Sean Hannity Show - Afghanistan Was Not Lost

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Aug. 20, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show

30:38

Afghanistan Was Not Lost

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	This is an iHeart podcast.
	All right, news roundup and information overload on a Friday, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
	I am still in a state of utter anger, shock, and dismay at all of the absolute lies told by Biden at his statement for five question press conference, if you even want to call it that.
	This is Biden.
	We haven't heard of anybody, you know, not being able to get to the airport.
	We have secured the airport.
	We haven't secured the perimeter, Joe.
	We haven't heard of any cases at all of people not being able to make it to the airport.
	Well, that's the exact opposite of what your State Department is sending out to people, Americans in Afghanistan, about we can't help you get to the airport.
	Oh, and the airport gates may open or close without notice.
	Oh, and use your best judgment about going, and we cannot ensure your safe passage.
	That's what they're telling him on the other side of this.
	You know, we played the questions earlier, but Biden just in complete denial.
	We've not heard of any case of anybody not being able to get to the airport.
	A complete and utter lie with all the videotape evidence to prove it.
	Listen.
	The military has secured the airport, as you mentioned, but will you sign off on sending U.S. troops into Kabul to evacuate Americans who haven't been able to get to the airport safely?
	We have no indication that they haven't been able to get in Kabul through the airport.
	We've made an agreement with the Taliban thus far.
	They've allowed them to go through.
	It's in their interest for them to go through.
	So we know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport or trying to get through to the airport.
	But we will do whatever needs to be done to see to it they get to the airport.
	We will see whatever needs to be done.
	Meaning, there's no control.
	We have control of the airport, but we don't have control of one road to get to the airport.
	Not one.
	That is controlled by the Taliban.
	And they said they're going to let Americans with passports through.
	Any American that wants to come home, we will get you home.
	I want you to hear me.
	Now, I can't promise any outcome on all of this.
	I mean, he's contradicting himself all over the place.
	We made clear to the Taliban that if they get in the way in any way, there was going to be a forceful response.
	No, there's not, Joe, because they've got 15,000 Americans they'll use as human shields and hostages, Joe.
	They're terrorists.
	No indication of any people having difficulties getting to the airport.
	Well, the Taliban secures the perimeter, and there's tons of personal stories, images on the ground that contradict everything he's saying.
	You know, it's unbelievable.
	No question.
	I've not heard anything about our credibility being in any way that we've been criticized from anyone around the world.
	Nobody.
	They don't have any partners.
	They've all been highly critical.
	And this is the mess that they left.
	We bring in Jason Chaffetz, Fox News contributor, now a distinguished fellow at the Government Accountability Institute, and Peter Schweitzer, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, host of DrillDown.com, which, by the way, is extremely successful.
	You know, originally, we had him booked for today to talk specifically about the 20-year war and this crushing defeat and everything else in between.
	And the idea that the president of the United States is lying about the situation on the ground, but more importantly, Jason Chaffetz, I'll start with you.
	Well, I guess I probably should start with Peter, considering he's your boss, but I'll start with you.
	But in all seriousness, they've had days.
	They saw an advancing Taliban take over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% of the country in record time.
	This was happening.
	They had all the time to prepare for extracting every American, the 60 to 75,000 estimated Afghanis that if they're left behind that will be killed, they did nothing.
	Now it's completely out of our hands.
	The control, the fate of our fellow Americans and our allies is in the hands of the Taliban with reports that go on door to door to identify any Afghani who supported and helped and assisted America in any way in the last 20 years.
	And then they're brutally murdering them right on the streets for the world to see.
	So it's not exactly as Joe portrayed it today.
	We have no leverage at all because he gave that up.
	He did.
	We have the biggest, baddest military on the face of the planet.
	We have an intelligence community that has satellite imagery and technology that nobody else has.
	But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made a conscious decision months ago to do it this way.
	And remember, they're on tape.
	They're on audio saying, yeah, we have planned for every contingency.
