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Sept. 3, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
31:27
Lt. Col. Oliver North on The Future of Afghanistan - September 3rd Hour 2
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When I hear this, that the ongoing chaos was priced into the withdrawal.
That's what Biden said to Democratic hack Stephanopoulos.
Biden digging in.
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 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 military warn you?
Nothing 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 Mike Pompeo, tasked with providing aviation logistics, medical support capabilities for the department's operational bureaus, thereby enhancing the Secretary and 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 Milley saying, competence, 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.
What about the Americans that 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 is blaming Joe Biden and they're blaming the Defense Department, the Defense Department blaming the Intel community, and everybody's pointing fingers at each other.
And the Biden administration literally went out of their way to dismantle the protections that have been put in place for a scenario and situation just like this.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
800-941 Sean is our 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 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 gone into Kabul and surrounding areas to protect British citizens and escort them personally to the airport.
But even under those circumstances, they're outmanned and outgunned and outnumbered now that billions of dollars of American 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 reliction of duties as commander-in-chief, talk about cutting and running during the fighting season.
He ignored good intelligence.
And frankly, the message it 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 the 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, you watch news.
You follow news as closely as 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.
And yet, we watched, go back to last weekend, and even with this unfolding, Joe stays on vacation, flies back to Washington, does a 10-minute speech as Chopper did, and then goes right back home.
And now apparently, he's taking another long weekend in Delaware.
And when he's asked questions yesterday, he doesn't answer one of them, and he talks about COVID, not Afghanistan.
I really have a problem with this, Senator.
100%, because you have common sense, 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 this dereliction of duties, cannot be seen best as the POTUS.
We have to see it 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.
I don't understand what he doesn't understand and how you go nation.
They're telling Americans, and 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, 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 Hamid 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.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board actually says the U.S. is now hostage to the Taliban.
Walter Russell Mead at the journal, The Return of America Held Hostage.
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 are unfortunately right.
I saw that same Wall Street Journal op-ed editorial, and it fits 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 are 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 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 President Trump.
And with President Trump's deal came based on conditions on the ground.
That was very, very specific.
Before the fighting season, that was specific.
And also the dire threat 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 said upfront 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 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 conditions.
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 is at the feet of President Biden by himself.
No other administration, just this one.
Do you have any options?
Because 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 could show 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 as 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 on the ground to be able to hold anything other than the airport, according to both Secretary Austin and General Miley.
They both 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 troops 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 in less than 90 days, we saw the efforts of thousands upon thousands of troops go down the drain because of the derelict 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.
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, our prayers are with everybody over there.
I want every American and frankly, all the people that we've 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-Sean, our number.
We'll get to a lot of your calls coming up.
We'll also talk to Brigadier General Don Bullduck and we'll have full coverage on Hannity tonight at nine 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 lot of care in the world.
Must be nice, Joe.
The rest of us will keep working.
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 literally what they thought, oh, intelligence was telling us on Thursday and Friday, oh, it would be 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 were 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 that served out in Afghanistan, every family that lost a loved one, every permanently injured soldier, trust me, 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 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 have 300,000 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 a embassy 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 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.
They're one of the toughest armies, militaries of all time with an Air Force.
And what happened, Joe?
Everything you told us didn't happen.
You act like you're being noble and that this is not about nationbuilding.
We'll speak out on human rights.
Really, Joe?
Did you not?
Were you not aware of what happened the last time?
And this notion that you're going to 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 who are afraid of Trump, but they're not afraid of you.
Now, as a result of this, now you got the Chinese stepping in and saying, ah, yeah, we're going to acknowledge the new government in Afghanistan.
And now they're using their propaganda outlets to move forward with the narrative.
Yeah, I don't think Joe's going to stop us when we 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 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 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 inherited a bad deal cup on my predecessor.
Really?
Well, you also inherited energy independence and a secure border, Joe.
You had no problem screwing that up.
You're going to act like that's Trump's fault?
You're 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 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.
And that, you know, any predictions that this could happen, a fall of Kabul within just a short period of time like this, no.
And 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 spent $2.3 trillion.
We lost American treasure over there.
Colonel Oliver North joins us.
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 served 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, Let's back up just one second because I listened very carefully to what this president said to the nation and the world here a few minutes ago.
And I'm glad he said that the buck stops with him because he does own this disaster.
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 Milley 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've 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, 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 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 them except the 6,000 Americans surrounding the airport.
I mean, 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 is an absolute travesty.
Biden and his company said that the 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 colours, everybody warned that this would happen.
Well, no, there were a lot of people warning.
Not just me, okay?
Not just you, but there were people inside the Pentagon who were made witting 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 overshadows the catastrophe of April 30th, 1975, in the war I was in.
And I will tell you this.
There are going to be, you know, one of the great things that's happened since you and I started going around the country raising money for Freedom Alliance to help the hurt heroes and their families.
Okay.
That was 10 years ago.
Okay.
Since then, the suicide rate for veterans, which were predominantly Vietnamese, excuse me, Vietnam War veterans, okay, dropped from 2022 down to 20.
Mark my words.
It's going to shoot up again.
Because a catastrophe like this, unparalleled since Vietnam, is going to be remembered by these guys for a long, long time.
I mean, Lost over there in that war, that I still wake up at night thinking about him.
Okay?
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 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.
Complete chaos at the airport.
Travesty.
You know, this is 20 years for what?
And there was absolutely no fear within the Taliban.
There was complete confidence.
If anything, they were surprised they got there as fast as they did.
But they got there.
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 as 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 now got his commentary was, we're going to make sure, because we got over-the-horizon capabilities.
That's just, well, it's horse manure.
Okay?
I mean, the fact is, they don't have that kind of capability.
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 that.
Let me add one point coming up.
Yeah.
We left a cache of all our weaponry.
Oh, yeah.
All of our trucks, all of our vehicles, everything.
They took nothing with them.
They not only left, but they left the Taliban armed.
Well, look at the President Biden ordered the evacuation of the best airbase in the country, which is Bagram.
They already had abandoned under Obama the second best one, which was down called Bastion Leatherneck, down in the southern part of Gandhar, south of Gandhar.
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.
Credible statement.
Appreciate you, Colonel North.
You're a good man.
That's unbelievable.
I never thought I'd see this again.
I mean, all the analogies about Saigon and that final helicopter, 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.
800-941-Sean is our number.
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Your reaction to Joe Biden's presser and much more.
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