decision that no one was virtually no one was arguing with. And when it came to the chaos and the horrible videos and pictures coming out of there and the pandemonium, he was defensive as if somehow, you know, if anyone questioned that part of it and the lack of planning and the lack of being prepared for contingencies and so many other things we could talk about that could have been done so that this did not happen. Instead of showing empathy and grief and concern for what's happening there, he wanted to defend his own actions. And in fact, when all this was happening over the weekend, Logan, for four days, we heard nothing. He disappeared in the middle of a human crisis of incredible magnitude.

We heard nothing. I'm convinced he made the speech yesterday because probably his aides forced him to do it. And speaking of that, I think there is something to say about that specific statement, which was the aides forced him to do it. I believe in politics and look, a lot of business.

You got a lot of yes men around you. So it's almost as if this speech was not addressing the real concern that people have, which again is not the mission at hand. It was the crisis that's happening right now. What's happening on your news right now? Not what happened a week ago, not what's going to happen in a month. How do we fix what's happening now?

And look, you said you said some good stuff. Let's play bite to this is about the war in Afghanistan, and I'm going to take it from there. We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals. Get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001 and make sure Al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that. We severely degraded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and we got him. That was a decade ago. The last line of that was a decade ago. Really rang in not only a sure it's true, but there was a tone there that I don't care for. There was a tone there that felt like that was a decade ago.

What are we doing again? As you stated, there's a mass majority of the country that thought we need to be getting out of Afghanistan. However, that's not the problem. That's not the discussion of what's going on. What's going on is we're seeing thousands of people trying to get onto aircrafts, risking their lives, some losing their lives, just trying to get on a plane to America because they know what is at hand. They know when this happens. You see women being interviewed, you know, confidentially, because you see any women out there running on that airfield or showing up right now on TV?

No, not one. They seem confidentially being interviewed because they're terrified for what this means with Sharia law and all the things that we know come with terrorist-run Islamic countries. That's not the statements that he's making. He's making a lot of statements related to Afghanistan as a whole, and we all agree as a whole.

Well, we got to deal with what's happening today. Yeah, it wasn't the plan to leave. It was the execution of the plan that is just so horrible and chaotic. Well, and you brought up the tone of the speech.

I think there are really only two options for the way the speech was delivered. Either the people that wrote it and proposed this speech said, listen, we want to make this issue about withdrawal and defend withdrawal, even though that's not what people are concerned about, kind of play a political game, so to speak, of let's put it on this focus that, you know, we made the right decision to withdraw. Or they are that out of touch with where both parties are, any left, right, center, everybody, that they don't understand the concerns people have, the negative feedback they were hearing, wasn't because the decision to withdraw, but because of the chaos and disaster that was happening in that moment.

I've seen it firsthand, and I really do, but not necessarily firsthand in terms of Joe Biden, but in so many cases where this does happen, where your disconnect from reality occurs because you are at a leadership position and people are afraid to tell you, we made the wrong decision. We messed up. This was wrong.

They're afraid of it. And therefore, you're going to go and you're going to defend everything. You're going to blame everyone else and you're going to defend. We made the right call. It's okay to just say, this is chaos and we're going to do what we can to fix it. Yeah.

And whenever the decision was made to take out Osama bin Laden in that situation room, Joe Biden was the only one in the room who disagreed with that decision to even go after him and try to kill him in Pakistan. Oh, wow. Well, we should talk about that more. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air. Mike Pompeo will be joining us coming up a little bit later in the show to discuss this.

Obviously, he's been making the news and making the rounds about the current situation in Afghanistan, as obviously during the last multiple years, we've heard very little out of what was happening there, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Give us a call, though. 1-800-684-3110. If you're on hold right now, quite a few of you are.

Stay on hold. We'll get to you in an upcoming segment. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secula. Let's go ahead and take some phone calls. Let's go to Rob, who's calling in Texas on Line 3. Rob, you're on the air. Thank you all for taking my call. My question is, how can Joe Biden sit here and justify his position when he just took our troops away from all of that equipment and left it for the Taliban to take and use it as they wish? We're seeing that come up a lot. Thank you, Rob. We're seeing that come up a lot in discussions, which is about all the equipment.

Look, we had on Rick Grenell yesterday. He mentioned that that was one of the contingencies of the Trump administration, I believe, was essentially the destruction or removal of a lot of that extra equipment. If it was going to end in chaos.

