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Aug. 19, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
29:58
Gen Don Bolduc
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This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, news roundup information overload hours, Sean Hannity Show 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, I'm tired of the lie.
I inherited this plan.
This is, it wasn't my plan.
I inherited this plan.
I decided to withdraw because I was abiding by the Trump peace deal with the Taliban.
Now, we've interviewed Donald Trump.
We've interviewed Mark Meadows.
We've interviewed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is on record as saying this is not the Trump plan.
It never was the Trump plan.
The Trump plan was predicated, one, on the understanding, first and foremost, that if you do not abide by the agreement, every comma, every I, every T, every I dotted, every T crossed, every period, that you will be blown into another century.
That was point one.
In other words, when they got to 2% of the country, there would have been a massive military response like Donald Trump did with the Caliphate in Syria as he defeated them.
He made sure before any further discussions continued, he said it to the leader of the Taliban.
Now, Joe can release that transcript.
They love to release Donald Trump transcripts with foreign leaders.
Release that one.
I'd love for the world to see it and read it and understand it and know that Joe is lying.
You'd never implemented the Trump plan.
So stop saying like what you said here to ABC News and stop lying about it.
Look, George, the reason why it's been stable for a year is because the last president said we're leaving.
And here's the deal I wanted to make with you, Taliban.
We're agreeing to leave if you agree not to attack us between now and the time we leave on May the 1st.
Less than two months after I elected to office, you have sworn in, all of a sudden, I am a May 1 deadline.
I'm a May 1 deadline.
I got one of two choices.
Do I say we're staying?
And do you think we would not have to put a hell of a lot more troops?
We had tens of thousands of troops there before.
Tens of thousands.
Do you think we would have just said, no problem?
Don't worry about it.
We're not going to attack anybody.
We're okay.
In the meantime, the Taliban was taking territory all throughout the country in the north and down in the south in the Pashtun.
Would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban?
I would have tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes.
Because look, George, there is no good time to leave Afghanistan.
15 years ago would have been a problem.
15 years from now.
You could have planned for an orderly removal of Americans first, Joe.
You could have followed the Trump threat up because they didn't start advancing until you became president.
There hadn't been an American killed in Afghanistan in a year and a half before you came into office.
And no good time.
There's always a good time to have an orderly drawdown and even withdrawal with conditions based on the ground, as President Trump told me this week.
Mike Pompeo has told us.
Mike Pence has said, and Mark Meadows has confirmed.
Some believe that.
The worst part is the Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby.
I don't know how many, I have no idea how many Americans are trapped in Afghanistan.
Why not?
How many American citizens remain in Afghanistan?
I don't know.
The State Department would be a better place to go for an estimate of how many Americans are Afghanistan or in and around Kabul.
That is not a figure that the United States military would know.
And I think, as you also know, not every American citizen in another country, there's no obligation that they register their presence And that you can have a a perfect accurate count.
The same people that want to cite Farah laws and the Logan Act.
Okay.
Anyway, joining us now, former Brigadier General Don Bolduck is with us.
Torrey Richards over at the Washington Examiner had a great interview with the Brigadier General.
Sir, welcome to the program.
Thank you for being with us.
You did 10 tours of duty in Afghanistan after 9-11, sir.
I did from 2001 to 2013, 10 tours, and I lost 72 service members I did not bring home.
So I have an idea what the sacrifice was and the successes.
And I was sad to see what we've done there.
And I characterize it like you, sir, as an unmitigated disaster unparalleled in political and military history.
Terrible.
You received five bronze stars, two purple hearts before retiring in 2017.
You're running for the Senate in New Hampshire.
It's an honor to meet you, General.
I read your comments.
I'll let you, in your own words, you've described it similarly as I have as an Adam Schiff show.
And, you know, tell me if I'm wrong in my assessment that right now, where we are today, I don't see any military option because we know what the Taliban will do with 15,000, according to Joe, Americans behind enemy lines or around 15,000.
Well, yes, there's only one thing to do, and unfortunately, it's a U-turn.
I agree with your assessment on President Trump's plan.
I also know that seven years ago, the Obama administration, and if I'm correct, the vice president was part of that, made a terrible decision to change our strategy from a counterinsurgency strategy bottom-up that was being very successful.
