Revenge of the Taliban

Today on Sekulow, the Ravage of the Taliban. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments.

Or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

Folks, we've got a special broadcast for you today. We started documenting the Afghan withdrawal and what became a disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan resulting in the loss of life, of course, of our U.S. troops. But also a horrendous catastrophe inside Afghanistan that continues on to this day.

The persecution of religious minorities like Christians, but also the treatment of women. We know that because of the Taliban takeover, the way it was handled, the fall of Kabul happening in 48 hours rather than 90 days. The fleeing of the Afghan government.

The Afghan military, in a sense, giving up arms as they were unwilling or just unable to fight the Taliban and everything that came with it. So my brother Logan has been sitting down with a lot of unique individuals with different points of view. So you're going to see a little mix of this today, Logan, because this is available for people to watch in long format. What we're trying to show today is a mix of who was there. It's people like Mike Pompeo and Rick Rinnell who people are used to on our broadcast. But also Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Waltz, John Ashcroft.

So people that were there from the very beginning of this conflict to Nikki Haley. Yeah, it was a really fascinating thing to do. We sat down and interviewed these people.

Originally it was done. We thought we were going to make a 90-minute documentary. It ended up being a over four-hour series that we released and we did it in real time.

So we were doing it as the conflict was unfolding. So to me, it was a fascinating time to get people's raw emotions and it is available right now for the first time ever in its totality on YouTube. And every episode will be released. The entire series of this limited series will be released by the end of this week. So we've been rolling them out one a day and it's a 10-episode. Again, most of the interviews are between 25 to 35 minutes that you can sit down and watch. Sort of in podcast form.

I'd say in some ways they're mostly interviews, though there is music and incredible score and there's B-roll so you get a little bit more engagement. But I hope people will like it. As you said, there's even people that you're going to agree with or you're going to disagree with.

And that was intentional. We wanted to get people's point of views from a bit of our realm and then a bit outside of our realm. So you'll have a conflicting version of what should happen maybe from a Tulsi Gabbard than you would from a Mike Waltz. You have two different, both veterans, both with great careers in the military, but both with two different ways on how we can proceed in Afghanistan. And of course, a lot of this was done in August, September, October of last year. So again, it feels very real, feels very raw for our team, for Rick Grenell, for Mike Pompeo. And then they said John Ashcroft was there since the beginning. And then you even have Wes Smith, who is one of our people here on our panel. But he created at Dover the dignified transfer, essentially where the bodies are transferred.

If you're fallen in warfare, you're fallen, you're brought over in this whole situation. He explains how that entire project was created and how running that was obviously incredible emotional experience. So really great insight.

Very interesting. And he said it's available on our YouTube channel. Yeah, so people, again, it's on our YouTube channel.

That's youtube.com slash official ACLJ. Shows the production that we do in this longer format, longer discussion than you can even do. We always talk about radio, how we can have a longer discussion than cable news.

This is a longer discussion that we can even do on our broadcast sitting down with one individual uninterrupted and talking tech. I mean, you're going to people who were there in the White House from the day that war began from people who were fighting in that war. People were dealing with the bodies coming back from the war, American soldiers and who were still active duty, who were representing the U.S. at the U.N. I mean, this again, you're going to do you see it from so many angles. And we now know this was foreshadowing some pretty disastrous international policy, foreign policy and military decisions by the Biden administration.

So we're living with right now as we speak. But I encourage you, as you see this special broadcast today, to support the work of the ACLJ. This shows more of our breath, more of what we're able to put together and the people we have access to support our work at ACLJ.org. Double the impact of your donation this entire month of March. We have a group of donors that match every donation that comes in through the month of March. So 20 dollar donations like 40, 50 is like 100 at ACLJ.org. Donate today if you're financially able to at ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. 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 dollar gift becomes 20 dollars.

A 50 dollar 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. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's 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. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse. That is not true. The first big city to fall was Kunduz. One after another, Afghanistan's biggest cities outside of Kabul were captured, Herat to the west. Terrorists in Kabul carrying out the deadliest attack on US troops in over a decade. Afghanistan is lost. Freedom came under attack. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes.

At my direction, a small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage. They killed Osama bin Laden. Al Baghdadi is dead. It's time to end America's longest war.

We'll do it responsibly. Rushing to the airport, behind them, the sound of gunfire. Deliberately, countless Afghans who helped American troops were left behind and safely.

Afghans by the thousands desperate to escape life under the Taliban. I'm sitting down to talk with Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. Senator Lankford currently serves as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management. He's worked fervently to defend religious freedom both here in America and abroad. Senator Lankford was directly involved in the ACLJ efforts to bring home and prison pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkey and Pastor Brian Naran in India.

