The FRONTLINE Interviews
Eugene Robinson
Columnist, The Washington Post
Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post, where he writes on politics and culture.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on June 30, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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The Reaction to 9/11
We start the film with on 9/11, there's this moment of bipartisanship where congressmen and -women from Republicans, Democrats, gather on the steps of the Capitol building, and they sing “God Bless America.” How hard to imagine is that scene taking place today, 20 years later?
It's almost impossible to imagine that happening now.You know, heaven forbid we have another catastrophe, another attack like 9/11, but I'm not sure even that would do it.I'm not sure we could get that sort of national unity and that emblematic view of national unity that we got right after 9/11.It was inspiring at a time when we were all in shock.It was what obviously needed to happen.But things that obviously need to happen don't necessarily happen anymore in Washington.
Give us a better understanding of George Bush around this time, around 9/11.He's looking into the abyss, basically.They fear the next attack at any point.And you've written about this in the past a little bit.Does he see all things that follow through the same prism?How does that affect him in the decisions to come when it comes to the war on terrorism?
The fact that 9/11 happened on the Bush administration's watch, on George Bush's watch, and that there were these signs out there, these unconnected dots that indicated something big was going to happen and something potentially terrible was going to happen, that reality, I think, colored the entire rest of the Bush administration, the whole rest of his tenure.
I remember once interviewing Condi Rice, secretary of state, in her office and talking about this and that, but I said, “You know, I imagine what it must have been like for all of you that day, not knowing, you know, where the next plane would hit, if one was coming toward the White House or the Capitol or what was happening, and so I can imagine what that was like.” And she, you know, put down her pencil and looked at me and said, “No, you can't.You cannot imagine what that was like for us.It was—” And she just explained that it was such a searing experience and that that was the question they were all asking themselves: What could we have done?What did we miss?And how can we make sure this never, ever happens again?
The Mission in Afghanistan
So in Afghanistan, Gen. [Tommy] Franks marches towards Kabul and takes the capital over, and in some ways it seems like there's a belief that that was success in some regards.But the reality of the status quo, the reality of the Taliban, the reality of Al Qaeda, talk about that moment when we are very successful militarily, but—
Right. The United States had no trouble, really, dislodging the Taliban from Kabul and effectively taking over.But then what?Then you've got Afghanistan, right?Then you have this place that has thwarted would-be conquerors going back centuries, and what are you going to do with it?And you know, there's a school of thought that says, in retrospect, at that point the United States should have just declared victory and said, OK, you know, we did what we came to do.We got rid of the Taliban government that harbored Al Qaeda, and our work here is done, and then tried to do some sort of withdrawal.
Now, would that have been any more successful than the policy that was ultimately pursued?I'm not sure.It might have extricated the United States, but Afghanistan was still going to be a mess.The Taliban was still going to be there, and we had not yet captured and/or killed Osama bin Laden, and so that whole question of the people who did this to us, we need to get them.So part of the calculus was, we need to get bin Laden.
Which was going to take quite a few more years.
And it took quite a few more years.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Describe the certitude of the Bush administration, number one, believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but beyond that, that the invasion would be a cakewalk and that reestablishing the society afterwards would also be a cakewalk.
Well, the Bush administration believed, first of all—or certainly said it believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.I've always been uncertain as to how genuine that certainty was, given the evidence they cited which seemed certainly, to me, to be shaky.I'm willing to believe that there are some in the administration, including the president, who perhaps really did believe that.And again, the context is 9/11 must never happen again; nothing like that must be allowed to occur.And so the thought of Saddam Hussein, this brutal, unstable dictator, having weapons of mass destruction, sure, that is an obvious threat if you believe he does have those weapons.
The problem was, the evidence was shaky to nonexistent.There were a lot of critics at the time who pointed that out.But there were also—there was also an amen chorus in Washington that was sort of willing to go along with the administration on the chance that it was right.Our editorial page was, at <i>The Washington Post</i>, was supportive of the invasion and believed that the evidence, the weight of the evidence did indicate that Hussein at least had a project to develop weapons of mass destruction, if not the weapons themselves, and that he was a danger.
