Obama Defense Secretary calls on Biden to accept responsibility for Afghanistan crisis

but i want to bring leon panetta into this the former secretary of defense um secretary thank you for taking the time uh one thing that keeps coming up is that it goes along by and large party lines uh but criticism about the way all this was handled did seem to be a bi partisan theme some going further back to say it's the fault of other administrations but you did recently say secretary that you thought this was joe biden's uh bay of pigs his worst nightmare do you still feel that way in light of some of the follow-up incidents that have happened some say provocative acts that might look random like you know what's going on at north korea launching more missiles china getting particularly bellicose of late uh what do you think [Music] well neil i you know i i understand that this hearing is going to try to look at all of the issues involved with afghanistan both past and present but my biggest concern frankly is that we need to look forward and ask ourselves how do we protect our national security and protecting our national security uh is yes it's about china it's about russia it's about north korea it's about iran but it's also about terrorism uh and the greatest concern i have is that uh the taliban that is now in charge of afghanistan is pretty much the same taliban that was in charge of afghanistan and 9 11. and that tells me that one of the dangers here is that afghanistan could clearly become a safe haven for terrorists for al-qaeda for isis for the haqqani terrorists and that that could represent a real threat to our national security so i i'm more interested in trying to determine what steps does the united states have to take now to make sure that we can protect our national security in the future well we can't protect it in afghanistan right so if if these groups are allowed to do whatever they want uh with taliban protection whatever differences they have amongst themselves like isis k and certainly the taliban if you're right i think you've signaled this in the past we might have to return to afghanistan well you know the issue for this president and for our country is to do what's necessary to protect our national security we've just been through a 9 11 20th anniversary where we saw what al qaeda was willing to do in attacking our country and killing almost 3 000 people we went to war to try to make sure that uh al qaeda would never get the chance to attack our country again uh and that hopefully afghanistan would not become a safe haven for terrorism well the danger right now is that uh this afghanistan with under taliban control i think will become a safe haven for terrorism uh and that means that al qaeda is going to be free to reorganize itself and to expand its work and to continue to plan a tax that's what al qaeda does they're interested in attacking the united states of america that's always been their goal and killing americans as well as killing others uh and that's true for isis and it's true frankly for the economies uh their interest is in killing people uh and so what we need to have is intelligence on the ground we need to make sure that we have strong intelligence capabilities yes in a taliban afghanistan intelligence is smart enough to know how to do that we have ways and technologies to be able to gather that kind of intelligence we do need people on the ground so that we are monitoring just exactly what al qaeda is doing and what other terrorists are doing and secondly we need to have the capability to use counter-terrorism operations against those targets the president himself has said we've got to use counter-terrorism it's called over the horizon but regardless of what you call it we need to have special forces capabilities that can move if we identify terrorist targets who are threatening the united states of america that is important in order to protect our security secretary you always hear the big difference between the taliban now and then is the taliban was working with or at least countenancing everything that al qaeda was doing 20 years ago not so much today particularly when it comes to this fringe group this isis k group so uh we have less to worry about do you buy that no i don't uh i i heard a spokesman for the taliban being interviewed uh by a national network in which the interviewer asked the taliban spokesman about bin laden's role in the attack on 9 11. and the response was that that individual saw no evidence that bin laden was involved in the 9 11 attack if that's what that individual believes and that represents the leadership's view in afghanistan of the role of al-qaeda what it tells me is that they are going to allow al-qaeda to do whatever the hell they want uh and that's dangerous now you talk about you can get people on the ground and say aren't troops um that could be monitoring how things are going but it's a lot tougher without troops in this environment right now isn't it well there's no question it's tougher when the taliban are in full control of afghanistan to be able to have good intelligence it's a big country it was tough enough to do it uh when when we were involved in working with the afghan government to be able to cover uh that country uh and determine where the threats were coming from now it's even more difficult uh with the taliban in charge uh in addition to that uh to do counter-terrorism operations i mean if we have to do them from bases outside of afghanistan whether it's a carrier whether it's pakistan whether it's uh uzbekistan wherever it's going to take more time to be able to go after those targets and that's going to make it much much more