Senator Lankford will be joining us today to talk about his plans to bring Afghan refugees escaping the Taliban to Oklahoma. Senator, I wanted to get your feedback over the last few weeks. Obviously, we're coming off a weekend where we memorialized the last 20 years since September 11th. A time when, for those of us who lived through it, you know, it is kind of those moments where you realize that a lot of us, a lot of people even in this crew here were two and three years old when some of this stuff was happening. But for those of us that lived through it, we saw a very uniting moment for America.

Nine months into a Bush presidency, you now go 20 years in the future, nine months into a Biden presidency. Tragedy happens related to that, and it's really unfortunate to see where the country has gone the last 20 years in forms of uniting over certain things. But maybe, and you can kind of touch on this, do you feel that there was maybe uniting not necessarily for the administration, but in seeing sort of the horrors that were coming out of Afghanistan?

Yeah, there were. And I would tell you, talking to so many veterans of the war in Afghanistan over the last couple of really weeks now, I hear two things that come up over and over and over again. Number one is they're shocked by how people, what they see of what we left in Afghanistan, how painful it is to be able to see what was left on the table there, how they abandoned Bagram Air Force Base, how they abandoned the embassy.

All those things, there's just a lot of frustration on what they actually saw there. And they know we were going to get out of Afghanistan. No one assumed we were going to be in Afghanistan forever.

But the way that we got out is very, very painful. And the second thing I hear from people over and over again is there were a couple of people that were fighting alongside of me that were Afghans, that they put their lives on the line just like I did, except they weren't armed. They were a translator, and they were traveling with me. We always told them that if this goes sideways and the Taliban take over, we're going to get you out safely. And they were pretty frustrated by that. So they're frustrated about how it ended. They're frustrated with what we spoke to the rest of the world into some of those translators that work with us and side by side with our military forces and what they've continued to be able to see from there to see us, literally as a country, abandon Americans in Afghanistan and abandon individuals that fought alongside of us.

Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on something I think that's important. And the Afghan people, whether it be the translators or people that fought alongside Americans, were kind of metaphorically thrown under the bus from the Biden administration as people who abandoned ship, ran away quickly.

That's the opposite of what I've received in these interviews that I've conducted over the last few weeks. It seems like very compassionate people, very sweet people. And we as Americans are compassionate people. And conservatives often get labeled in a way that I don't really appreciate because we can all look to those scenes that happened a month ago and see the horrors that they were and say, how can we help?

What can we do? I know you were one of the people who discussed taking in refugees in Oklahoma. A somewhat controversial thing, but not really. So I think it becomes a very loud minority online that people think represents conservatives or Republicans and think these are not compassionate people who don't want to help. I want to know, though, what was your decision making to come to that conclusion?

Because look, some of the states, some other people in your own party have taken an opposite approach. So I would say that the first thing that came to my mind was that all these different veterans of the war in Afghanistan, they came to me and said, these are folks that I know. They fought alongside of me. I know them. I know their families. These are folks that laid their life on the line. These are freedom loving people. These are the folks that are fighting against the Taliban. These aren't terrorists. These are the exact type of people that we want to advance and that we want to be able to support. And so how I came to that decision was talking to so many veterans of the war in Afghanistan and what they were saying about those individuals and how they want them to be able to get out.

So that's the first part. The second part is in Oklahoma, we took in a lot of Vietnamese 48 years ago when they were fleeing during that time period. Those are thriving members of our community at this point.

Very engaging. Lots of Vietnamese churches in Oklahoma. We have lots of communities that are engaged and business people and all kinds of folks. We did this as a state five decades ago with the Vietnamese. We will do this again with Afghans that are coming into our country. In Oklahoma, we'll probably have about 1,800 to 2,000 Afghans that will move into Oklahoma. Those should be vetted individuals. Those should be folks that have worked alongside of our military or worked alongside of our State Department. I don't want to just randomly grab people in Afghanistan to be able to move to Oklahoma. They need to be fully vetted. They need to go through the process. But most of these folks that are moving this direction are exactly that.

For those that are not fully vetted, they don't need to come to the United States at all until we know who they are and what their background is and how they were trying to be able to flee out of Afghanistan. That says a lot about you, though. It says a lot about the state of Oklahoma that you guys would support this kind of move in general. I think that it's the Christian thing to do as someone who I know is a person of faith. It's important to disconnect maybe partisan politics and actually look at the heart of it because I know about you and other people.

