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Sept. 3, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
31:32
Lt. Col. Oliver North on The Future of Afghanistan - September 3rd Hour 2
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All right, hour two, Sean Hannity Show.
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I what when I hear this, that the ongoing chaos was priced into the withdrawal.
That's what Biden said to uh Democratic hack Stephanopoulos.
Uh Biden digging in.
No, no one's being killed right now.
We have at least 15,000 according to him, Americans.
We don't even know the exact number, which infuriates me also, trapped behind enemy lines of a terror organization.
And we're reporting acts of terror that I just chronicled in the last hour.
Serious acts of terror.
And now we have no control whatsoever of the destiny of those Americans, except that we're now being told that the Taliban, the terrorist group, has promised pay uh safe passage to the airport.
And people are getting memos, you know, echoing yesterday's.
Yeah, now is probably a good time to head to the airport, but please note we cannot ensure your safety as you try to get to the airport, nor are they guaranteeing get the hell out of the airport.
Well, you know, did the whip military warn you?
Well, no, I can none that I can recall, but now we know that there was a plan completely in place that they dismantled.
It was called the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau.
And that was formed under Secretary of State Bank Pompeo, tasked with providing aviation logistics, medical support capabilities for the department's operational bureaus, thereby enhancing the Secretary in America's ability to protect American citizens overseas in connection with overseas evacuations in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster.
I never saw this coming.
General Milly Millie saying competence I I mean, it is beyond any comprehension I have.
Except that, you know, our military leaders, General Milley, there's nothing I saw or anyone else saw.
All you needed to do, General, was read a newspaper.
Because the newspaper said the Taliban was on the march.
And they've got, well, last week they were telling you they had 30, 40, 50, 60% of the country.
Joe Biden, I know we didn't respond for days.
He was on vacation.
He's going back on vacation.
I just, we just it was just reported.
Great.
How do what about the Americans?
That it now their fate, their future lies in the hands of the Taliban.
You can't screw something up this bad and spin out of it that we didn't see this coming.
Nothing, no warning that I saw.
Then the intel community's blaming Joe Biden and and they're blaming the Defense Department, the Defense Department blading the Intel community, and everybody's pointing fingers at each other, and Biden administration literally went out of their way to dismantle the protections that have been put in place for a s scenario and situation just like this.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
800-941 Sean is on number.
Senator Tim Scott, South Carolina, good friend of the program, joins us today.
Senator, let's get your overall take on the situation.
I I I look at this from every angle imaginable, and you know, short of a massive military presence.
I don't see a lot of military options available, although there are British paratroopers, it's been reported that have that have gone into Kabul and surrounding areas to protect British citizens and escort them personally to the airport.
Um, but even under those circumstances, they're outmanned and outgunned and outnumbered.
Now that billions of dollars of American weapon weaponry is in the hands of the Taliban, also, sir.
Yes.
Well, Sean, thank you for covering this issue so comprehensively.
As usual, you are spot on and ahead of the curve when you look at President Biden's performance.
The few words that come to mind unmitigated disaster.
Their elixir of duties as commander in chief, talking about cutting and running during the fighting season.
He ignored good intelligence.
And frankly, the message is sends to our allies could not be more crippling while he is safely tucked away at Camp David.
I can't think of a more bizarre and alarming picture that the President of the United States comes out of hiding, it seems like for a press conference, won't take questions, and then ducks and runs again, and only talks to George Stephanopoulos.
It is the greatest bizarre occurrence I've seen in a foreign policy disaster happening in real time with thousands of Americans trapped in a country without the greatest fighting force ever crafted in the history of the world at their disposal.
I don't understand how in the world he allows us to be where we are, but there we find ourselves with a lack of leadership from the White House.
When they say they didn't see it coming, um you you watch news, you follow news as closely as ever as uh anyone in your business has to.
And you saw that the Taliban was on the march.
You saw that they were very quickly taking over significant portions of the country.
We all saw it coming.
We all and and yet, you know, we watched go back to last weekend, and even with this unfolding, you know, Joe stays on vacation, flies back in, you know, to Washington, does a 10-minute speech, or is Chopper did, and then goes right back home.
And now he's go now, apparently he's taking another long weekend in Delaware.
And when he's asked questions yesterday, doesn't answer one of them, and he talks about COVID, not Afghanistan.
Now, I I really have a problem with this.
Uh Senator 100% because you have common sense, uh Sean.