And we did have a mark on the wall of 2016 where we would be completely done with the transition of that program.
And the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, we believe, would have been successfully defeated.
So when he says that he never heard of a plan or saw a plan, he's absolutely wrong because as vice president of the last administration, him, Susan Rice, the president, the National Security Council, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and all the leadership in Afghanistan knew this to be true.
And when we told them it was a bad idea to change strategy, they didn't listen.
They went to non-combat operations, and that set in the Taliban taking over the rural areas, a reversal in the security situation, which has led to this unmitigated disaster.
And they used the 2011 Iraq plan basically as the plan for Afghanistan.
They knew better.
General Milley knew better.
General Austin knew better, or Secretary Austin.
They all knew better.
I was a subordinate commander for them in 2012 and 13.
They knew the deal.
And they also knew that the assessment of the Afghan National Security Forces since 2005 has been that they cannot defeat the Taliban on their own.
So given all the equipment they have and all the training they have and so on and so forth, that's great.
But they still, in 2021, could not defeat the Taliban.
They own the rural areas, so it was just a hop, skip, and a jump.
So they know they're dealing with a weak administration.
They know they're dealing with a Pentagon that's in disarray that's focusing more on teaching CRT and social-emotional learning than they are on employing the great men and women in our military to defeat our enemies.
So, hey, what we need to do, we need to take back all our airfields.
And that's all the airfields, and I'll name them for you.
The ones in Herat, the one in Marjar Sharif, the one in Conduz, the one in Kabul, the one in Kandahar.
And we need to take all those back, set up a breakout and break out and take the presidential or excuse me, the provincial capitals back.
And then we need to put our special ops guys on the ground and re-establish the village stability Afghan local police and then push them out of the rural areas.
You're saying anything short of a full engagement just keeps us in the current holding pattern, which is the Taliban controls the fate of 15,000-plus Americans, never mind the Afghanis that were interpreters and assisted us, that were promised safe haven if this day ever came?
Exactly, exactly.
And we have people that are retired and we have people that are in there that know how to do this.
We need to put them in charge and leave them alone.
Let them get this thing done.
We beat them before in 2001, 2002.
We beat them again between 2010 and 2013 before Obama changed strategy.
We did it before.
We can do it again.
We know how to do it.
And we just got to show them strength because right now they see weakness and they're not going to listen to us.
And it's going to imperil American lives.
You know, like so many Americans, I think these endless wars have to, we can't do what we've been doing, have kids go door to door in Baghdad.
I think there's a lesson to be learned from the way that Donald Trump defeated the caliphate, which grew under Biden and Obama.
And that is he systematically, as they took over, for example, Syria, Iraq and Syria, he just bombed them backwards, and he took over each piece of territory.
The problem we now find ourselves immersed in is quite challenging.
And that is we've got 15,000 or so American lives on the line and the risk that they will be used A as human shields and B, that they will, you know, we know what they're capable of and what they would do and probably put that video out to the entire world without getting too graphic, General.
Yeah, well, you're absolutely right, Sean.
And that's why Afghanistan, if we're going to do this right, and it won't take forever again, but unfortunately, we've done it wrong for so long and we've done this wrong that we just can't go in and do the same kind of bombing that we did in Syria because of the collateral damage that you just talked about.
So you're saying short of this massive military presence and operation, you don't see any other way to successfully control the destiny of American citizens now that are ostensibly trapped or pretty much a hostage to the Taliban and the perimeter they created around Karzai International Airport?
Unless the Taliban decide to completely allow them and support transportation of American citizens to Kabul to get them out, absolutely not.
Is there any possibility that this promise that they're making America or that General Milley is repeating and our defense secretary and national security advisor is saying they have promised safe passage to Karzai International Airport?
Is there any possibility you believe that to be true in any way or you do not believe that's possible?
I don't believe that's possible, sir.
My experience there, what I understand about it, how I have fought there, how I have employed other American service members to fight there, sitting across the table from the Taliban and negotiating deals with them in rural areas.
No, I don't believe that that can happen.
I think it's irresponsible for any of them to tell the American people that that can happen.
But in hindsight, if we're going to do a full withdrawal, there was a way to do it and identify where every American was.