You couldn't watch the children being passed over the gates. You couldn't watch those things happening in the military. Even before there was the ISIS attack. And not say, how can I help? And I think a lot of people can turn to the Presidential administration and say, how can I help?

And feel like they have no answers. But there are people like you, Senator Langford and the Senate, and there are people in Congress who are saying, okay, the administration may be failing us right now, but you have a voice and you represent a people. And I think that's got to be an important step for anyone right now to really look to their local representation. Yeah, there should be a moment that nonprofits and churches should step up and say, what can we do to be able to walk alongside these families? Because it's one thing to say, these folks are coming in destitute, afraid, escaping from the ruthless Taliban.

We got them out of that environment. It's another thing for the churches and nonprofits to be able to wrap around them and to say, what are we going to do to help you integrate into society and to be able to make sure that you have connection points here. And again, many of these refugees are not coming to America. They're coming to other countries as well. But those that do come to the United States, we need to make sure that we actually engage and that we make sure we show them, for me, the love of Christ to those individuals, but to also be able to make sure that we help them to be able to survive through this time period. A pretty amazing transition for them, not just as a country, but as a family, as an individual.

Absolutely. And you look back now, it's been roughly a month and we're recording this. I wanted people to see the raw emotions that were coming out of people and remember that this in a year, in two years, in three years, in 10 years, because it's so easy to look at 9-11 and sort of this historical viewpoint now, pre social media, pre the way that we kind of have to run our lives now.

I want to make sure that these kind of interviews were preserved. So regardless of what happens years from now, that people know the intention that was coming out of people like you and were coming out of beyond Washington. Folks, let me take a minute of your time here because this is a really critical month for the ACLJ.

When we launch in the new year, this first month of March, it's a matching challenge month. It's when you hear us more often, we don't do it a lot on our broadcast, but these months it is important because the ACLJ, of course, is a 501c3 organization. We exist because of your financial support. This broadcast, all of our attorneys, all of the cases, all of the work we do here in the United States and around the world, including our work in Israel, our work in the Middle East, our work on behalf of persecuted Christians. If we're representing a governor or a state because of a pro-life law, if we are, again, representing the Heritage Foundation in a fight against the employer vaccine mandate, all of those cases we're able to do because of your financial support.

And part of that, of course, is this broadcast as well. And we're in a matching challenge this month of March. That means we can double the impact of your donation.

Let me explain how that works. So if you donate $15 online at ACLJ.org right now, we have a group of donors. They're going to match all those donations through the entire month. So your $15 triggers a $15 match. So it's like $30 for us. But all you're donating and all you're charged is $15. And you can donate online at ACLJ.org. So think about 50 bucks.

50 bucks becomes $100 for the ACLJ because it triggers a $50 match. These are our most critical months of the year. And we like doing it this way so that we don't have to spend a lot of our broadcast doing a fundraising pitch to you most of the year.

But these months, we really do have to tell you how we bring you the broadcast, how we bring you all the experts, how we have team members like Mike Pompeo and Rick Rinnell, how we're planning on the fight for life. Even after the Supreme Court case, it's all because of your financial support. Be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org today.

Music Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's 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.

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. Today I'm speaking with United States Attorney General under President George W. Bush, John Ashcroft. After the September 11th terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda, Attorney General Ashcroft was tasked by President Bush to take action to make sure another attack never happened again. Prior to that, Attorney General Ashcroft served as the Governor of Missouri for nine years before then being elected to the Senate in 1994. The former Attorney General and Senator has expressed serious concern about the stability of Afghanistan now that the Taliban has taken control once again. It's September 28th, 2021, and we are joined today by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was there at the very beginning of the War on Terror, and we're going to get his point of view on not only the last 20 years, but what the future could hold for Afghanistan and the future of terrorism in this country.

Attorney General, thank you for joining us. Attorney General, we just passed the 20th anniversary of 9-11, hindsight being 20-20. What's your emotions and memories of that day now looking back on 20 years of such a tragedy?

Well, it's a matter of great regret that it occurred. It obviously is something that we should learn from. We should make sure it never happens again or we do whatever we can to displace the resources that were aggregated to make it possible in the first place. The situation in Afghanistan reminds us of the continuing threat of terrorism, especially given the fact that prior to 9-11, 20 years ago, the folks in Afghanistan had been involved deeply with terrorist strikes against the United States, but not so much on American soil. Embassies overseas, the coal and the like, the terrorist groups were resourced and frequently found refuge in Afghanistan, and as a matter of fact, President Clinton had actually fired missiles into Afghanistan in retaliation for the acts. So, 20 years ago, we learned that terrorism could visit our shores from foreign sources. We'd had some incidents of terrorist activity here in the United States, the Oklahoma bombing was one of those, but foreign-based terror became a reality in a way that we hadn't anticipated. When you look at that now, following September 11th, there was a great uniting moment in this country. We're 20 years later, roughly a similar timeframe of the Presidential administration as when President Bush and your administration had to handle the September 11th attacks.

