Dec. 21, 2018 - Steve Pieczenik
04:26
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, this is Dr. | |
| Pachenik. | |
| As expected, General Mattis is leaving, and he's leaving on his terms. | |
| He felt that the President didn't really understand the notion of coalitions and the importance of NATO forces, and therefore he had the right to leave. | |
| I wish him the best. | |
| I think he's done a marvelous, marvelous job as Secretary of Defense. | |
| However, no individual is indispensable to the Republic, including a president and a general or myself. | |
| But more importantly, I have a candidate. | |
| He's the first African-American general who has been commander of the U.S. ROK, that's Republic of Korea, U.N. forces in South Korea. | |
| He's a four-star general. | |
| By the name of Vincent Brooks. | |
| He was at West Point. | |
| He was the first captain of West Point cadets. | |
| He was an incredible commander in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, and Iraq. | |
| He was part of the war on terror and knows the CIA very well, the State Department. | |
| He's worked with Pompeo, who also went to West Point. | |
| And this is a man versed in all aspects of the Defense Department, the intelligence world, and the procurement world. | |
| I believe that he should be our next Secretary of Defense. | |
| And I believe it's time that we have our first African-American Secretary of Defense. | |
| Having said that, I want to make an important point here. | |
| Most people are accusing Trump of being unstable or totally incompetent because Mattis is leaving. | |
| Mattis has done a formidable job, as I've said to you, and so has John Kelly and many others who are unidentified. | |
| The truth of the matter is, at this point in time, Trump has decided that he had to go with his instincts and the original promises That he made to the country, which was number one, we're taking our forces out of Syria, which he's doing. | |
| Number two, he said the war in Afghanistan is a wasted war. | |
| We have no reason to be there. | |
| And I agreed. | |
| And so he's pulling out 7,000 troops from there. | |
| He's saving us billions and billions of dollars. | |
| But more importantly, he's saving the lives of American warriors. | |
| Number three, the war in Afghanistan really was initiated by a man who worked for me, Zalmi Khalazad, an Afghani who was trained at the University of Chicago, was part of the neocon group, was on my policy planning staff, worked with me on the West Bank, and quite frankly, was not that effective or that strategic. | |
| He was very much involved with his self-aggrandizement. | |
| And despite everything else, he really promoted himself to become ambassador to Iraq and the intercessor in Afghanistan. | |
| I think he's the source of the problem in Afghanistan. | |
| I think the Taliban should eventually take over, which was inevitable. | |
| I flew into Afghanistan in the 70s. | |
| The problem was already there, and the solutions were outlined very quickly. | |
| Once you get rid of Zalmi Halazad, You allow the Taliban to take over, you make a peace treaty with them, and we go back and we shift to the Asia area where in fact General Vincent Brooks would be the man in charge because he did a very unique experiment doing the Pacific experience where he allowed our soldiers to spend three months in each one of the East Asian countries. | |
| Having said that, Let's accept the fact that Trump will make his own decisions, his own way, and people will leave. | |
| Now I want to say to General Madison, all our generals who have left, in the words of Douglas MacArthur, old soldiers never die, they just fade away. | |
| I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. |
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