And before the Taliban advanced this far, we could have very safely, very securely extracted everybody, every American and everybody that we had promised safe haven to.
Yes, President Trump had the plan.
But instead of holding the airfields we had all over the country and bringing in the appropriate aircraft and the appropriate support and then holding the Taliban off and bringing Americans and bringing our interpreters and other workers that we were going to get out of Afghanistan and then safely doing that and then saying, okay, Afghanistan, government, figure out what kind of government you want here.
And then we wouldn't have this mess.
But we didn't do that, sir.
And you know, I mean, I'm speaking to the choir here.
We can see we didn't do that.
There was a right way to do it.
We didn't do it the right way.
So now we're stuck with the harder way.
And this isn't Iraq.
This isn't Syria.
It's much different.
And I wouldn't trust the Taliban as far as I could troll one of those guys.
I mean, that is the great danger.
I know that the Department of Defense generals knew in 2005 there was a problem with the military.
You created a program that involved local police in the villages and that they were trained to combat the Taliban specifically.
By the way, now the Taliban is equipped with billions of dollars of American technology and weaponry, General.
That scares me too.
Yeah, it scares me too.
And when I saw the M4s on the shelves and I saw all that equipment there, you know, I mean, I just, you know, I obviously had to shake my head and go, wow, this is, but it's not unexpected.
And to stand there and say that they had the capability to beat the Taliban, they didn't.
The Afghan local police routinely beat the Taliban in the village areas.
Why?
Because that's where they worked.
That's where they lived.
That's where their family was.
And they didn't want the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to hurt their family.
Different investment and mindset and will, right?
The Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Military, I mean, it was a national organization that completely excluded the idea of regionalism.
So they had Afghans in the north who are Uzbek and Tajik descent down in the southern portion, which were Pashto's.
They didn't even speak the language.
They didn't do anything.
They weren't invested to stay there.
That's why AWOL rates were so high.
Leadership, I mean, they would stop fighting, right?
They would literally stop fighting because they didn't want to shoot other Muslims.
Another thing the leadership knew about that, you know, a lot of Americans don't, they would stop shooting.
And our guys would come out of their cover and concealed positions and go grab them and say, oh, hey, get out.
Come on.
Come on, fight.
And then our guys would get hit.
And so it shouldn't be a surprise that any of this happened based off of the way they did it, sir.
I can't thank you enough.
I mean, your, you know, five bronze stars speak for themselves.
Your two purple hearts speak for themselves.
Your ten tours of duty in Afghanistan speaks for itself, sir.
And it's a chilling, chilling scenario you're describing.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for being with us.
Good luck in your race.
We're going to follow it closely in New Hampshire.
We really appreciate you being on the program today, sir.
Thank you for having me on the program.
God bless you.
Thank you for what you do to bring the truth to the American people.
God bless our fellow citizens.
Yeah.
Thank you, sir.
We'll continue.
When we come back straight to the phones, 800-941-Sean, as we continue our coverage of this unmitigated disaster of Joe Biden's making in Afghanistan, straight ahead.
25 till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean is our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
You know, I know that in certain there's things in life, you know, Linda, you can relate to this as a parent.
You got a six-year-old, right?
That are out of your control.
You know, I kid around with my daughter, and I said, you know, I liked it so much better when I had complete and total control of everything.
I say that to both my kids.
I mean, it may sound a little mean, but I like the feeling of being in control of things.
When you have a six-year-old, you're in control, but you're not totally in control, right?
Okay, there's going to be these intervening years, and you're going to realize you control pretty much everything.
All you got to do is say, okay, I'm taking your iPhone, I'm taking your iPad, I'm taking your computer, and you're going to have to stay in your room.
And guess what?
You'll get full compliance.
Those are the good years.
Then they begin to drift off into their own independence and life, and it gets a little more difficult.
In the world in which there is horrific evil, where there are people that are fanatics, we call them Islamic fundamentalists.
Now we're looking at the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
And to not completely prepare for logistically the extraction of our fellow Americans and then get to the point where all of it is now out of our control.
Well, Hannity, you just had on General Bullduck, a brigadier general, and he just said, he's saying that either the Taliban cooperates, which is always a possibility, won't be because of anything Joe Biden does or did or even threatens.