20 years later, very similar to the Biden administration having to handle what was going on in Afghanistan, the exit of Afghanistan. But at that moment, a nation united after September 11th. Do you feel that we can get there again as Americans, that we can be this united country?

Because I think a lot of people watching this, including myself, you see the divide growing deeper every day. It doesn't feel like, maybe we've unified and said, yes, the atrocities in Afghanistan, on a big perspective, a lot of people go, well, these are horrible, but it seems quickly people fall back into politics, and it's a different world. But do you feel that there can be uniting again for Americans?

Well, you would sure hope so. It took an assault from outside the country by the terrorists striking New York, striking civilian populations, striking targets which were symbolic of what we are and what we stand for as a nation that united us. And since then, we have been successful in keeping those kinds of things from reoccurring. And as a matter of fact, politics, the good politics at that time was to champion the unity of the United States against foreign threats. Some people have come to the conclusion that good politics now is to divide the United States and champion one group in the United States against other groups in the United States, alleging that the United States is not a place that's to be admired or to be a focal point of respecting human dignity and human rights, but is a place somehow where they are disrespected and ought to be rejected. And that really has fostered this disunity, which is very, very different than the unity which we experienced, especially that which followed immediately upon the attacks of 9-11.

We look at that uniting moment, and it was maybe short-lived. You can say that there were times where it became very contentious, very politically driven, whether it was the war in Iraq or anything that followed. But we're hearing now, coming out of the Pentagon, you obviously were deeply involved with this 20 years ago.

I think people are trying to just kind of break down what it all means. Because we've had a relative peace, like you said, there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in this country since September 11th. There has not been relative peace for years or quiet coming out of Afghanistan. But now the Pentagon has said the resurgence of terror in those regions in Afghanistan is sort of inevitable.

What do you say to that, to someone who's been there, like yourself, who has been involved in these top-level meetings? What does that mean for us as Americans and stuff we should be looking out for? What is it all, though, it's hard to, there's a whole generation of people who grew up without real even knowledge of terrorist threats. Well, let me just say this, that the more terrorist activity there is in Afghanistan, the higher the threat is to the United States. The ability to export terror is something that's a result of technology, communications. If you think of threats as being, one component being lethality, how lethal they can be, how destructive they can be.

And the other is deliverability. We were protected by oceans for hundreds of years as a country, but we're no longer protected in the same way. And resources that can be assembled, planned in one part of the world can be deployed in another part of the world. So the defense of America and the ability of America to displace or otherwise default plans to attack America can't exist solely in the United States. We have to be aware of what's happening in other places. And one of the reasons we haven't, I think, had intervening attacks in the United States is that we've consciously sought to fight the terrorists there rather than to fight the terrorists here. And it's a problem, obviously, when we have to fight terrorists at all. But I think most Americans would come to the conclusion better that the fighting be there than that the fighting be here. And if we have decided that we're going to just thinking we can wash our hands of terrorism by leaving an environment in which terrorism will flourish and grow and provide planning resources and perhaps launch potential against the United States. It could be that we would be making a very big mistake to think that we can just turn our backs on what happens overseas.

The domestic security of the United States can no longer be controlled and determined totally by focusing inside our borders. Folks, let me take a minute of your time here, because this is a really critical month for the ACLJ. When we launch in the new year, this first month of March, it's a matching challenge month. And you hear us more often, we don't do it a lot on our broadcasts, but these months it is important because the ACLJ, of course, is a 501c3 organization. We exist because of your financial support. This broadcast, all of our attorneys, all of the cases, all of the work we do here in the United States and around the world, including our work in Israel, our work in the Middle East, our work on behalf of persecuted Christians. If we're representing a governor or a state because of pro-life law, if we are, again, representing the Heritage Foundation in a fight against the employer vaccine mandate, all of those cases we're able to do because of your financial support.

And part of that, of course, is this broadcast as well. We're in a matching challenge this month of March. That means we can double the impact of your donation.

Let me explain how that works. So if you donate $15 online at ACLJ.org right now, we have a group of donors. They're going to match all those donations through the entire month. So your $15 triggers a $15 match.