And we're not seeing that. We're seeing these people get out as quick as possible, which means a lot of things are left over. And President Biden said a month ago, this is one of the most powerful militaries in the world. Well, either he was wrong or we just left that military now in the hands of terrorists. Yeah, thanks to all this happened in the last few days, the Taliban is now the best armed radical Islamist group in the world. You know, they have some of the most sophisticated weapons that the U.S. possesses in their hands now. And if we ever had to go back, they will use those weapons against us. And right now I'm concerned about the flights going in and out of the airport because some of those weapons are weapons that can bring down an airline or a plane.

And they have literally surrounded the airport. So I guess the discussion point goes to what do we do from here? And I think there's a lot of different options. A lot of people have a lot of different theories.

It's not necessarily one size fits all. So just to kind of what as a military person is the only option right now to be doing what we're doing, which is you still go get planes in there, get people out and do what we're doing for the best humanitarian reason, because it's already far gone. Do we just abandon ship or do we need to send people?

But what what happens? I think that's where a lot of us are concerned. And there isn't a straight answer.

And I know that. Right. Yeah, I think it would be unwise, it'd be actually a horrible mistake to go back in en masse into Afghanistan. The decision to leave was the correct decision. How it was executed, how they're trying to accomplish it is where they've totally, totally bungled it. But no, I don't see us going back in. I wish, and this could have been done, and it is a mystery to me as a retired Army guy why it wasn't done, with the Taliban taking over all the provincial capitals in the last few weeks, and then in the last few days actually taking Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, we have air power. The Taliban, they were actually going down the roads of Afghanistan in convoys with vehicles. Our air power could have taken those convoys out. We could have started attacking them and holding them in check, holding them back. That would have done a couple of things. The Afghan government could have had a time to somehow make a better plan than just leave.

And by the way, they left with billions of dollars of U.S. cash and fled to another country, the leadership did. We could have held them in check for that. We also would have held them in check so that we can, in an orderly way, get people out of the country. We had the military power to stop this encroachment by the Taliban, and we did not. I think part of the reason was, in this crazy way of thinking, that if we attack the Taliban, it will somehow hack them off and they're going to become violent and attack us.

They do that already. I think a lot of the chaos could have been prevented with planning for the inevitable things that happen, contingency plans, but also using our military force to hold them at bay. But now that that horse has left the barn, I think the best we can do is try to keep the airport at Kabul secure until we can get everyone out and do what we can. Perhaps we can negotiate with the Taliban.

I know there are conversations going on between our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon and some of the Taliban leaders. Maybe we can try to get other people to the airport. Part of the problem that's going on right now, there are a lot of people, including people with American citizenship, who can't even get to Kabul because now, all across the country, the Taliban has checkpoints up, and they're not letting anyone through. It's a mess. The best we can do is try to resolve the mess, get as many people out as we can, and basically put this behind us. Well, and I heard someone on the news this morning say they estimate as many as 10,000 U.S. citizens could still be in Afghanistan dispersed throughout the country.

So it's not as though the people that are there can just get to the airport and get out quickly. There is still a long road ahead of trying to clean up the mess that was caused this weekend. But you also brought up that he's blaming the previous presidency of Donald Trump, saying that they decided this was the path forward, and when we got in, we're going to move ahead. But that's kind of the excuse we see with a lot of these policy decisions out of the administration. You look at the border, you look at various other foreign policy issues that they will blame the previous administration's decision on something. But what they ended up doing was gutting the actual plan. They took the top-line issue, gutted the plan, and then blamed them when their gutting of the plan falls apart. And it reminded me of something you've mentioned on the show before, but that Robert Gates said in his memoir, and he served as Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama, that he said, Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades. So it really shouldn't be a surprise to us, but yet he was kind of elected partially on that he was going to be so savvy with his foreign policy, but yet these type of disasters are what we keep seeing over and over again. Yeah, absolutely.

And I would love to hear from you and your point of view. I know there are a lot of calls coming in, and we're going to go to one that's a little bit different than ours. 1-800-684-3110.

I'll say it slower. 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard. Thousands of you are watching right now on social media, millions on the radio. This would be a good time to call. We have some lines open. We're also going to be joined in a couple of segments by Mike Pompeo.

So we're going to have expert analysis continuing in the show. Let's go to Rochelle in Virginia. Rochelle, you're on the air. Yes. Hi.