	This chaos was built into the plan that we had put forward.
	But somehow the brilliant mind that is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decided that they were going to close the Bagram Air Force Base where we did have total control of the airspace and the ability to move airplanes in and out.
	They gave that up to protect the, without extracting the Americans, the diplomats, the foreign service operators, the contractors, Americans with passports.
	We gave all that up to go do something else.
	And now we've got to rely on the Taliban.
	I have been to that Kabul airport.
	I have flown in and out of it.
	It took a convoy, literally, of Army in an MRAPS to get me in and out of it.
	It is exceptionally dangerous.
	And there is no way that Donald Trump would have ever allowed this to happen.
	There is no way that that would be done under a different administration, except they made a conscious decision, Sean, to allow the Taliban to be in control of the fate of Americans who are doing America's bidding in Afghanistan.
	It was a conditions based on the ground agreement, but it was started with a phone call with the leader of the Taliban and President Trump himself as part of the deal that he had that Biden never followed up on.
	And by the way, to get out before the, quote, war season, as war historically is more likely at this time of year, which is why Trump had a much earlier date for a drawdown withdrawal.
	But again, based on conditions on the ground, but also backed by this threat.
	And I've talked to now numerous sources that were on the call that heard it.
	And that before we discuss anything, President Trump said, you saw what I did to the caliphate in Syria, did you not?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	That will be nothing, nothing compared to if you do not abide by every comma and period in any agreement we might make, that I will blow you into an entirely new century.
	Do you understand me?
	Apparently, those words were spoken by Donald Trump.
	He got back an affirmative.
	We didn't lose an American in Afghanistan for, what, almost 18 months, the last 18 months of Trump's presidency.
	They weren't on the march or on the move because they feared and believed Donald Trump would do everything that he said.
	That fear no longer exists, clearly.
	Well, this is peace through strength.
	The example to me is Ronald Reagan.
	Some of the most peaceful times we have were with Ronald Reagan because he knew he had the biggest, baddest military, wasn't afraid of firing on it.
	And Donald Trump took exactly the same philosophy.
	Is there any doubt in anybody's mind that if somebody did something to even one American, that Donald Trump wouldn't send every single asset in there to go take him out?
	Compare that to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
	And you've got to include Barack Obama, who had some of these people in Gitmo and let him get back out on the battlefield when Benghazi was happy.
	No assets were sent in.
	And does anybody believe that Joe Biden would actually pull the trigger?
	He didn't even want to go after Osama bin Laden, for goodness sake.
	Peter Schweitzer, your reaction.
	Yeah, I mean, I agree exactly with what Jason said.
	But, you know, Sean, if you look over the span of American history, I mean, we've had situations before where we've had American presidents, let's say, who were detached, who were not completely there.
	You think of Woodrow Wilson, you think of LBJ.
	But at least in those circumstances, we had people around the president who had the capacity, the knowledge, and the will to do the right thing, to sort of carry out and protect American interests.
	What's troubling right now is you have Joe Biden who is detached, either because of age and because of a health condition that he has, or he's simply lying to the American people.
	But there's no question he's detached from sort of the reality on the ground.
	But the people around him, the vice president, she is not involved in any way.
	And you look at the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, you get the same kind of detachment.
	So this is a very troubling situation that I would say is somewhat unique in American history because nobody seems to be wanting to step up and actually fix the problem and the situation that we're in.
	And as Jason said, and as you mentioned, Sean, look, the world watches these events.
	You know, it is a global society in the sense that if something happens in Afghanistan, people in Beijing, China are aware of what's going on, and weakness breeds aggression.
	And we have seen nothing from Joe Biden on the international stage except for weakness since he became president.
	Well, I mean, the fact that we saw them on the march, Peter, we watched them, we witnessed this, we've seen this coming for weeks.
	You know, at what point didn't anybody in our national security apparatus, intelligence apparatus, those around the president, warn him?