So it's like $30 for us. Be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org 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. We'll be right back. A special broadcast for you today. We started documenting the Afghan withdrawal and what became a disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, resulting in the loss of life, of course, of our U.S. troops, but also a horrendous catastrophe inside Afghanistan that continues on to this day. The persecution of religious minorities like Christians, but also the treatment of women.

We know that because of the Taliban takeover, the way it was handled, the fall of Kabul happening in 48 hours rather than 90 days, the fleeing of the Afghan government, the Afghan military, in a sense, giving up arms as they were unwilling or just unable to fight the Taliban and everything that came with it. So my brother Logan has been sitting down with a lot of unique individuals with different points of view, so you're going to see a little mix of this today, Logan, because this is available for people to watch in long format. What we're trying to show today is a mix of who was there.

It's people like Mike Pompeo and Rick Renell who people are used to on our broadcast, but also Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Waltz, John Ashcroft, so people that were there from the very beginning of this conflict to Nikki Haley. Yeah, it was a really fascinating thing to do. We sat down and interviewed these people.

Originally it was done. We thought we were going to make a 90 minute documentary. It ended up being a over four hour series that we released and we did it in real time.

So we were doing it as the conflict was unfolding. So to me, it was a fascinating time to get people's raw emotions and it is available right now for the first time ever in its totality on YouTube. And every episode will be released, the entire series of this limited series will be released by the end of this week. So we've been rolling them out one a day and it's a 10 episode. Again, most of the interviews are between 25 to 35 minutes that you can sit down and watch sort of in podcast form.

I'd say in some ways they're mostly interview, though there is music and incredible score and there's b-roll. So you get a little bit more engagement, but I hope people will like it. As you said, there's even people that you're going to agree with that you're going to disagree with.

And that was intentional. We wanted to get people's point of views from a bit of our realm and then a bit outside of our realm. So you'll have a conflicting version of what should happen maybe from a Tulsi Gabbard than you would from a Mike Waltz. You have two different both veterans, both with great careers in the military, but both with two different ways on how we can proceed in Afghanistan. And of course, a lot of this was done in August, September, October of last year. So again, it feels very real, very, very raw for our team, for Rick Rinnell, for Mike Pompeo. And then they said John Ashcroft was there since the beginning. And then you even have Wes Smith, who is one of our people here on our panel, but he created at Dover the dignified transfer, essentially where the bodies are transferred.

If you're fallen in warfare, you're fallen, you're brought over in this whole situation. He explains how that entire project was created and how running that was obviously incredible emotional experience. So really great insight, very interesting. And like you said, it's available on our YouTube channel. Yeah, so people, again, it's on our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com slash official ACLJ shows the production that we do in this longer format, longer discussion than you can even do. We always talk about radio, how we can have a longer discussion than cable news.

This is a longer discussion that we could even do on our broadcast sitting down with one individual uninterrupted and talking tech. I mean, you're going to people who were there in the White House from the day that war began from people who were fighting in that war. People were dealing with the bodies coming back from the war, American soldiers and who were still active duty, who were representing the U.S. at the U.N. I mean, this again, you're going to do you see it from so many angles. And we now know this was foreshadowing some pretty disastrous international policy, foreign policy and military decisions by the Biden administration.

So we're living with right now as we speak. But I encourage you as you see this special broadcast today to support the work of the ACLJ. This shows more of our breath, more of what we're able to put together and the people we have access to support our work at ACLJ dot org. Double the impact of your donation this entire month of March. We have a group of donors. They'll match every donation that comes in through the month of March. So twenty dollar donations like forty, fifty is like one hundred at ACLJ dot org. Donate today if you're financially able to at ACLJ dot org.

We'll be right back. 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 ten dollar gift becomes twenty dollars.

A fifty dollar gift becomes one hundred. 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 dot org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's 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 forty 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 dot org slash gift. I'm joined by former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. Ambassador Haley served her home state of South Carolina as a congresswoman for six years and then governor for another six years before she was named as U.N. ambassador by President Trump. For two years, Haley represented the United States on the world stage and his extensive knowledge of international policy and conflict. During her tenure in the U.N., she stood up to nations that sponsor or endorse terrorism and human rights violations such as Iran, Syria and North Korea. Ambassador Haley has also been a fervent supporter of the state of Israel.

It's September 30th, 2021. We are joined today by former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. And Ambassador Haley, it's great to talk to you today and thank you for taking time. But this whole experiment that we've been doing for the last month, this series has been on everything that's happened in Afghanistan. Obviously, we're going to be talking about the U.N. We're going to be talking a lot about what's happened in the U.N. But I do want to go back just a little bit because before that, you were governor of South Carolina.