Thanks for taking my call. I just want to say I support President Biden's decision to exit. I, you know, I know that I worked over there for about seven to eight years.

Love the work, the people, the Afghans are, you know, they are they have their struggle. But I believe that they had a plan. We had a plan to leave. We didn't just up and leave them. There was an exit plan.

But I don't know with them enforcing it and and executing it. That's a different story. But I think it was time to go. And I believe this fallout and this chaos that you're seeing, it would have happened. It doesn't matter what we what we do or or did not do. This would have been there. I don't think that it was the wrong decision.

I think the U.S. contractor, they should have been out of there by now. We knew what was coming. This has been on the table for a very long time. And the Afghan people knew this. And I don't mean to cut you off.

We only have a minute and a half in this segment left, so I do have to wrap. That's a sentiment from a lot of people that this, you know, obviously, I mean, for people like you, you're like, well, clearly this was going to happen. But this is a wake up call for a lot of people.

No one, no one outside of maybe those who are there and experiencing it in person thought this was going to be the conclusion. Well, and there's a leadership issue here as well that, as we've said, we aren't disagreeing that it was time to pull out, but it was the execution and the plan. But also the President blaming the Afghanis saying they didn't want to fight for their country. They gave up.

They walked away. And there is there is truth to that there was not a resistance at the Taliban at this moment. But as we were discussing, thousands and thousands of Afghani citizens died for their country. So that's selling short the effort that people did do to stand up and try to fight for a better Afghanistan and die doing so.

Just saying they didn't want to fight for their country is disingenuous and disrespectful as well. Yeah, he blamed President Trump. He blamed the Afghan civilians. He blamed the Afghan military. You know, there was no acceptance of personal responsibility in saying the buck stops with him.

He was very, very good at passing the buck yesterday. All right. We have another half hour coming up on Sekulow.

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Give a gift today online at aclj.org. I'm talking about freedom. I'm talking about freedom.

We will fight for the right to live in freedom. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. If you're just joining us, hello. We are talking about obviously the chaos that is happening in Afghanistan.

We're joined by Wes Smith and Will Haines later on in the show. In the next segment, we'll be hearing from Mike Pompeo to go over all of what's been going on. I want to quickly go to President Biden from his speech yesterday that has been criticized, has been, I think rightfully so, said is tone deaf, not sincere. I've seen all conservative and liberal pundits both given this pretty much an F rating in terms of understanding what the American people are going through.

So let's hear President Biden by 21. I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghans civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discourage us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, crisis of confidence.

So that is coming from President Biden. A statement that has been made that people have kind of critiqued a little because I said that they didn't just begin evacuating Afghanistan. They should have gotten people out sooner.

We should have the blame again being pointed in different directions. And the idea of blaming the people, they don't want to get out of here. I don't know if they thought that was an option to just run for the hills to flee.

It feels again, very insincere, very tone deaf. Yeah, and I've talked to, I have a couple of friends that were Afghan interpreters for U.S. forces. There are people lined up, you know, who've wanted to get out of Afghanistan and come to the United States for years. The idea that somehow or another we couldn't evacuate people sooner because no one wanted to leave is flat out false on its face. But what he's trying to cover is the chaos because of how this plan is being executed and the fact that we did not stop the Taliban from encroaching the capital and putting roadblocks up. One of the things about Trump's plan, and it was true, he did make the initial decision to pull troops out, which is, I think, the right decision, but it was condition-based. President Trump said, we will leave, but he put the Taliban on notice.

You can't do this and you must do that. Those were conditions. And when the Biden administration came in, those conditions, I haven't heard anything about any of those conditions.

No, no, it just feels like we're manned in a ship. So it's not the plan. It's not the decision. It's how this President is executing that plan. And this idea that I had no choice, he actually said that yesterday, you know, basically I had no choice. It was Trump's plan. He signed it.

Yeah, I couldn't stop it. Yeah, it was either that or we're going to escalate the war and send tens of thousands of U.S. troops back to Afghanistan. That's a false choice.

That was not the only two choices he made. And again, it's not Trump's plan or going back to a full-scale war in Afghanistan. It's how do we actually go through with the plan in an orderly way, keeping the Taliban at check, protecting civilians, protecting U.S. troops, and securing our equipment. So can we, this morning or yesterday, actually, Matt Zeller was on MSNBC and was discussing, he's an Afghanistan war vet, former CIA analyst, right after the speech. And let's, we'll give you the setup and a few of the quotes here.