	Now, we're discovering that apparently the Pentagon did warn him that intelligence agencies did warn him.
	The State Department did warn him.
	And now the question is, why didn't he take their advice and admonition seriously?
	Do you have any answer to that?
	Because I can't figure it out.
	No, it's hard to figure out.
	You know, what I liken to Sean is imagine if you have a natural disaster like an earthquake.
	An earthquake happens suddenly.
	Nobody's prepared.
	You're kind of in reaction mode.
	This was the equivalent of in 2018, we signed the peace agreement with the Taliban.
	This is basically saying three years from now on this date, there may be an earthquake.
	And Joe Biden extended, actually, the withdrawal that Donald Trump had scheduled for the spring.
	So the point is, there's basically been three years of preparation, meaning the bureaucracies, but you have a new administration that comes in.
	They've got eight months.
	They've got eight months to prepare for an earthquake that the State Department in some of the cables.
	We now know the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2020 was warning about this.
	We know that the CIA was concerned about it.
	They were all warning about this earthquake that was going to engulf with the withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan, and nobody prepared for it.
	Nobody secured anything.
	And it is precisely the sort of terrible response from leadership that is very, very hard to recover from.
	Because remember, Sean, Joe Biden said two things to the world.
	He said, first of all, well, you know, Donald Trump is unpredictable.
	I'm going to be the adult in the room.
	I'm the guy that knows what he's doing.
	The second thing that he said was, I'm going to be the one that has better relations with our allies than Donald Trump with.
	They're going to respect me more.
	Both of those things were never true.
	They are now both definitely not true because it's been demonstrated that the emperor has no clothes, that Joe Biden does not have the competency to run the free world.
	And he has lost the respect of allies that really had been built up in the Trump administration and is now basically completely gone.
	From the Wall Street Journal, Jason Chaffetz, about two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Blinken, Anthony Blinken, and other top State Department officials last month warning of the potential collapse of Kabul.
	Now, this was sent on July 13th.
	That is five weeks ago, that the Taliban was rapidly gaining ground and the city was vulnerable to collapse.
	They didn't listen.
	They didn't prepare.
	They didn't act.
	And this is now the result.
	Basically, Americans held hostage, their lives hanging in the balance on the whim of the feelings of a terrorist organization.
	Yet the warnings couldn't be any more clear.
	Damning evidence.
	The Biden administration was warned by its own officials of this disaster coming.
	I think we're going to continue to see more of that.
	I think you're going to see State Department cables.
	I think you're going to see intelligence reports that continue to stream out to show that the Taliban was gaining strength, there was movement, and just the very basics of what a leader should have been doing in securing the Americans that had passports and getting them out.
	I just, I'm absolutely stunned that we would close our Air Force base there at Bagram.
	I've flown in and out of Bagram.
	I've flown in and out of the Kabul Karzai airport.
	I have been to all of those places.
	And I've got to tell you, one was secure, at least as secure as you could get it.
	The other one, not so much.
	And they saw this march happening.
	But this is exactly the time, if you match it up, that Joe Biden was going out answering questions saying, oh, the likelihood, oh, near zero.
	This isn't going to happen.
	We plan for every contingency.
	They have this huge, massive security force in Afghanistan.
	Anybody who's been to Afghanistan knows that with all due respect, most of those people were illiterate.
	And yet somehow we left tens of billions of dollars of American assets, military equipment, all back in the hands of terrorists.
	We're worse off now than we were before we went in to take out the terrorist threat.
	And if you look at the way Joe Biden, if we get them out, and I'm just short on time, but if we do get them out, Jason, it's not going to be because of anything that Joe Biden and his administration did.
	It'll be in spite of it.
	But it will be basically the terms will be dictated completely by the Taliban.
	And to put Americans in that, that situation is just unforgivable.
	A dereliction of duty that at a level I can't even imagine that we're even talking about.
	Thank you both.
	Peter Schweitzer, Jason Chaffetz, 800-941.