You were involved in politics locally. When you see these images and you're on the ground, you meet people in South Carolina who are not necessarily just Washingtonians and people who are dealing with politics. You see these images coming out of Afghanistan the last month. What is your reaction to that?

Some of these obviously heartbreaking, horrifying images. And what is it like for the people that you interact with? You know, it's painful because, you know, South Carolina is a big military state. I, as governor, watched units deployed to Afghanistan. I, as governor, had my own husband deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

And so I know the sacrifices that so many military men and women have made and I know what their families have made. And, you know, for them to watch videos of the Taliban, you know, driving our vehicles, holding our guns and wearing our uniforms all while making fun of Americans is just it's painful to anyone who's ever served there. And the idea that we left them with $85 billion worth of ammunition and equipment, the idea that we abandoned Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies, without telling our Afghan partners, the one intel hub that was so important to NATO.

It was reckless. And, you know, now to turn around and have Biden say, al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan, when all his generals have said the opposite of that. As a matter of fact, we all know when the Taliban took over, they released all the al Qaeda prisoners from the prisons for him to say we weren't going to leave any Americans behind. And literally he put his military against the moral code of you never leave an American behind, or whether it's the fact that he claimed that the Afghan military could have handled it. You ask any person who ever served there, they could tell you the Afghan military could never do it by themselves. They had the fight, they had the heart, they had the sacrifice, but they needed leadership to tell them what to do and where to do it.

And so it's just been an embarrassment all the way around. When you look at it from the UN perspective, someone who's been there, obviously yourself, we saw the world leaders address the UN just recently. President Biden gave his first address. You know the UN practically better than anyone. I'm just curious, contrasting what you've seen and then what you experienced in the previous administration, just contrast that a bit to me.

Tell me what that feels like to you as someone who's been there. Well, you know, I told someone when I saw Biden's speech, it was the first time that I could say out loud I was truly embarrassed because I know how those countries think. I know what they expect of us. You know, the thing that President Trump and all of us did that served him was we made sure that the world knew what America was for and what we were against. We didn't care if they liked us, but we wanted them to understand us. And what I saw were the UN ambassadors very much wanted America to lead.

Even if they badmouthed us, they wanted us to lead because they'd rather follow the United States than China or Russia any day of the week. And to see Biden go there, not mention China by name, not talk about the new terrorist threat that we have, not call out human rights abuses that were happening in Venezuela, Cuba, China, and so many other places, not acknowledge COVID and say anything about that. There were so many things he left undone, but this was the thing.

I did an event on the outskirts of the UN and met a fellow diplomat that I knew. And he said, you know, we all watched to see Biden's speech. And he said, and we all were looking forward to seeing which direction the U.S. was going to go. He said, we're all left scratching our heads. He said, because it was a vanilla speech and it gave us no guidance whatsoever.

It's just horrible. I wanted to get to certainly our adversaries or China or Russia, and we'll get to that in a minute here, but let's talk about that. Our allies who have relied on the U.S. Look, for a lot of people would say maybe too much, but rely on the U.S. for what they need are now seeing the imagery, are seeing the verbiage coming out of the President's mouth. And there is a deep concern, it seems, from even not just our adversaries, but from our allies that the United States may not be the future strong voice that it's been.

And how do you combat that? It's amazing that when I was at the United Nations, no one wanted to meet unless the U.S. was in the room. And now you've got the fact that NATO is having meetings and they don't even think U.S. needs to be in the room. I mean, that's how far we've fallen. That's how dangerous it's gotten.

And there's a lot of repairs that need to be made here. And I know Biden came and said at the U.N., the U.S. is back. We're back with diplomacy.

We're back with all this. You know what? Countries don't want the niceties. That's not what they're talking about. They want to know you're going to have their back. They want to know that you're going to lead and they can follow.

They don't want to wonder what you're thinking that day when you wake up in the morning. I think that you see it where France is trying to tell the EU that they need to become less dependent on the U.S., not less dependent on China, less dependent on the U.S., which is shocking. The idea that the U.S. is now asking Russia for help in dealing with Afghanistan, which is unthinkable. And, you know, the idea that we have no plans on how we're going to go encounter terrorism and not once did Biden say we should not acknowledge the Taliban as the head of the Afghanistan government. I mean, that was a prime opportunity for the U.S. to lead the charge that we cannot acknowledge the Taliban. We can't give them aid.

We can't in any way recognize them. And he missed the mark on that. Right, right.

And keeps missing that mark. Bring back or build back better and America's back coming from the Biden administration. Great words to say verbally. But then you see the narrative that represented the U.N. You see the fumbled, horrible withdrawal of Afghanistan. Those two things can't exist. That can't be the narrative.