You should have a problem with it.
Every American in this country, and frankly, every American abroad should be shaking in our boots, watching not only the president of the United States, but he's also the commander-in-chief of our military.
He is the sterile duties cannot be seen best as the potist.
We have to see a best as commander-in-chief, and what we're watching here is an absolute utter disaster, one that is preventable, completely preventable.
You never leave anyone behind.
Certainly not 15,000 living, breathing Americans, I hear around 15,000, but thousands of Americans left behind in a very uncertain environment with terrorists coming for every corner of the country.
Uh I don't understand what he doesn't understand, and how you go on nation.
They're telling Americans, and I I know from your fellow Senator Lindsey Graham, apparently both of your offices are being inundated with calls, desperate calls from families and people in Afghanistan, even you know, how do we get out?
Now, the State Department is telling people uh you might want to start making your way to the airport, but we can't guarantee your safe passage to the airport.
We know the perimeter around Hamed Karzai International Airport is now in total control of the Taliban, numerous checkpoints, just even getting into the airport.
Then we got reports of all the violence, which I chronicled on the last hour.
I won't repeat here.
Uh the Wall Street Journal editorial board actually says the U.S. is now hostage to the Taliban.
Walter Russell Meade at the journal, The Return of America held hostage.
I don't I I really see that every one of these American Lives Senator, their destiny is out of our hands and in the hands of a terrorist organization.
Am I wrong?
You were you are unfortunately right.
I saw the same Wall Street Journal uh op-ed uh editorial, and it sits it so clearly that we are literally watching the president and his efforts leave too many Americans at the mercy of terrorists.
And literally, people were being beaten as they get out of their cars, Afghans, and we are hoping and pleading with the terrorists, literally, to let our people come to the airport.
That is a weak picture.
It's a weak scene to be digested by Americans and our adversaries.
Bad enough for our allies to watch this, but our adversaries are being emboldened by the inaction of this president suggesting that we don't know if we can keep Americans safe.
I I I honestly thought it was bad enough.
You know, it's interesting to watch Biden say that he inherited this from Trump, but then he abandoned the plan of the evacuation plans and contingencies that had been put in place by Mike Pompeo and and President Trump.
Uh and with President Trump's deal came based on conditions on the ground.
That was very sp very specific before the fighting season.
That was specific.
And also the the dire threat that I would blow that they would be blown into another century if they dared not abide by every comma and every period in any agreement.
And that was set up front and first, and I'm told by many people that were on the call, it was a brutal, straightforward, no nonsense threat.
We will destroy you if if harm comes to a single American.
I don't see that fear existing in this plan of Biden.
Not at all.
As a matter of fact, Sean, the two things that we can contrast is one is strong leadership and the other one is weak leadership.
Under President Trump, what we saw very clearly was a deadline based on condition.
Therefore, the deadline is not a deadline if the conditions changed.
Obviously, they have changed.
So watching national media try to conflate this into a Trump Biden issue is just terrible because it's inconsistent with reality.
What we know, however, is that the Biden administration had a chance to do it differently.
They had a chance to make sure that the current catastrophe did not happen.
They decided to go with arbitrary deadlines set by themselves.
They have done this to themselves, to the American people, to our allies, and frankly, to the interpreters and the Americans in Afghanistan.
We know exactly where the blame of this issue.
It is at the feet of President Biden by himself.
No other administration, just this one.
Do you have any options?
Because I'm I don't see any good ones to be very blunt.
Because we both know what the Taliban's capable of.
So militarily, you know, we we could we could show all the all the might of the United States now, but it's too late because they have control of where the Americans are, which is behind enemy lines.
Do you see any option other than counting on the goodwill of the Taliban?
And I can't believe, quote, those words are even flying out of my mouth.
Yeah, I will say uh as uh the answer is short and simple, no.
There are no good options left on the table.
The only options that we see fall into the category of too little, too few people uh on the on the ground to be able to hold anything other than the airport, according to those Secretary Austin and General Miley.
Uh, they both have were in concert saying this is basically out of their hands.
They simply don't have the troops, they don't have the authority to even increase the presence.
And frankly, bringing the truth back into harm's way is also a complicated decision that could have all been eliminated had we just not cut and run.
That is something that should never be synonymous with who we are as a nation.
And frankly, it is not.
It is, however, consistent with this administration.
It is not consistent with the American people.