There was also, along with that fear, there was this idealistic view that, number one, we would be greeted as liberators when we rolled into Baghdad; and number two, that it would be not necessarily easy, but certainly not impossible, and maybe not all that hard to convert Iraq into a democracy, a functioning democracy in the Middle East.And there was a belief that doing so would change the equation in the Middle East, in the most unstable region in the world; that having a sort of thriving, stable democracy in one of the major countries, at the heart of the Middle East, would change the dynamic in that region and in the long term would perhaps lead to a more peaceful region and a more peaceful world.That was the—that was the thinking.
In retrospect, of course, it was complete pie in the sky.It was—and but I do believe that [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [Secretary of State Donald] Rumsfeld and Bush and [then-Secretary of State Colin] Powell, all of them sort of convinced themselves that this was a possible scenario, that it actually could turn out to be a great thing for the Iraqi people and for the greater Middle East.
And you mentioned Powell.Powell's speech at the U.N. we've been focused on, is a very important point, but at that point, this was an America that was kind of ready to believe that we should be willing to march into Iraq?
Yeah, America was genuinely willing to believe that, yes, it was necessary, in fact, to march into Iraq.And again, there were those who had doubts and who said, wait a minute, what are we doing here?But those voices were largely drowned out.You know, you can go back, and you can look at the media coverage of the run-up to the invasion, and you can find plenty of skeptical stories asking, do we really have the evidence?Is this really such a great idea?But those are vastly outnumbered by coverage that was, frankly, sort of, you know, rah-rah, let's go get 'em.And so, rah-rah, we went and got 'em.And again, then what?
That is the question.So what does Bush leave for the next president to handle?
George W. Bush left a really complicated legacy.He left two continuing, messy, expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that we are still trying to extricate ourselves from all these years later, all these decades later, two decades later.You know, when I talk about Bush, I always mention that he also did one thing not related to the Middle East, but one thing that was really powerful and that saved millions of lives, which was the PEPFAR program, the program that he established, against political and some scientific advice, to provide antiretroviral drugs, anti-HIV drugs to Southern Africa.And that's something he did because it was the right thing.And it saved millions of lives; it's very clear.So when I sort of try to tot up the balance of the Bush administration, I can't forget that, that that was a really good thing.
But he left his successor these two wars.And by the way, he also left his successor a financial crisis.You know, the global financial system was on the brink of collapse or in the process of collapse, and so Barack Obama had quite a lot on his plate when he came into office.
The Obama Years
So let's talk about the Obama years for a little bit.He comes in with a different idea about how to fight the war on terrorism, as the Bush folks would call it.He's certainly not a dove, but what's his view entering, not talking about the economy and everything else he has to deal with, but specifically on what he should do, what he had to do when it came to the wars?
Well, Obama's analysis, sort of global analysis of the situation was that Afghanistan was the right war and Iraq was the wrong war, right?He said, yes, we're right to invade Afghanistan because that's where the Taliban had been, and that's—so the focus there was justified, and that the invasion of Iraq was not justified and that should not have taken place.Nonetheless, there we were in both places.And so he had to prosecute both these wars even as he wanted to try to find some way to extricate ourselves from Iraq certainly, and to bring Afghanistan to some sort of close, and to get bin Laden.
He was getting a lot of conflicting advice.His vice president, Joe Biden, had the idea that a unified democratic Iraq was not going to ever happen and that in fact one thing to think about was a kind of partition, that there would be a Kurdish, little Kurdish state and maybe a Sunni state and a Shiite state, and that maybe that was the most stable situation we could leave behind.I don't think—Obama never really bought that, and who knows if that would have been possible anyhow, especially given the views of Iraq's neighbors, which were pretty much uniformly against that sort of thing?
So Obama had a mess.He also had the excesses that had to be ended, you know, the secret prisons and the torture and all of that, that he had to end.So he—it was a very complicated and difficult situation.And he moved in some ways rather slowly to correct or to reel in excesses that he had identified, that he had criticized on the campaign trail.But it took him a while to get around to actually ending some of these.
He wins understanding the domestic 9/11 fallout.So does he have a plan to avoid those same very powerful forces on his future?
Which forces?What do you mean?
The fact is, is that post-9/11 and the decisions that had been made and the quagmires that had been created was the reason he got in, because people were fed up with it.But he was deep into that quagmire as soon as he walked in the door.Did he understand that?Did he have some sort of plan to evade the quagmire, get the hell out and not to look as muddy as the former president had?