	Sean is on number.
	We'll have a lot more on all of this tonight on Hannity.
	Well, I forgot to bring this up.
	25 till the top of the hour, 800-941.
	Sean, I got to tip my hat to the British military.
	They sent in paratroopers to save British citizens successfully, and they even helped step up and helped evacuate some American citizens left behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.
	Of course, following this disastrous non-plan of Joe Biden missing every single sign and warning, it was in writing.
	They were told in writing specifically that Kabul is going to fall.
	Five weeks ago, they were told by over two dozen diplomats what was going on around the country, which, by the way, you could have looked at the news and just watched the map on a daily basis and see how much ground and territory the Taliban was gaining.
	And there's this great, you know, well-trained army, one of the best trained in the world, army of Afghanistan, with 300,000 military fighters that even have an air force, some of the best trained in the world, that were going to be easily easy for them to defeat the Taliban.
	Wow, I didn't know they were going to collapse.
	They were collapsing weeks ago.
	The Taliban was advancing for weeks.
	And nobody, you know, well, the people on the ground had the urgency, the more than, what, two dozen or so State Department officials, their memo, you know, serving in the embassy of Kabul, they sent it to the Secretary of State.
	I assume he had to share that with Joe Biden, right?
	Just have to assume that because, you know, they send this memo and over five weeks ago, it's July the 13th, the Taliban is rapidly gaining ground and the city of Kabul is vulnerable to collapse.
	That was five weeks ago.
	This is right after Joe Biden had said it's highly unlikely the Taliban would take control of Afghanistan.
	They were already taking control of almost the rest of the country.
	I mean, it is unbelievable.
	It is a tragedy.
	It is by far the biggest strategic military foreign policy disaster we've ever had.
	Now every American life is in the hands of the Taliban.
	Well, I see no signs at all.
	Joe Biden saying, I don't see any indication.
	We've not seen, have you seen any indication?
	No indication whatsoever that, you know, no, we've secured the airport.
	We have full, we've secured the entire airport.
	It's secure.
	6,000 troops on the ground.
	We have 6,000.
	Only problem is the Taliban secured the perimeter around the airport and they are deciding who does and does not get to go to Kabul airport.
	And then even when you get there, it's nothing but utter chaos that has ensued where even Taliban fighters are firing tear gas to disperse crowds at the airport.
	Unbelievable.
	We successfully got out New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal reporters.
	I'm glad.
	I mean that with all sincerity.
	But we have what, according to Joe, 15,000?
	We don't even have an exact number.
	I want every American that wants to know that if you want to come home, we'll get you home.
	But look, I can't really promise any outcome.
	It's, you know, very, very difficult.
	One of the most difficult challenges ever in history created by you, self-inflicted by you.
	Never mind the 60 to 75,000 estimated Afghanis that will be identified.
	They will be murdered.
	The Taliban's already going door to door, identifying anybody that may have or did work with Americans.
	Apparently, they got a hold of a cache of intelligence that has their names on it.
	They're walking dead in Afghanistan.
	How will we ever get them out?
	We promised them we'd get them out.
	The interpreters and others assisting our military for long periods.
	In some cases, one guy that actually said, I spent a third of my life.
	This guy was on TV with me last night.
	This guy by the name of Sabre.
	I won't mention his last name.
	Said, I spent a third of my life.
	My family's stuck over there.
	We were promised that you would get us out if this moment ever came.
	All right, let's get to our phones on this Friday.
	I know a lot of you want to weigh in.
	Let's say, hi, it's Georgia's in North Carolina.
	Hey, Georgia, how are you?
	I would say happy Friday, but I'm not exactly happy.
	I'm not in the best mood today, and neither is anybody I know.
	Hello, Sean.
	Thank you so much for taking my call.
	I'll just get right to it.
	After 9-11, I started sending military care packages, and through those projects, I met the most amazing men and women in our military, as you know.
	Sean, more often than not, these military men and women would not ask me for things for themselves.