It's not consistent with every single member of our armed forces who fought to keep that country stable for 20 years and less than 90 days.
We saw the efforts of thousands upon thousands of troops go down the drain because of the dereliction of duty of this administration.
There are no good options on the table that we can put there without putting in jeopardy more American lives.
Uh it's the worst case scenario, and one that I just don't understand how in the world President Biden allowed us to get into this situation.
Senator, um, our prayers are with everybody over There.
I want every American and frankly, all the people that we made a promise to that if this day ever came, those that assisted us in our military effort over the 20 years, they deserve safe passage out of there as well, because their destiny is now sealed.
Their fate is sealed.
They will be killed.
Either they leave or they die.
Our prayers are with all of them.
Thank you, Senator.
Appreciate it.
The update 800-941 Shaw on our number.
We'll get to a lot of your calls coming up.
We'll also talk to Brigadier General Don Bolduck, and we'll have full coverage on Hannity tonight at 9 on Fox.
At 9 p.m., do you know where your president is?
I don't know.
Yep.
He's sound asleep in his bed.
With not a care in the world.
Must be nice, Joe.
The rest of us will keep working.
on the Sean Hannity Show.
Sean Hannity Show.
I don't think I've ever gotten a reaction to a story that we've covered.
News that we've covered, like the reaction we're getting here.
And there's a reason for that.
The reason is simple.
We're the United States of America.
We have the biggest, the best, the mightiest fighting force in the planet.
The idea that people didn't see or they factored in chaos as part of any withdrawal.
And they didn't think ahead enough and didn't see the writing on the wall early enough, and that they decided to stay on vacation rather than deal with an unfolding crisis.
Says everything.
The saddest part of what we're witnessing is it was entirely preventable.
All of it.
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It is really spectacularly stunning to watch a guy who took a stable situation handed to him with a plan, an exit plan in place that literally was going to be decided based on conditions on the ground, and in literally what they thought, oh, intelligence was telling us on Thursday and Friday, oh, it would be 98, 90 days minimum if they ever got to Kabul, meaning the Taliban.
They'd already taken 60% of the country, and Joe let them do it.
You know, the difference between President Trump and President Biden is that the Taliban respected and feared Donald Trump.
They saw what happened to the caliphate and ISIS as Donald Trump systematically just wiped them out and blew them into smithereens.
And they saw that that would happen to them.
That would be their fate.
Those war options.
Apparently, Joe is in conflict with some of his own military leaders.
You know, this is a buck stops with me, but I don't regret my decision.
Our allies regret it.
Every man, woman uh that served out in Afghanistan, every family that lost a loved one, every permanently injured soldier.
Trust me, that they're watching this in horror as they should.
As people are clinging to airplanes taking off in the hopes that maybe they can get the hell out of there and then falling from the sky.
You can't spin Joe's surrender, or as Leon Panetta calls it, Joe Biden's Bay of Pigs moment.
Our credibility right now is in question.
This is Leon Panetta.
In many ways, I think a John Kennedy Bay of Pigs had unfolded quickly.
The president thought everything would be fine, and that was not the case.
Kennedy took responsibility for what took place.
I recommend Biden that he take responsibility and admit the mistakes that were made.
No, his his plan was to blame Trump, which was a situation where they feared him, number one, and number two, would be based on conditions on the ground.
I know because I know the people that were involved in that decision, like Secretary Pompeo and the senators that were involved with that decision.
You know, it's the exact opposite of what Joe answered the other day.
Let me play it again.
Any chance the Taliban can get back in power?
No, Joe, this is what Joe said.
Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
No, it is not.
No.
Because you have the Afghan troops at 300,000.
Wow.
Well equipped, as well as equipped as any army in the world and an Air Force against something like 75,000 Taliban.
It is not inevitable.
There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the of the United States from Afghanistan.
Yeah, we kind of saw that, and it's still even unfolding.
Now we have pleas from press organizations to get our people the hell out of here.
And I'm not exactly sure how they're going to pull that off.
Because that's what we're that's that's now the situation that he created.
The exact opposite of what he told us and assured us would never happen.
But it's Trump's fault, it's Ghani's fault, it's the Afghan army's fault.
One of the toughest uh armies, militaries of all time with a with a with an air force and what happened, Joe.
Everything you told us didn't happen.
You act like you're being noble and uh that this is not about nation building.
We'll speak out on human rights.
Really, Joe?
Did you not?
We not aware what happened the last time.