Yeah, he had a plan.That was his plan: I'm going to get out of the quagmire, and I'm not going to be trapped by these wars the way George W. Bush was.But, you know, in any war, the enemy gets a vote, right, and reality gets a vote.And the reality was that there was no easy way to sort of extricate the United States from either conflict.And so he had these meetings with his generals, and the generals would say, look, you know, if we pull out, this is what's going to happen.It’s going to be a disaster here; it's going to be a disaster there.And indeed, the generals were certainly right.I mean, it was not—he did not have easy choices.
He also was left with, for example, all the sort of secret data collection of our—aimed at Americans, not—you know, the National Security Agency, because of a secret ruling by the FISA Court, secret FISA Court, was collecting metadata on all of our phone calls, which is just absolutely outrageous.And Obama was sort of left with that situation that nobody knew about.Nobody was allowed to know that this was going on.No one was even allowed to know that the Patriot Act had been reinterpreted by the secret FISA Court to allow this metadata collection.And Obama let it, you know—he rode with it, right?He did not end that program.Even though he had promised to end not just torture, but any illegal sort of surveillance that was happening, he let that go on until Edward Snowden forced his hand.
Was he therefore consumed to some extent by the same fear that Bush had had, the fact that there is always the possibility of another attack, and then what?
Absolutely.It had—that feeling had not worn off by 2009 when Obama took office, the feeling that there could be another 9/11.Bin Laden was still out there.Who knew, you know?We knew we had captured a lot of key Al Qaeda figures, but we hadn't got the big cheese; we didn't know whether or not they could be planning some sort of follow-up attack or attempting some sort of follow-up attack.So yes, he—he sort of inherited and was—was not unaffected by that feeling that, you know, it could happen again, and I have to do everything I can to keep it from happening again.
And so the NSA surveillance, for example, I think it was just more convenient and perhaps seemed safer just to let it continue rather than to—rather than to end it.The intelligence community liked having it.There's never been an indication that it produced anything worthwhile, really, any sort of leads to—it didn't find bin Laden for us or anything like that.And it was clearly not Congress' intention to allow that sort of domestic surveillance.And Obama's a very, very smart man and a constitutional scholar, and he knew that.But he let it ride.
Afghanistan.So he also early on sends in more troops that the general wanted, reluctantly.And he defined in that speech where he states exactly how many troops—30,000 troops in all would be going in.He also gives a deadline.That deadline becomes a point of contention amongst a lot of experts, that it was a huge mistake.What's your overview about that moment, that decision and the way a lot of people viewed it?
Well, I think President Obama was torn between his—every fiber which wanted to get us out of both of these wars and end this, and the advice he was getting from the military and the warnings that he was—withdrawal would be disastrous and that if we got out, we inevitably have to get back in at some point.And so I think he was pulled in these two directions.So he came up with, you know, we're going to get out; we're going to set a deadline.A lot of people thought it was a mistake to set a deadline.I think he did so to underline his seriousness and real intention to do everything he could to get—to get out of the business of trying to fight a war in Afghanistan that can't be won.
Obama’s Use of Drones
Let's turn to drones for a second here.So he turns to drones as an answer, as a more precise way to damage the enemy, the specific enemy they were after.Talk a little bit about it.You call it “immoral” in a lot of ways.What were the consequences of it?Why does he turn to drones, and what were the consequences?
You know, the president turned to drones because it's a way of waging the war without putting so many American lives at risk.And it's a longer discussion about the sort of morality of robot war, but that's kind of—this is kind of the dawn of robot war, right, where we are—drones were not acting autonomously, but being operated at a distance, often from, you know, out of Nevada or whatever, and are able to remotely destroy a house or a convoy or whatever, and kill a lot of people.
And I remember speaking with Obama about drone strikes and about how in many cases, the question of whether to launch a particular strike came all the way up to him.He wanted to know what the risks were, what the risks were potentially to civilians, bystanders, how sure the military was that the target of a strike was there.But it's sort of war by assassination and I think that's morally problematic.I mean, it's something that we didn't think through; we didn't talk through.It may be too late for that now.That's kind of where we are.But I do want to emphasize that I believe Obama sincerely understood the sort of moral hazard involved in drone warfare, and I think he sincerely made every attempt to mitigate that hazard by being involved.And he said that some of the most difficult moments of his presidency were when he, you know, gave the go-ahead for a drone strike against a particular target just knowing that, because of the nature of those strikes, it might kill not just the target, but it might kill others as well.