	They would tell me about their humanitarian missions, the villages that they were adopting, the refugee camps that they were sending supplies to, the schools they were building, most of which were accepting girls for the very, very first time.
	And so, of course, it was wonderful sending supplies for these things.
	One of my favorite stories is a vendor at an FOB told my military contact that he had a group of developmentally delayed children that was a very underserved population at that time.
	And they built a school for this developmentally delayed children and asked for school supplies.
	It's one of my favorite.
	Those pictures are some of my favorites.
	Sean, after last weekend, it took me a while, but I got those, I have large scrapbooks that are just filled with, I'm sorry, I'm a little emotional, but that are just filled with letter after letter and pictures.
	Oh, the pictures and certificates of appreciation from all kinds of organizations that say things like, your humanitarian efforts have greatly improved the quality of life of the people of Afghanistan and the future of their nation.
	That last part just kills me.
	So I've had trouble reconciling the countless stories of heroism and selflessness and the relationships with what I'm seeing on the news, and it's been gut-wrenching.
	But you know what, Sean?
	I will not be defeated in thinking that this is a waste.
	And here's why.
	No act of kindness, no act of bravery, and no act of integrity is ever wasted.
	Even if something evil on this world wipes out our effort, the kindness and the courage are forever.
	And so if I can just make three points before I let you go, first of all, listeners out there, if you know anyone who is involved in Afghanistan, please reach out to them because they're not feeling okay.
	And if I'm as affected for my small part, I cannot even imagine the pain of a veteran, a disabled veteran, or a Gold Star family.
	And second, I touched on it a little earlier, but I know without a doubt that there is more kindness in this world than there is evil.
	Now, evil's deceit will try to convince us that it's too much.
	It's too overwhelming.
	Your little bit won't matter.
	Your little bit didn't matter.
	What you did didn't count.
	You know, why do you even try?
	Don't believe it.
	Don't be fooled.
	Don't be defeated.
	And I don't know what has become of those villages and the schools and the medical centers are the recipients.
	I'll tell you what's going to become of them.
	You're not going to like it.
	I don't even need to tell you because you already know the answer.
	But the effort and the kindness, it meant something then, and it means something now.
	Well, I got to, let me just say this to you.
	I'm listening to you, and I hear the passion and emotion behind these words of yours, and they're resonating.
	Trust me.
	People are hearing you.
	Okay.
	But the reality is, is we lost.
	The reality is that we botched the withdrawal.
	The reality is, this is what happens when you have a weak, frail, cognitive mess as a president of the United States.
	This is when the left wing and their lies and their spin is so easily proven false that it's a layup in terms of, oh, let me debunk this lie and that lie, but that doesn't advance the cause, the immediate concern, which is getting Americans home.
	And then that would mean getting those that we know will be killed if we leave them behind home or out of there, get the hell out of there.
	But that doesn't do anything for the situation for the people that will remain, which is the majority of people.
	And that's women and children.
	Their lives forever transform.
	Those girls that I helped sent to school, I have so many wonderful girls.
	They will no longer be in school.
	I promise you, by the time this is all said and done, the Taliban has not changed.
	And the last thing I'll say is this.
	Linda and I were talking about this off-air today, is that what it must take for a mother to go to the British embassy, go to an embassy, a high wall on top of the wall, not a razor wire, and to take an infant child and throw that child over the razor wire to a British soldier in the hopes that that child will be taken away from you forever, but at least have a chance at a life.
	That pretty much speaks volumes.
	You might say, well, Henry, that's cruel.
	Who would ever take a baby?
	Because they realize and recognize that which we may not understand.
	Life for women is over.
	It will be over now in Afghanistan.
	They return back to the Stone Age where they were 20 years ago.
	It's like Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone and Dino the Dinosaur.
	And I'm not saying this to be clever, but it is women were not allowed to go to school.
	They were not allowed to go to work.
	Only certain medical care was offered, not most.