And this notion that you're gonna blame your predecessor for this, no, because they were afraid of Trump.
Just like China is afraid of Trump and Russia was afraid of Trump, and the Iranians were afraid of Trump, but they're not afraid of you.
Now, as a result of this, now you now you got the Chinese stepping in and saying, ah, yeah, we we're gonna we're gonna acknowledge the new government in Afghanistan, and now they're using their propaganda outlets to move forward with the narrative.
Yeah, um, I don't think Joe's gonna stop us when we re have reunification with Taiwan.
And by the way, they're not wrong.
As there's no consequences for the communist Chinese lectures on human rights, they're giving Tony Blinken, just like they're threatening our military operations and the Japanese military operations lecturing us on landing planes at our ally in our at our allied country Taiwan, as if we need their friggin' permission.
It's unbelievable.
They were asleep at the wheel.
It didn't have to be a humiliating defeat like this.
He turned it into it and had no clue it was coming, although everybody warned him it was coming.
The Taliban don't fear Joe Biden, neither do the Chinese, the Russians, or anybody else.
Unbelievable.
I had a I inherited a bad deal cut by my predecessor.
Really?
Well, you also inherited energy independence and a secure border, Joe.
And no problem screwing that up.
Well, you could you're gonna act like that's Trump's fault.
You're in your president's.
I'm the president of the United States.
I'm like, oh, he finally remembered for five minutes.
It's an amazing thing.
A 20-year mission collapsing in literally a 24-hour period of time.
That's all it took.
And China will now recognize the declared Islamic emirate of Afghanistan.
Who did not see this coming at the Pentagon?
Because the Pentagon, our government, General Milley said in, you know, back in July, the nation's top general expressed confidence.
Just like Biden and Afghan security forces, and that they would be able to fend off any tried attempted takeover by the Taliban.
You know, and that, you know, any any predictions that this could happen, a fall of Kabul within just a short period of time like this, no.
And as there's Joe on vacation watching it all unfold and doing nothing.
But great praise.
This is worse than Jimmy Carter, if you want my opinion.
It's Jimmy Carter.
I mean, we spend 2.3 trillion dollars.
We lost American treasure over there.
Colonel Oliver North joins us.
Um I don't even know what to say at this point.
I know you've been there many, many times.
I know you know people that lost loved ones over there.
I know you know people that serve multiple deployments over there and have suffered greatly as a result.
I know people that have been permanently severely injured that you know from over there.
And then you see what unfolded this weekend.
Your thoughts.
Well, uh let's back up just one second, because I I listened very carefully to what this president said to the nation and the world here a few minutes ago.
And and I'm glad he said that the buck stops with him because he he does own this disaster.
Okay.
Tragedy is an inadequate word to describe what's happening in Afghanistan.
Biden's mouthpieces and Biden himself claimed again today that the Afghan army numbered 300,000 and outnumbered the Taliban, which only had 75,000.
That's just wrong.
It's not true.
And if Millie or the CIA was telling him that, they're lying.
Bottom line of it is we did train 300,000 people.
Unfortunately, since July, they have not been paid well.
The money disappeared.
It is our money.
There's no doubt about it, we've been paying them.
But the money didn't get to the troops.
And so in Kandahar, where I spent way too much of my life, the and the second largest city in the country, the troops had not been paid, fed or given ammo for over a month.
Okay?
And so at the end of the day, when they see the Americans are going to cut and run, the Biden bug out is underway.
They turn around and say, we can't get air support anymore.
Biden talked again today about this over the horizon capability of air power in counterterrorism operations.
Let me just tell you something.
There's no s there's no way an American pilot who has a flame out or gets shot down is going to get rescued because there's no search and rescue left in the country.
Think about that.
You've got American airplanes up overhead at this minute, and nobody to call airstrikes on him except the 6,000 Americans surrounding the airport.
I mean, that that commentary by the president was full of lies.
And the American people ought not to be snookered because he quotes Harry Truman, the buck stops here.
This this is an absolute travesty.
Biden and his company said that that they Afghans have an Air Force.
They did.
Unfortunately, the contractors left months ago.
And so keeping airplanes up and running requires a lot of maintenance, a lot of the kinds of service that they need, and they can't fly because they don't have fuel, they don't have ammo.
All of the logistics that were being done for that Air Force were being handled by Americans.
And the worst thing he did was to set a date certain.
Instead of conditions-based decisions, in other words, we're going to pull people back out of this space.
