DENVER — As of late Monday, the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war.
The frantic final exit cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, some barely older than the war.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Marshall Zelinger sat down with Bennet to talk to him about the U.S. withdrawl from Afghanistan.
(Editor's note: Responses may have been edited for context and clarity)
9NEWS: Senator, it's Aug. 31 and the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan without evacuating everyone that wants to get out. What should the situation be on Aug. 31?
Bennet: Well, I think we're going to have to continue to try to get out anybody who still wants to get out. We've evacuated 123,000 people, 6,000 of whom are Americans. If there are people left that still want to get out, we've got to work with our allies to try to get them out.
I always find it odd, I ask questions about you being on the Senate Intelligence Committee and there are things you know that you can't talk about, but what do you know that you have questions about?
Bennet: What I have questions about is the staging of the evacuation and, I think that there are questions about whether Bagram Air Force Base, for example, should have been closed or not, whether we should have had more troops, or not, to do the evacuation sooner. These are all questions that I have and we're going to have a lot of time in the coming months, and maybe even years, to ask questions, not just about the last 20 days, but about the last 20 years in Afghanistan.
In a way, when I hear that, I think of mass shootings, and there are certain politicians that want to talk about gun control immediately after a mass shooting, and so this is a fresh situation, why not fast track getting answers to those questions now?
Bennet: Well, I think we need to know, the posture we've been in the last two weeks has been to try to get out every single person that wanted to get out of Afghanistan. I think that 2,500 names that we forwarded to the administration to try to get folks out, and that's where we've been, and I think, in the days ahead we're going to have the opportunity to access whether the withdrawal was effective or whether it was not.
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You recently spoke at a Space Symposium dinner that, I imagine, had a large military audience, and one of the things in your comments was: '…Whatever one thinks about the decision of the President to bring this war to an end — and reasonable minds will certainly disagree — this is a very difficult moment for our veterans and their families.' What do you think about the decision of this president to bring this war to an end?
Bennet: Well, let me say first, this is an incredibly difficult moment for our veterans and their families, and especially for people who served in Afghanistan and did their duty. This is a very, very hard moment. My view is that 20 years was long enough, and that the Taliban, I'm sad to say this and it's staggering to say this, but the Taliban is stronger today than it was 20 years ago, when we went into Afghanistan. We have a lot to think about in terms of what we've done, and the ineffectiveness of our, not our troops, but our political policies, the lack of the ability for America's political leadership to define the mission in Afghanistan and to create a set of conditions that could allow us to succeed.
When you were running for president, I don't think you said you were going to take every American troop out of Afghanistan. It was more about keeping troops that were necessary to keep the safety, essentially, I know I'm paraphrasing. Were we wrong? Are we wrong?
Bennet: What you said was absolutely right. That's a correct characterization of what I said. I think what has become clear in the intervening amount of time is that the Taliban was succeeding, and that Donald Trump, the previous president, made a decision to withdraw all of our troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban stopped shooting at us as a result of that. Had we made a different decision, all hell would have broken loose in Afghanistan. I think that 20 years was more time than we should have been there, that's my view.
So are we wrong to not have any troops there?
Bennet: No, I don't think so. Under the conditions that exist in the country, the decision that was made by the prior president, and the expectations of the people in Afghanistan, I think we made the right decision.
I know this is a hypothetical that is nearly impossible to answer, but if this were a Republican president or still President Trump and we're in the exact same scenario that played out, are you any more harsh toward the president than you are?
Bennet: I think that's a really fair question. I was very negative about the way we withdrew from northern Syria, for example. Where Donald Trump completely abandoned the Kurds, and I guess I'd say the difference between that and this situation is that we airlifted 126,000 people out of Afghanistan. Donald Trump airlifted zero people out of northern Syria. So, am I happy that there are still people left there? Of course not. If there are people left there that still want to come out, this is a very tragic situation. Afghanistan is a tragic place. But, I guess that's the distinction between a president that has tried, I think, to under very difficult circumstances, to get people out, and somebody who turned his back on our allies in northern Syria.
I'll end on this, what is success from today forward?
Bennet: Where?
With Afghanistan. With whatever this has resulted in.
Bennet: I don't think we're going to -- I wouldn't characterize any of this a success. I think we left the country, we left our country, with bad and horrible choices. And President Biden had bad and horrible choices to make. I guess what I would say success is, Marshall, for me, would be studying the question of why we spent 20 years at war in two countries in the Middle East; one Afghanistan and one Iraq. I'd like to know why we put the American people through, essentially, two endless wars and what we can do to avoid that again, that would be a success.
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