Let's go first, 37, and we'll go from there. This consequential speech by the American President didn't run from it. He owned it. He owned his decision. He owned the fact that, as he put it, the buck stops with him.

I hope he gets to own their deaths too. I don't, I feel like I watched a different speech than the rest of you guys. I was appalled. That's not Pete Williams speaking. That is Brian Williams, but it's okay. I just want to make sure people know that. But then he brought up specifically that quote that we just played from President Biden. So let's hear bite 38.

This is Zeller. There is such a profound, bold faced lie in that speech. The idea that we plan for every contingency. I have been personally trying to tell this administration since it took office. I've been trying to tell our government for years that this was coming. We sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. Nobody listened to us. They didn't plan for the evacuation of our Afghan wartime allies.

They're trying to conduct it now at the 11th hour. Okay. Again, that was Matt Zeller on MSNBC.

So you can see the comments that are coming in, not just from, we'd say, conservative news sources. All right. When we get back, we're going to be joined by Mike Pompeo.

Secretary Pompeo obviously is a senior counsel at the ACLJ. We'll be discussing everything that's going on in Afghanistan. What the past, the present, the future holds for it. We'll be right back. Give us a call as well.

1-800-684-3110. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress.

The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support for that. We are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

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Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Secula. We are joined by Secretary Mike Pompeo, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, and obviously someone who has been making the rounds on the news talking about just the mess that is going on currently in Afghanistan. Secretary Pompeo, I don't know if you saw President Biden's speech yesterday. Seems to be pointing a lot of blame in a lot of different places and seems to be also be giving a conflicting message. What is the difference in what the strategy you were trying to implement and accomplish in Afghanistan? Obviously, we've we've all kind of been a little more informed on all of those inner workings just in the last few days. And what this administration did, the Biden administration, as we've seen just just a tragic mess.

Well, look, this is not the time for assignment of blame. We've got to make sure we get the Americans there that are trapped, some of them trapped inside of Afghanistan deep, some of them in Kabul and around the airport. We need to make sure that our military is focused on that and that alone.

We've got to make sure we get those folks out. But as for the strategy, we were very clear. President Trump wanted to get our boys and girls home. Nobody is squawking the objective of getting our men and women out of Afghanistan.

But they seem to have forgotten two basic rules. One, you have to execute this in a way that reflects the history and the context of what's going on. And second, there is a real responsibility to make sure that we reduce the risk that we're ever attacked from that place again.

And President Trump gave me the mission to do each of those two things. We withdrew twelve thousand five hundred folks, so call it 80 plus percent of our forces. We had we had gone down to around twenty five hundred by the time we left in January of last year.

We had stability. We hadn't had an American killed since February of 2020 because the Taliban understood that President Trump and I were serious about protecting America. From the pictures you can see on TV, it does not look like our leader has done this. It looks like there's a weakness that you see around the world with respect to the Russians that were at the table in Vienna with the Iranians. That weakness was somebody that came to be known by the Taliban and they ran the table. And now we find ourselves in a place where the President says he planned for everything, but yet had to at an emergency basis send back in even more troops than were there twelve months before that.

It's really sad. Mr. Secretary, you mentioned the mission was to make sure the capacity for an attack against the United States from Afghanistan was diminished. And as you mentioned as well, that there had not been a loss of life for an American soldier since February of 2020. But with such a chaotic exit, has the threat from Afghanistan risen dramatically just over these last few days? So my guess is, you know, that the direct threat for tomorrow probably hasn't changed a great deal. But remember, this is always about context. We end up focusing on the number of boots on the ground.

That's too narrow a lens. But make no mistake about it, if you're Al-Qaeda, if you're ISIS, you can see now that there's a space that this... President Trump and I made very clear, if we see the buildup, if we see Al-Qaeda, if we see terrorists from other organizations, we're going to go back in and do what we need to do to take that risk down. My guess is that they are emboldened. They can see that they, if they find uncovered space, this administration is likely not prepared to inflict the costs on them to keep America safe and secure. So whether the risk is any greater as we sit here today, I don't know. But over time, American weakness, America's absence in leadership around the world, it begets war. It creates risk for the American people. I pray that that will not be the case, but I fear that the full context, whether it's what's taking place with the Chinese or the rest of us, what they all watch is Xi Jinping is watching, Chairman Kim is watching. They can all see how America responded and its inability under President Biden to execute a mission that it was working on. I think it absolutely increases risk to the United States.