If they decide to let the Americans make a safe passage to the Hamid Karzai International Airport, then, okay, this issue will be resolved, but it's not in our control anymore.
Joe Biden gave up all leverage, all power that he inherited, every bit of it.
And that is the tragedy that is this.
And takes no responsibility, claims it was inevitable, and claims it was factored in.
That is all a lie.
We had full, complete, total command and control over this situation.
But he gave it away.
And then they're like, surprised.
Well, you know, you got to see what was happening.
It wasn't hard to see.
And that is that, you know, Joe is telling us, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, no, no, no, this is one of the best trained militaries in the face of the planet.
300,000 strong, and they even have an Air Force.
And the Taliban only has 75,000 fighters.
That's it.
They said, no, under no circumstances will we see helicopters on top of embassies rescuing people.
You know, it's how do you not see it?
How do you not understand it?
You know, we know about the Taliban.
We've known all about them.
It's madness.
All out of our control at this point.
The situation then now is therefore dire.
The Taliban are brutal, evil terrorists.
We've been showing you pictures last night: a woman murdered by the Taliban for the crime of not wearing a head covering.
Another woman had her eyes gouged out.
We know all about the Taliban.
Yeah, she had a job as a police officer.
Taliban fighters cut off one woman's ears and nose after she attempted to flee from her husband, who she was forced to marry when she was only a child.
Taliban, just today and yesterday, fighters going door to door.
They're now enslaving young women and forcing them and little girls to be their sex slaves.
The interpreters, former Afghani military personnel, other families now being executed.
Some hung, some dismembered, some shot, some beheaded.
They even opened fire on a group of protesters that flew the Afghan flag.
You see that they're not stupid.
You know, militarily, you know, they did something, you know, if you want control and you want power, they surrounded the perimeter of Hamid Karzai International Airport.
And our own State Department is saying, we advise you now to begin to make your way to the airport, but we cannot ensure your safety.
How comforting.
One Taliban fighter pictured whipping people trying to get to the airport.
Man was kicked in the face, abducted on the back of his pickup truck.
It's happening to media people as well.
May not agree with their coverage, but they're Americans and I want them home safely so they can write how horrible I am.
I want our fellow Americans home.
We lost contact with people that we've been in touch with.
Linda, you saw Sarah Carlo last night breaking down on TV.
You know how often she was there?
You were part of all of this.
Yeah, I mean, I think the hardest part for all of us right now is just, you know, no control.
No control and also just the fact that there's just, it's this group of people who are so concerned with the way things look as opposed to the way things are.
And that doesn't help anybody who's trying to save themselves from what is actually happening on the ground.
I mean, we've got little kids and women.
And if you look at the people that are being evacuated, it's not the little kids and women.
It's not the American citizens.
It's not the civilians.
I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know what they're doing.
We'll get to the point.
I know people have wanted me to say that they all have to go.
They all have to be fired.
They do.
Joe Biden's not capable of being president.
I actually thought watching the Stephanopoulos interview, and I do agree, I want to see the unedited version.
They need to release the entire video online.
I want to see the whole thing.
There's been calls for that.
Because I suspect that's the best they got from Biden in terms of supporting him politically.
Let's get to our busy telephones here.
Let's say hi to Lee is in Florida.
Lee, glad you called, sir.
Thanks for being with us.
Hey, thanks, Sean.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thanks for everything you do.
There's only a few of you out there that we hear from, you, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson.
I'd like to know where everybody else is on this.
You're not hearing anything from anybody.
Everything I wanted to say, you need to keep playing the track back from last night that Mark Levine said.
He couldn't say it any better than anybody else.
I watched your show last night.
He was dead on.
And you need to keep playing that track over and over and over.
By the way, there is a reason I've nicknamed him the great one.
It's not by accident.
Trust me.
I thought he was great last night, too.
Lara Logan has been great.
Laura Trump, when we did a segment on what can women now expect.
Did you see, Lee, the story?
Did you see the video of women taking their children, their young babies, and trying to throw them over a barbed wire wall and fence to British soldiers because that's the only hope for their children they feel they have.
Do you know what it must take for a loving mother to do that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's insane.