So let's turn to the blowback at home on what has been going on in both these presidential terms.And we can take it in two parts.It's probably easier.The territory I want to go down is, by the end of his term, he's got adversaries on both sides, left and right, that are very angry at him because of the decisions he made.We're leading up to this United States that is so divided in so many ways.First, talk about the blowback that he was getting from the left.
Well, you know, Obama did a lot to curb some of the worst excesses of the Bush administration, including torture.The unforgivable practice of torture, he ended that.But there was impatience and anger on the left, among some on the left, that he hadn't done more; that he hadn't ended the war in Iraq that he had opposed; that he hadn't made more progress toward getting us out of Afghanistan, which he had promised to do; and that we were still bogged down in these two forever wars when he left office just as when he took office.So yeah, so there was impatience and frustration on the left.
On the right, it was, I think, the anger at Obama was more—was less about the specifics of his policy in Iraq or Afghanistan than it was about the sort of inchoate anger against, you know, against him for being him, for being, for being Barack Hussein Obama, for being the person that some on the right were falsely convinced was a Kenyan Muslim, for being the first Black president of the United States; I mean, let's be honest.That wasn't vocalized, but that was there.And you know, you saw that sort of diffuse, nonspecific but intense anger surface in domestic situations, like the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the rise of the Tea Party and all of that.And so that was the kind of anger that I think was coming from the right, less about the specific policies than just about Obama.
The Trump Years
So you've got this anger and distrust and fear, still, on both sides.I suppose sort of a perfect opportunity for an outsider to come in and exploit the moment?
Apparently so.
Politically speaking, of course.
Apparently so.Apparently it was the right moment.I think that the rise of Donald Trump, in retrospect, historians will trace to any number of factors, one, I absolutely believe that Barack Obama had been the first Black president of the United States and served as president at a time when the country has been becoming more diverse.By the year 2045 or something like that, there will be no sort of white Anglo majority in this country anymore; we'll all be minorities.And I think Obama's presidency, for some white Americans, for quite a few white Americans, sort of brought that reality home and made them very anxious about it.So I think that was part of what Trump was able to exploit.
And so he comes onto the scene.He descends the escalator at Trump Tower and in that first speech as a candidate goes after Latino immigrants in a sort of vicious, visceral way that people sort of respond to.And people who believed, who had the sense that somehow they were losing their country, had somebody to vocalize that just in flat-out terms: You're losing your country; it's being taken away from you by these immigrants, by these minorities, by, you know, all these people.Remember that Trump was the sort of leading birther in, you know, propounding the theory that Obama wasn't even an American.
And there were, frankly, more people receptive to that idea than I had thought.I wasn't one of those who, as Trump was campaigning and kept saying outrageous, crazy things and doing outrageous, crazy things that would have killed any other candidacy, I wasn't one that kept writing, “Oh, well, finally, now, this time, the Trump campaign is over after he attacked John McCain,” or this or that, because I'd always wait a day or so, and I'd see his numbers climb in the polls.And so I wrote—I remember writing two columns about Trump during that campaign in 2015 and 2016 before he became the nominee and wrote one that said he was “a farce to be reckoned [with]” and that people really needed to pay attention to him because he was gaining in the polls and he was hitting some sort of nerve that I might not fully understand, but that the other Republican candidates had better try to figure out fast, because he was gaining on you.
And as he went further up in the polls, I wrote a column that compared him to Godzilla in a kind of favorable way in that—in the sense that, you know, Godzilla is stomping around, and the poor people of Tokyo who were getting smashed decide, oh, we're going to kill him with, you know, electricity or a nuclear blast or something like that, and they try it, and it just makes Godzilla stronger.And the point was that traditional political attacks against Trump were just making him stronger.And I confess that I didn't understand why this was happening, but it was happening.And obviously it happened because he was—became the 45th president of the United States.
And his victory, due to some extent of the aftershock of 9/11 and his ability to use it as a wedge issue?
9/11's aftershocks are so sort of deep and profound that I think you can find their echo everywhere, including in Trump's election.But there were also—there's also a confluence of other circumstances, I think.The fact that he followed Obama at a time when white Americans, many white Americans were freaked out about the increasing diversity in the country; the fact that he was running against Hillary Clinton, who had such high negatives, who was so—such a, frankly, unpopular person and political figure and who brought back memories of the Clinton years and scandals of those years, and this and that; and just a lot of things had to come together in order for Donald Trump to become president.And it's frankly something I never imagined happening until the date it happened.I thought Clinton was going to win that election, and she did not.