You know, Mr. Secretary, this is Wesley. You know, I think about just a lot of the foreign policy decisions that have been made, policies that have been put in place, some of the rhetoric. You know, it seems like this administration lacks some clear direction and strategy and consistency with foreign policy. And I'm curious, was this, all this happening over the last few days in Afghanistan, the natural outcome of an administration without a clear foreign policy? You know, in some ways that's a really good, that's a really good concept, right? This is a symptom of their failed understanding of how you secure American freedom and how you protect America.

Look, it's a combination. Right now we have terrorists that were, that have run over a country who will try again to kill America. We have a porous southern border so people can freely travel, including radicalized terrorists who can come across.

We're going to provide them aid in traveling around our country. We've defunded, demoralized our law enforcement community, the tools necessary to protect and serve. We now are telling people that, yes, they need to go cover up again with the virus. All of these things are interconnected.

It is the combination of these things that increases risk so greatly. They didn't, they don't understand the central precept of American security is to establish a current model that makes it known to the world that your leaders, your American leadership is going to be present and we're going to protect the things we care about, our vital interests. And we're going to do so in a way that we never apologize for securing American freedom.

Thank you, Secretary Pompeo. Another question, you know, a lot of people, America is a compassionate place. We are a compassionate people when you see these kind of imagery from anywhere in the world and double down on it being somewhere where we have such a presence and you see people clinging to airplanes to escape. I guess our concern, a lot of people's concern is the safety of not only the people that fought alongside us, partners, and the people of Afghanistan as well as the United States citizens, but is also, like I said, the people who have looked to the US for comfort and for safety. How should this be addressed?

Do you have a thought on this? I know that this is a big question that a lot of people are, we all can look at it and go, this is horrible. It's going to be horrible for women. It's going to be horrible for everyone in Afghanistan. But what can be done at this point?

What would you, how should this be addressed? So we always came back to the central thesis of what are the things that are vital American interests. And so there are tragic things that happen in lots of places in the world that we do our best to help ameliorate all of these risks to people around the world. We worked on religious freedom. We worked on human rights.

Those were important things for the United States. But in the end, with respect to sort of the basic living conditions, right, the building of a nation there in Afghanistan, that is going to fall directly to the Afghan people. It's the negotiations that we had begun, right, with the Taliban.

They were a little bit about things military and a lot about things security, but also about trying to get Afghans, Pashtus, Tajiks, people from the north, people from Herat in the west, all the elements of Afghan society to find a set of accommodations that could deliver the very human rights understanding that you're describing. It is difficult to watch. It is very sad. But the use of America's military power, they're putting a risk of our sons and daughters in a place like Afghanistan has to be confined to those places where there is an absolutely vital American interest. We can't be everywhere and all things to everyone. Secretary Pompeo, we appreciate you coming on and giving your point of view, obviously a very knowledgeable and a very specific outlook and outplace. That's why, you know, with the ACLJ, I want to say this. We have some incredible people who are part of our team. And Secretary Pompeo is one of those people.

You've heard him on this show multiple times a week for many months now as he can weigh in, unlike anyone really could weigh in on this topic. And that's why we have people like him on our team. And that's only because of the work and the support of people like you at the ACLJ. If you want expert analysis, expert opinion, as well as true, real litigation and legal response for you and for all that you stand for. That's why we have the ACLJ. And I haven't spent a lot of time this show talking about it, but I never want to leave a show without saying that the work of the ACLJ is vitally important and we only can do it because of you. And as for right now, the month of August, all donations that are made to ACLJ at ACLJ.org are effectively doubled, which means someone is there's another ACLJ member on the other end that is saying, I will pledge to donate and match that person's donation.

And there's a whole group of them so we can be at any donation for the month of August. It is incredibly effective and incredibly important. So I encourage you to go there to not only donate, but also to see all the great content. There are blogs going up from people like Secretary Pompeo, from Rick Grinnell, from Wes Smith, from our team here. Every day is brand new content ACLJ.org.