And one other thing I want to get to before, I know you're very busy, but let me say this and then one other thing.
I'd like to see Pelosi and all the women, AOC and her squid squad, get on a plane, go over there, sit down with the Taliban and talk to them about women's rights.
I want to do that.
I think the silence, and I appreciate the call.
Thank you.
The silence, you know, women's rights groups, where's the Me Too movement?
You know, where's the, are they using the Taliban using the proper pronouns movement, which we have been following, for example, the military and wokeness, etc.
I'm not saying things aren't important in terms of respect, but women are going to be oppressed.
They're going to be taken as sex slaves.
Young girls will be married off to these Taliban fighters, if you want to call it that.
It's not in my mind.
It's called rape and kidnapping.
And no, we don't hear about that part.
Sad.
So hypocritical.
Michael, New York.
Michael, glad you called.
Hello, Sean.
My heart's troubled, Michael.
Lift up my heart.
Lift it up.
Help me out.
I can't.
I can't.
I'm a Vietnam vet.
55 years ago, we left blood and guts in the rice patties only to leave in disgrace.
This is just so outrageous, this Afghanistan.
This is so outrageous.
And this Millie, he disgraces the stars on his shoulder.
This guy's got to go.
That's my point.
I don't disagree.
I can't believe he said we had no idea that this was happening.
I'm like, okay, that's just unacceptable to me.
It's unacceptable.
Deja vu, Sean.
Deja vu.
I'm a big fan.
I love you.
Keep up what you're doing, baby.
Keep it up.
Michael, thank you.
Appreciate the call.
Deborah, Florida.
Hey, Deborah.
How are you?
Hi, Stone.
I'm great.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
My question is, I want to know, where is our Republican leadership in the House and in the Senate?
Where are they?
Where's their collective outrage?
Why are they not standing on the White House floor demanding answers and more importantly, actions being taken to get our people out?
I want to be fair because I think the Republicans are weak and feckless and spineless and visionless.
So I'm not disagreeing with the premise of what you're saying.
There have been many that have been very outspoken, but a lot of it's not been covered in fairness to some of them.
But all of them know the fact that they're, listen, we've been paying attention to this.
There have been even some Democrats saying the intel is saying, don't do this.
Don't do this.
There have been staunch, stern warnings to the Biden White House, don't do it.
And they didn't listen.
And now.
Yeah, look, I would cover that more if I thought it would help.
I'm just trying to figure out how, in God's name, what is the answer?
How do we get every single person out of there safely, every one of our fellow citizens?
And how do we get the people out that we know are going to be murdered?
They're known in Afghanistan as having helped the U.S. military and allied forces.
These people will die horrific deaths.
They will be tortured.
They will be murdered.
It will be probably, you'll see internet videos popping up here, there, and everywhere.
I've watched those videos in the past.
You ever watch a beheading?
I have.
It's that dark.
It is that evil.
It is that insidious.
And it is done sadly by fanatics with abandon.
That kind of evil exists in the world.
And this is the evil that is radical Islam.
Fascism, Nazism, Imperial Japan, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia.
100 million souls died in the last century alone.
Wrote a whole book about delivering us from evil.
You know, the Lord's prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Powerful words, if you believe it.
I do.
I do believe it.
Amen.
I appreciate it, Deborah.
We're praying for them.
Fortunately, I wish I had a better solution.
Let's just walk through what options do our military have here.
Now, I really did like Brigadier General Don Bullduck, who he had on, but he's saying either we go in full force again, or there's no operational control whatsoever.
And that would then send the message that if you dare harm a single American, the price you pay is going to be massive.
Okay.
I don't see that as an option that anybody's considering in the administration, but I listen to everybody's views because nobody really has an answer at this point.
Any military presence, I just knowing the brutality of the Taliban and what they're capable of and how many lives are at stake, you know, that then limits, almost eliminates a military option.
And then we're back to where I said we are, which is that every American there is now there at the mercy of the Taliban that the Biden administration is telling us has promised to assist the safe passage to Karzai International Airport, where we started the show.
I don't have a lot of confidence in that plan.
Could happen.
I hope it happens.
If it happens, it won't be because of anything Joe Biden did.
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