	Women were taken routinely, raped.
	They were taken as child brides.
	That's all coming back.
	Now, we'll have plenty of time to discuss the ramifications of what is going on for the people that will remain there that you tried to very, very generously help.
	But I don't even have a sliver of hope I can offer you.
	I'm not going to lie to you.
	I know.
	It's not, you know, there's a reason those mothers.
	It's terribly discouraging.
	Terrible.
	Even though the effort seems to have been wiped away, the effort mattered.
	The courage mattered.
	The kindness mattered.
	Whenever you put kindness into the world, even if what you did gets wiped away, the kindness is forever.
	It mattered then and it mattered now.
	But it is very discouraging.
	It took me a very long time before I could go upstairs where I keep my scrapbook and bring those down.
	I couldn't even face it.
	I spent 18 years sending packages.
	Thousands and thousands.
	And the relationships with the military men and women, I wonder how they're doing.
	If I am this upset, and I am very upset, I sent packages.
	I didn't send my daughter.
	I didn't send my son.
	I didn't leave my legs or my PTFD, my psyche.
	I sent packages.
	And I am so affected and discouraged.
	And I was actually battling depression this week over it.
	And that's why I want this message to resonate loud and clear to anybody who did anything in this effort.
	Like you said, Sean, it was defeated, but the effort mattered.
	The effort mattered.
	You never go wrong, in my view, in life when you try to do the right thing and you try to assist innocent, good people and the innocent among us.
	They're the ones that will suffer.
	Our prayers are with all of them, Georgia, and we can only now hope for the best.
	But I would say brace yourself for the worst.
	Appreciate you checking in with us.
	800-941-Sean is our number.
	Christina is in Ohio.
	Hey, Christina, how are you?
	Hey, Sean, how are you?
	I'm good.
	Thank you.
	I'm mad.
	I am so mad.
	If this happened under Trump's presidency, him and his whole administration, they would have been yelling in the streets and wanting his head on a platter.
	Instead, we have Pelosi saying how brave he was and how this is like so valiant of him.
	We have people that are dying.
	We're putting our military up in front of these cameras all over the world, showing weakness like never before.
	I mean, when we're asked how many Americans are over there and they don't know, when we are saying, hey, the British and the French are paratrooping in and getting their people out, how come we can't do that?
	Oh, no, no, no, we can't do that.
	We don't have the capabilities of doing that.
	How can we be doing this?
	When we're asked our military whether or not they're buying gas from the Taliban and they can't give you a straight answer, that's sad.
	The day that we, what is this world coming to?
	Instead, we are now pulling our president out of his ice cream socials on vacation to update us sometimes and beat us lines of VS. He was more worried about his administration looking good to the woke population that we have.
	I've got to run, but I'm hearing you loud and clear.
	I really am.
	And it is sad, everything that you're saying.
	And yet, China is already prepared to recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan because they want all their natural resources.
	800-941 Sean.
	We'll continue.
	Hannity tonight at 9.
	All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
	Hannity tonight on the Fox News channel.
	Yeah, Americans hostage behind enemy lines.
	We have exclusive footage.
	Sarah Carter and her source is on the ground.
	She was in tears the other night on the show because she knows so many people.
	Lara Logan also has been there many times on the ground.
	We'll get some insight from her as well.
	The media, they're not even covering up for Biden anymore.
	Even James Clapper warning that, yeah, Afghanistan, they're going to become pre-9-11 another terror haven, which we already know they are because they released the prisoners.
	Dan Hoffman, Jason Chavitz on tonight.
	Larry Elder on tonight.
	We just loaded up.
	Mike Pompeo on tonight.
	News you won't get from the mob.
	It's all happening tonight.
	Please set your DVR.
	Hannity, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
	Pray for our Americans trapped behind enemy lines.
	It's going to take a miracle to get all of them out alive.
	It's possible.
	I believe in them, but we're all going to pray hard.
	Have a great weekend.

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