It's not as much a news source as it is a source to really break down and understand what's happening in the world and some of the things that you may not know are happening in the world. So again, thank you, Secretary Pompeo, for joining us. Thank you for all of you. We will be taking phone calls in the next segment as we wrap up the show. There's a few lines open. If you want to be on the air, this is a perfect time to call. If you served in Afghanistan, I would love to hear from you as well. Or if you're one of your family members, I'd love to get your point of view on what's happening right now.

But even not that. Give us a call. If you have a statement, a comment, a question over there, so this is a confusing time. Just give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. You'll speak to one of our phone screeners.

He gets all the information to me. We get as many calls as we can up in the next segment. So if you ever want to be on the radio, this is the time to talk.

1-800-684-3110. I want to thank everyone who has not only chipped in financially, but also supported the work of the ACLJ. And I want to thank everyone who's listened the last few days since really last week as we've really broken this down.

I think differently than anyone on the news has. Really provide a different style of program, and I hope that you have enjoyed it. There are a lot of comments coming in. We're going to take some of those as well.

Some of you on YouTube have sent some great comments and super chats, and I appreciate those. We're going to try to get to those coming up in the next segment as well. And again, support the work of the ACLJ.

That's at ACLJ.org. Phone lines are lighting up. Perfect time to call. 1-800-684-3110. Let's get as many of you on the air as possible.

I want to hear from the American people, and if you're in fear around the world, what your thoughts are on the current situation. We'll be right back. This is called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

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A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to the last segment of Psychula for the day. I want to take some calls. A lot of you are calling in right now. This is still a good time to call.

If you get a busy signal, just keep trying. 1-800-684-3110. Actually, a couple lines just opened, so this is a perfect time to call. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Tim in Colorado on line two. Tim, you're on the air.

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My question has to do, or comment has to do with the part of President Biden's speech where he said that he had a contract or a deal that President Trump had signed with the Taliban and that basically his hands were tied, indicating that he felt that there was nothing he could do. So my sense is that really a leader, someone who's really a leader will take a situation that they find themselves in and craft a new solution, come up with new ideas, and not just sit back and say, well, I can't do anything. And I'm wondering what your team's view is on the leadership aspect of President Biden's actions there.

Tim, I think that it's an excuse big time. As anyone knows who follows politics quickly, you've been President now for what, eight months at this point? Things can be undone. Things can change.

Your hands are rarely tied in a way that is impossible. Now, I'm not saying that he's not just passing the blame off on President Trump, or necessarily, I'm not saying which way even the decision was correct, but passing that blame when you're eight months in is something that is certainly, I don't know if it shows a good sign for what the next three years plus could lend us. Yeah, exactly. Well, not only that, he says it's President Trump's plan that somehow his hands were tied, and yet in his speech, he agreed with every point that President Trump made of why we should leave Afghanistan.

So he's not disagreeing with the plan, but he's trying to blame Trump. Think of the reaction today, Logan, if yesterday when the President came to the microphone, he had made a brief speech and said, you know, I agreed with my predecessor. We needed to leave. We're trying to execute it.

It got out of hand. Some unforeseen things have happened and I take full responsibility and we will fix it. He could have made a three minute speech and he would have been the leader. I remember I was telling Will during the break when Jimmy Carter was President, I was like a college student, but we had the hostages taken in Iran and President Carter secretly authorized a rescue mission. And in that rescue mission in the desert, two of our aircraft ran into each other in the dark and caught on fire and Americans were killed. The next day, and I'm not a big fan of Jimmy Carter, but the next day he came on television and explained to the American people that he had attempted a rescue. It was clandestine.

It went bad. Americans are dead. And he said, and I take full responsibility. That is a leader. It's simply not going to happen in this style of politics in 2021. When you think about 9-11 where we're 20 years post 9-11, it's almost the antithesis of the emotion that happened on 9-11. 9-11, a horrible tragedy happened in a country united. For many years, a country united behind a President a lot of them did not agree with. And a lot of them now looking back on it also may not have agreed with.

But in that moment, the country united. Now we're saying almost exactly 20 years to the day, the end of what was that mission, and you cannot have a more adverse reaction. And to that point, President Bush was at just about the exact same place in his presidency as President Biden is into this presidency. And you did not see a speech from President Bush that was, you know, this is terrible. This is horrible. But Bill Clinton really dropped the ball on this.

He left me with this terrible, insecure situation. He was a leader. It was a horrible security failure in the United States. It was a tragedy that we will never forget and has shaped our country in so many ways over the last 20 years.