You can't have one and the other, it seems. Well, I think what you're going to see is, look, words can get you through the first month of your presidency, but without action, you're not going to get that. Not only has there been inaction, there's been wrong action. And so all of our allies see that the world is less safe now. All of our allies see how quickly we folded in Afghanistan. They know we left our Afghan partners behind. They know that we left Americans behind.

It goes against anything that they know. And so where do we go from here? Because it's not just complaining. It's what do we do about it? The one thing that I think went well was getting the agreement with the U.S., Australia and the U.K. to start allowing the submarines for Australia so they can counter China. We need to be doing more of that. We need to get together with the Quad, U.S., India, Australia, and make sure that we're finding out ways with Japan, finding out ways that we can all counter China, that we can all work towards that.

And we've got to start talking to our friends and saying, OK, this is what we need to do and this is how we need to do it. But all we're seeing from Biden is, you know, a tax and spend policy that doesn't address foreign policy, doesn't address what average families are going through because inflation has kicked in. And it's just really wondering, where's the leadership here?

Absolutely. And China and Russia, as you said, have been brought into this conversation maybe more than even I anticipated with Afghanistan when the withdrawal was happening. But now all of a sudden we're seeing situations that have unfolded with whether, you know, we were going to be using Russian military bases or any of China's interests. We've talked now about our allies, but what about our adversaries?

They've been brought into this conversation and we know they both want major influence. So what do we do when we've just abandoned this region? Now, I think you can expect China to go in and make a major move for Bagram Air Force Base. They've wanted the minerals in Afghanistan for a long time. Afghanistan's already said the Taliban has already said they want to work with China.

So we have lost that foothold. I think you're looking all you got to do is turn on the TV or open up your utility bills. Natural gas is going up. Russia. Biden just gave him Nord Stream, too, which gives him all the money he needs, all the influence and power he wants and makes our European allies more vulnerable and dependent on Russia. So, I mean, I think that Russia hacked the U.S. We saw it in the pipeline.

We saw it in the food processing plant. I dealt with Russia enough to know that was Russia's way of not hurting America. It was their way of testing us. They wanted to know how we were going to handle it.

And Biden literally did nothing, which allowed China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, all those that do realize that that is the cheapest form of warfare, you're now going to see further and further hacks that are more and more serious because Biden has shown he's not going to hold anyone accountable. Folks, let me take a minute of your time here because this is a really critical month for the ACLJ. When we launch in the new year, this first month of March, it's a matching challenge month. You hear us more often, we don't do a lot on our broadcasts, but these months it is important because the ACLJ, of course, is a 501c3 organization. We exist because of your financial support. This broadcast, all of our attorneys, all of the cases, all of the work we do here in the United States and around the world, including our work in Israel, our work in the Middle East, our work on behalf of persecuted Christians. If we're representing a governor or a state because of a pro-life law, if we are, again, representing the Heritage Foundation in a fight against the employer vaccine mandate, all of those cases we're able to do because of your financial support be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org today.

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Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Today I'm sitting down with ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Rick Grenell. Ambassador Grenell formerly served as Acting Director of National Intelligence under President Trump.

He also served the U.S. at the United Nations under President George W. Bush and holds the record as the longest serving U.S. spokesman in history at the U.N. Grenell possesses extensive knowledge on foreign policy and national security. Last summer, when we were all talking, Rick, and discussing, we kept saying on the air, no one's talking about ISIS. No one is talking about what's going on in the Middle East. Israel is relatively quiet.

All of these situations were relatively quiet. It wasn't even really a topic in the political debate, in the political sphere. But we kept telling people, just wait. Because this seemed, and look, it was just sad to say.

It just seemed to be the inevitable. And you look at the 20-year war in Afghanistan, obviously, and it's something to speak to, our servicemen, our troops, there were 20 years there of successes that did happen, at least 10. You could at least say 10 years successes, maybe 10 years too long. But 10 years of successes, people were there for a reason.

And these guys all fought and put their lives on the line for a reason. But unfortunately, a lot of people are going to judge this by the ending. It's kind of like a movie. The movie can be great until the last scene, and at the last scene, they blow it. Don't ever think of that as a good movie.

You're going to be like, well, that was horrible. I'm afraid that in many ways, as someone like you, who was involved in the very early stages of this, people will look back and just remember the ending, when so many people did give up their lives to not only protect American interests, but to at least do their best and what their mission was at the time. Such a good analogy. And to keep to that analogy, I would say, let's not focus on the end of the movie.