Let's make sure that before we do, let's give Kandahar as an example.
Before we pull the Americans out of Kandahar, which we did months ago, let's make sure that we've got an Afghan unit that's being well supplied, well supported, and has direct communications with air power.
They didn't do that.
And so everybody now says that they're surprised by the outcome.
You just said yourself, we shouldn't have been surprised.
We should not have been.
The incompetence, the theory, no Colonel.
Everybody warned that this would happen.
Well, no, those there were a lot of people warning.
Not not just me, okay?
Not just you, but there were people inside the Pentagon whose re who made winning of what he was planning to do and said, Don't do it.
And he went and did it anyway.
Okay.
So this Biden blunder, well uh it overshadows the catastrophe of of April 30th, 1975, and the war I was in, okay.
And I will tell you this.
There are gonna be you know, one of the great things that's happened since you and I started going around the country doing raising money for freedom lines to help the hurt heroes and their families.
Okay, you know that was ten years ago.
Okay.
Since then, the the suicide rate for veterans, which were predominantly Vietnamese, uh excuse me, Vietnam war veterans, okay, dropped from twenty twenty-two down to twenty.
Mark my words, it's gonna shoot up again.
Because the catastrophe like this, unparalleled since Vietnam, is gonna be remembered by these guys for a long, long time.
I mean, there's I lost over there in in in that war that I still wake up at night thinking about him, okay?
And And you know what the word that the troops used over there?
The troops would say when Smitty got killed, he was wasted.
And that's exactly what this president has made sure happens in this war.
It's an absolute travesty what this man has done.
There's nobody around that I know of that says we should stay forever in Afghanistan or Iraq.
But doing the right thing, and that's getting out of the war the wrong way, is catastrophic.
And that's what we've got because of this commander in chief.
God help us.
And then in my column, I said this week, you know what?
If this if there's a single American that dies as a consequence of this, then this president ought to be impeached.
I don't disagree.
The fall of Kabul, a 20-year mission, collapses in a single day of surrender.
The Afghan images, the Afghan president flees.
The U.S. Embassy lowers the American flag.
And the Taliban flag is flying over it right now.
Correct.
Videos from Kabul, Taliban fighters now celebrating inside Afghan's presidential palace.
Right.
Complete chaos at the airport.
Travesty.
You know, this is this is 20 years for what?
I've been on the city.
And there was no there was absolutely no fear.
No.
Within the Taliban.
There was complete confidence.
If anything, they were surprised they got there as fast as they did.
But they got there.
You know, it hopefully there is someone at a government agency that is looking at all the video that's coming out.
Most of it from cell phones, right?
And if you start looking at these guys, many of them, not just a couple here and there, but many of them are foreign fighters.
They don't dress the same, they don't look the same, they wear their beards differently.
And you're now got his commentary was we're going to make sure that because we got over the horizon capabilities.
That's just well, it's it's it's horse manure.
Okay?
I mean, the the fact is they don't have that kind of capability.
And and again, I mentioned the word SAR, search and rescue.
If an aircraft goes down, that pilot is gone forever.
I mean, think about this.
They're now committing atrocities, the likes of which we've not seen since ISIS was destroyed by the Trump administration.
And you're seeing it.
Let me add one point coming up.
Yeah.
We left a cache of all our weaponry.
Oh, yeah.
All of our all of our trucks, all of our vehicles, everything.
They did they took they took nothing with them.
They not only left, but they left the Taliban armed.
Well, they look at the 45 seconds.
President Biden ordered the evacuation of the best air base in the country, which is Bagram.
Okay.
They already had abandoned under under Obama.
The second best one, which was down called it was called Bastion Levanek, down in the southern part of Gandhar, south of Gandahar.
I mean, what you've got now is an unmitigated disaster.
And this president thankfully said the buck stops with him.
Well, I hope you're going to go to the funerals.
Are you going to go up to Dover to meet the caskets when they come in?
And are you going to count on the Chinese to get our people out?
Is that what we're doing?
Don't underestimate the power of blackmail.
Appreciate you, Colonel North.
You're a good man.
That's unbelievable.
I never thought I'd see this again.
It's it's uh I mean, all the analogies about Saigon and that final helicopter, we it's exactly the same.
An unmitigated disaster.
For Leon Panetta to say what he said, yeah, pretty much proves it.
Colonel, safe home, appreciate you.
Thank you for being with us.
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