Obama came in assuming that his interests were to become this domestic healer.His interests were on the domestic side.He was going to restore the values lost after 9/11.But did the war loom larger than he expected, and did that in fact overcome his presidency to some extent, because he ends up being seen as the war president in some ways?Despite all the other things that he did, despite health care, despite Iran, despite Paris Accords, did the war loom so large that it affected really his entire presidency?
I think obviously the war did affect his entire presidency, because it was an immense drain on resources and attention and on American lives.You know, Americans kept getting killed and injured.It was a strain on the military.It created a strain on the budget, because Obama, you know, regularized the budget process, and that put a strain on—on finances.
So yeah, the wars were always—were always a factor, when what Obama really wanted to do was—was, you know, an ambitious domestic program.And he got to do a good deal of it, but not all of it.I think the wars were a factor in that.
He also had other—he also had, you know, ambitious ideas about foreign policy that he didn't get to implement.He had an idea—I remember talking to him about it before, either right before or right after he announced that he was—he thought he could broker a real sort of détente between India and Pakistan by fixing that little Kashmir problem for them, and then that would make it easier for Pakistan to back off its support of the Taliban, and then he could finally get, you know, we could be done with Afghanistan.
Well, you know, turned out that little Kashmir was more of a problem, and he never—but he never really got to even make a, you know, serious, all-out attempt to do that because, you know, events, including the wars, intervened.
So what does Trump inherit, then, as far as what Obama hands off to him as far as the Middle East?
Well, you know, Trump comes in having run on a—you know, an untraditional Republican platform of ending the wars, right, and the claim that he had been against the Iraq War, although that's kind of doubtful.We can't find him—evidence or a record that he was against the war, but he claimed that he was against it from the beginning.And he was determined to end it.And I think he kind of came in as a neoisolationist in a way, and I think he, too, was really determined, as quickly as he possibly could, to end the wars, and just by temperament somewhat less restrained, or temperamentally less restrained in all things but including in this than Obama was or that Bush was.
But he, too, found it impossible just to say, OK, it's over, bring everybody home, which I think he would have liked to do.
Discuss the dichotomy of Donald Trump when it comes to the military and the wars.He was very pro-military; he was very pro a lot of the more aggressive military actions that Obama had done—so the drones.And he upped it in many ways, and the assassinations, bombings and stuff.But on the other side of it, he was against his generals and the idea that he wanted to pull out.He wanted to pull the troops out no matter what, and he wanted to do it in immediate ways.And he also wanted to negotiate with the Taliban despite no input from the experts.What was going on?What was that dichotomy all about?
Well, you know, you're asking me to get inside Donald Trump's head, and that's not an easy or safe place to be.Nonetheless, I think that the thing for Trump was to look and be tough, and he always wanted to look and be tough.He never wanted to appear, you know, weak or tentative or—so he wanted to be tough and decisive and a real—that was his image of what a real leader was like.
But I think he sincerely believed that these wars had gone on too long and were a drain on resources and on, you know, blood and treasure, and he wanted to end them.And so he was pulled in those—in those two directions, I think genuinely.
The negotiations with the Taliban that Trump agrees to, was that an admission of defeat by the United States?
I think it was an admission of reality.I mean, it's always been the fact that the Taliban live there, right?They're not going anywhere.And so it always made sense, I thought, to at least acknowledge that fact.And if you're not capable of defeating them militarily and sort of wiping out the Taliban, and we're not capable of doing that, then the alternative is to talk to them and to try to see if it's possible to bring them into any sort of coalition or arrangement that we can live with and that they can live with and that it's not, you know, it's not in and of itself some new kind of disaster.
So I don't think it's an admission of defeat, although I'm sure that some people would see it like that.
Trump was always good at using fear, but by 2020, the enemy, the existential threat was no longer overseas.It was his enemies; it was antifa; it was Black Lives Matter; it was Democratic Socialists.And he uses it in a very productive fashion for himself.What happened?What was he doing, this war at home, and how it raised the temperature of the hatred and the division that has been growing since 9/11?