I think that there are so many redeeming characters in this movie. And what I would say to every single man and woman who fought in Afghanistan, you won for us. You gave us a victory, and that victory was stopping terrorism from coming into the United States. That was their goal. They were sent there to make sure that there wouldn't be a safe haven in Afghanistan so that the terrorists would never be able to do another 9-11.

They wouldn't be able to come at us. We took the fight over there instead of having the fight come to the United States. And the American military won that battle. They did everything right at great cost, incredible sacrifices, limbs and lives. And I think that what we have to remember is that it was the politicians at the end that messed this up, the politicians who decided to keep our men and women there and to change the goal. The goal was no longer just about fighting the immediate threat to U.S. national security, but it was suddenly trying to get little girls to go to school and importing democracy.

All noble goals, but I would say that's not what American men and women in the U.S. military should be doing. The State Department was sidelined. USAID was sidelined. We have to think through these issues more strategically and figure out what part of the U.S. government should be involved. We have a whole huge mission at the United Nations. Maybe it's the U.S. at the U.N. should be much more involved in getting the U.N. to do it. Now, we know that the U.N. does not function unless there's U.S. leadership, but maybe we adjust our goals and we only include the international community and say let's do the best we can. But at the end of the day, I think just focusing on little girls going to school in Afghanistan, having the U.S. military there is not enough because little girls in the Congo can't go to school. Where do we stop? We have to have some sort of rules for engagement of U.S. military men and women on the ground with guns trying to enforce something, and I think that we have to drop back and remember that the goal is just to have U.S. national security not threatened.

I think that's an interesting point to start winding down here with you, Rick. And one thing before we end, I want to talk about you were ambassador to Germany. You involved the U.N. You've dealt with our allies. We're seeing a lot of outcry from our allies.

We're seeing responses from MPs in the U.K. We're seeing a response from France and from other countries saying this is not how we're going to handle it, and also we need to not be turning to the U.S. now to help solve our problems. Somewhat you watch that and go, well, these countries should be operating independently, and it is their own country to worry about. But you also worry about the strength of America. You worry about the superpower kind of concept that we've built here. And if they've lost hope, have we lost our allies in these kind of situations when they see how horrible we handled this big ending in Afghanistan?

This is such a big, important, thoughtful question. We could do a whole segment on what the allies have done and the groundwork that they've laid. I hope that our allies are able to be thoughtful about their role in all of this in the last 20 years, because let's be honest. Our allies all have a country-first foreign policy and domestic policy. In Germany, where I know it well, they have a Germany-first policy. Now, they mock America for having an America-first policy, but every country around the world has their own country first as a motto. We're the only country that gets in trouble for actually articulating the America-first policy. When Donald Trump was asking other countries to step up and do more, and remember the America-first policy is also about allies doing more, NATO doing more, meeting their obligations, we got a big pushback from many allies who didn't want to do more, who are very comfortable with America doing the most and leading the way.

I can tell you, I spent eight years at the UN. Many of the world's problems are brought to the UN, and the UN sits around and waits for the United States to come up with a plan. Then they critique the plan, and they say why this isn't good. Then when we finally settle on something, they say America should pay for it. This is not something where the allies should escape their own process to say what went wrong and what could we have done wrong.

I'll finish by saying this. Many allies really wanted Donald Trump out and Joe Biden in because they wanted a softer America. They wanted an America that would govern by consensus and allow them to be participating in these decisions.

Well, they got that. They got a leader who doesn't put America first, and clearly we've seen in Afghanistan a disaster. Now many of our allies are saying, oh, this is terrible. What can we do differently? I would say that they need to look long and hard at why an America first leader like Donald Trump is better for them. I think that's the challenge of our diplomats. When we talk about America first and we go out around the world to represent America first, there's a way to tell other countries why America first is better for them, especially for NATO allies who are part of our commitment to keeping Western values strong. They have to remember that an America first helps protect them.

It means greater capitalism for everybody, a more solid human rights record for those who want to follow an America first agenda, and it certainly makes the world a safer place. Thanks, Rick. I really appreciate you spending your time and sharing your expertise with all of us. Folks, let me take a minute of your time here because this is a really critical month for the ACLJ. When we launch in the new year, this first month of March, it's a matching challenge month.

You hear us more often. We don't do it a lot on our broadcast, but these months it is important because the ACLJ, of course, is a 501c3 organization. We exist because of your financial support. This broadcast, all of our attorneys, all of the cases, all of the work we do here in the United States and around the world, including our work in Israel, our work in the Middle East, our work on behalf of persecuted Christians, be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org today.

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 $10 gift becomes $20. A $50 gift becomes $100. 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.