But that wasn't the speech you saw. So many people admired President Bush in the days after 9-11, because he went to ground zero and he stood on the rubble with the megaphone. And these images that are in your head forever, he went to the scene of the terrorist attack. Images that make the Hall of Presidents at Disney World. Exactly.

The highlight reel. And while the terror attack on 9-11 was significantly more catastrophic than the chaos we've seen in Afghanistan for different reasons, it was not that type of speech. It wasn't a leadership moment for the President when, as Wes pointed out, it could have been. It could have been a moment that people that disagree with him respected the way he handled it.

And you're not seeing that on any side of the aisle. Speaking of that, we have a comment that came in in a Super Chat. I appreciate it.

That means someone who essentially paid to have their comment highlighted on YouTube and that goes to the ACLJ. So again, I appreciate that. I would not do that in lieu of a donation because, you know, obviously there's percentages and cuts and all these different things. But if you do it, I appreciate it.

So I want to highlight this. And it's sad, this is from Alex, that you even have to think this. He said, do you think Biden was just incompetent in this or he wanted this? I will tell you without a doubt, he did not want this. Because this is just about one of the worst things that can happen under your watch. Yeah, politically, this has the potential to cost him greatly. This is not what he wanted. It was mismanaged and mishandled six ways from Sunday. But I don't think President Biden wanted this.

I know he didn't. Absolutely. Let's try to take at least one more call. April in Virginia. April, thanks for calling. You're on the air.

Hi, my name is April. I'm from Texas. My husband did 30 years in the Army spent a lot of time over in Afghanistan, and I was just trying to ask him last night to give me some clarity. And he said, you know, a lot of Americans don't understand why we were there. He said, but like the first 10 years, it's hard to train them when they couldn't write. He said they had to go back and teach a lot to write and be able to get, you know. Yeah, April, I hate to cut you off.

We're having some connection problems. I have your comments in front of me. She said her husband served in Afghanistan, said it was very difficult situation, a large level of illiteracy. They were teaching them how to fight was tough just in general. And I think beyond that, like we talked about before, just a common our common thought of people who want to serve in the military is the United States military or the Israeli Defense Force, who are actually kind of forced into doing it. But these are people that are very patriotic, people who are who support their country unwaveringly support their country. It may not be the same when you grew up with the Taliban or you grew up in chaos or not or as corrupt as you weren't getting paid your what you were promised you were going to get paid to serve there.

There's so much that goes into it. And when when President Biden said, you know, they don't want to fight this war. I don't think they want to fight the war. They just didn't see the point in fighting the war when none of the promises they had maybe were actually true.

Yeah, I heard a veteran this morning on the news talk about this very thing that April talked about. He said that not only did they have to teach them, some of them to they didn't have to read. They didn't know how to count. They didn't know their colors. Some of the things that a kid in kindergarten or first grade knows in the United States of America, they did not know.

And so it was a challenge. And it's a different it's a different world over there. It's a tribal society. It's very primitive, actually almost semi barbaric.

Think of something from the Dark Ages. That's Afghanistan in the 21st century. And I think a lot of us, because we kind of conflate Iraq and Afghanistan, I think a lot of people assume it's desert. You know, just because it's just you kind of put those images together for those who grew up with it. Those wars kind of the same. And you look at its mountainous regions.

It's, as you said, a tribal society. It's not something we can necessarily all fully wrap our heads around what it's like there. But when you see people running for the airports and running for the planes, obviously it's heartbreaking. And our heart goes out to everyone. I'm not those not only those who are there right now, not only those who have family members that are there, but those who served. And as Will said and Wes said, definitely check in on a family member or friend, you know, who served in the military because and tell them that this was not a defeat. This was not this was not in vain. Their service was not in vain. And, you know, check in because it's a tough time for us to be watching this imagery, but it's I can't imagine how much more it is for those who have sacrificed so much.

Like you said, life and limb and even just mental fatigue that has come with it and PTSD and all of all the horrible things that come from war. So with that, that's going to do it for this week or today on Sekulow. I appreciate you all listening, commenting and getting your feedback. And it's greatly appreciated.

I always want to know what everyone thinks. Make sure you share this. Comment, like, subscribe, all that. Support the work of the ACLJ. ACLJ.org.

Talk to you tomorrow. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A ten dollar gift becomes twenty dollars. A fifty dollar gift becomes one hundred. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.