Well, you know, from the beginning, Trump was most interested in fighting this culture war, and I think part of it genuinely worked for him politically.But he was going to take the side of traditional white America against the sort of new America that was developing and that was gaining power.And that was his position.And in 2020, amid all sorts of huge events, like the pandemic and this and that, you know, we have the murder of George Floyd and then—and then that whole sort of conflict which was at times, you know, subsumed or unspoken, it just comes all out into the open, and Trump clearly takes sides.You know, he wants to smash the Black Lives Matter protesters and demonstrate the sort of strength.And he wants to use that, use the protests as a way of rallying his base, and of course he has his eye on the election, but he's thinking of that as a winning electoral strategy as well.
He's also using the tools of antiterrorism.He's using DHS; he's using military.
Yes, that's right.He wants to use the military.I mean, he wants to—you know, he has people, you know, drafting orders under the Insurrection Act.I mean, it's just—it is unbelievable, but it actually happened.
Twenty Years Later
So Jan. 6 happens.Let's talk about that, the summation here.This is 20 years after the bipartisan actions of congressmen on the steps of the Capitol in a Capitol building that had been the target of bin Laden to be taken down on that same day.Well, 20 years, lo and behold, later, there's a very different group that's after that building and after the democratic elections that were being discussed in it.And they are successful in breaking in, with the imprimatur of the president of the United States.How did we get here?
I think Jan. 6 is the product of a couple of decades, really, of social, economic, cultural change that has really been upheaval for a lot of people in this country.And I mean, look at the Republican Party today.Donald Trump changed the Republican Party from being a party that at least professed belief in fiscal responsibility, that at least professed belief in a muscular, consistent foreign policy that was ideologically conservative into a party that's more of a cult of personality.And the ground was fertile for that.I think because so many people in so many parts of the country have seen their local economy sort of hollowed out, have seen the ravages of the opioid crisis, have seen—have listened to promises of politicians over time and have seen their own lives becoming more precarious and their futures becoming less certain, I think that's a contributing factor.
I think at the same time, you've seen African Americans and others asserting themselves and asserting their right to enjoy all the freedoms and advantages and benefits of being an American in a way that some other people found threatening, I think.And so all this sort of came together after George Floyd and would remain at a pretty sustained pitch for the whole rest of the year.
And then we get to, you know, Trump loses the election.He makes this ridiculous claim that he actually won, and the cult of personality believes him.
And the decisions of three presidents over 20 years and endless wars and lies about weapons of mass destruction and interrogations that lead to torture, how did all of that affect the division in America?
Well, I think all of that shook the sort of consensus faith in our leaders, in our institutions.I think a lot of people on every side of political issues and every side of the spectrum felt they had been lied to, they had been betrayed, and in a certain way they had been used.And so there was a feeling, I think, and it's—and the wars, the endless wars certainly contributed to this, that the country was somehow not just on the wrong track but losing the capacity to win, to succeed, to get things done, to bring things to an end and have a tickertape parade and this and that, that we were always just bogged down in the sort of endless conflict.
And I think it was frustrating to everyone.And I think it sort of helped create the atmosphere in which Jan. 6 could happen.Nonetheless, again, Jan. 6—on Jan. 5, unimaginable that Jan. 6 would happen the way it happened, that even though it was easy to see there could be trouble in Washington, that the crowd would actually storm the Capitol, actually get into the Capitol, actually threaten the lives of the vice president and the speaker of the House and all the members of Congress in that way is still shocking to me, and it's still hard for me to believe it actually happened.
And lastly, Biden's decision to pull out, to follow through with the agreement and to extend the deadline and pull the troops completely out of Afghanistan, what do you think the significance of that is?With the bottom line is the reality it's very possible that the Taliban will take over and a lot of the benefits of the past 20 years for women, for minorities, for other people within that community will be lost.What is the significance of this decision by President Biden?
President Biden has always, back when he was a senator and certainly when he was vice president, he has always been on the skeptical side in terms of both wars, what we can accomplish in both places in terms of nation building.And I think he is mindful of what will be—will potentially happen when we do pull out of Afghanistan.But I think it's not just because Trump made the agreement.I think he believes it's time.I think he believes that wars shouldn't last forever and that we're not going to—that another year or five years or 10 years is not going to materially change the situation, and that this is not analogous to the way we have kept, you know, some U.S. forces in Japan or in Germany or in places.This is not analogous to that at all.Afghanistan isn't Japan or Germany post-World War II. It's not that sort of democratic or that functioning society.It's not going to be in the foreseeable future.And so if we stay, we're going to be keeping the peace and nation building, or trying to do nation building in a way that probably will not succeed even if we try.
So I think that's his view.
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