difficult to be able to hit the targets that could represent a threat to our security so there's a lot of work that needs to be done here in order to protect our national security we have that obligation as i said this is not something we can ignore yeah sure it's the end of a chapter in afghanistan we understand that but it's not the end of the war on terrorism and that means that the united states is going to continue have to continue to be vigilant about the potential threat that we are going to be vulnerable to from what is now a taliban controlled afghanistan secretary do you think these 100 or so americans are no exact number given yet again by the secretary of state are are going to get out of afghanistan safely well look i i think the administration has several important responsibilities here as we look forward number one they have a responsibility to get all of us or u.s personnel out of afghanistan uh whether it's a 100 or 150 whatever the number is uh we have a responsibility to them to do everything necessary to get them out and the same thing is true for the afghans who fought alongside of us uh those things i guess do you think they will get out secretary well we have a responsibility to do whatever the hell is necessary to get them out now that means we've got to be able to track them that means we have to be able to guide them that means that we have to be able to find ways to be able to get them out of afghanistan whether they go to pakistan whether they go to a particular location where we can try to retrieve them we have a responsibility to get them out we can't just turn our backs on them and we can't just allow the taliban to tell us that they're going to cooperate when in fact they're not cooperating so we've gotta we gotta push through this that's number one number two as i said i think we have really got to develop our intelligence capabilities and our counterterrorism capabilities three we've got to continue to put pressure on this taliban working with our allies to make sure that the you know if they say they're not going to support terrorism if they say they're going to provide women's rights then let let's see them in fact implement that not just use words but in fact do that and then lastly i think we've got to learn the lessons of what's happened here uh in afghanistan if we're going to deploy united states forces any place we need to have a clear mission we need to have a strategy for achieving that mission and we need to have an exit strategy that's a lesson we should have learned from vietnam and it's a lesson that we now should learn from afghanistan secretary we're learning a little bit now that you know defense officials and higher-ups and those the confidants of the administration were warning the president that what what could ensue uh with our pullout um and you know he took it and you know weighed it and and obviously went through uh with the withdrawal um are you concerned about his judgment after all of this well you know joe biden has a lot of experience uh he he knows foreign policy he's known him for a long time he knows you know that uh the adversaries that face our country and what needs to be done to deal with our adversaries look presidents make mistakes just like anybody else i think the most important thing for this president to do is to be willing to accept responsibility for the mistakes and to move on uh and to basically do what is necessary now to protect our national security he made the decision some will support that decision some will oppose the decision but in the end i think the important thing for the united states of america and for this president is what are we going to do to make sure that america never again experiences another 9 11 attack secretary you say that uh president biden is it knows foreign policy but on a lot of key issues over the years he has not exhibited that knowledge and and and some have criticized him um for being on the wrong side of almost every important foreign policy uh initiative uh he was against the taking out of osama bin laden when you were leading the charge to take out osama bin laden his concern at the time was about collateral damage uh obviously the the effort to take him out succeeded uh but it was a reminder of that on on these key areas maybe the president isn't as steeped or well schooled in this or accurate in this or expert in this as he likes to say no neil uh look i i've known joe biden for a long time uh and one thing he's always done is he has raised questions about the decisions that impact on foreign policy and that's okay that's okay that's what uh senators uh are responsible for doing is to ask questions uh and very frankly as vice president he asks the same questions i don't have a problem with that i think that it's important when a president has to make decisions to have people in the room that are saying and raising questions about whether or not uh these are the right steps to take i think that i think that's important to do and frankly i think every president including this president needs to have people in the room that are saying wait a minute i don't think this is the right decision there are problems here there are consequences that you have to look at that's important to do so i i don't i don't question joe biden's knowledge or his capability or his willingness to ask questions i think that's a good thing to have i think more questions should have been asked with regards to afghanistan as to what the potential consequences would be so that we could take steps to deal with that for some reason that didn't happen but now the issue is we have a situation in afghanistan that represents a national security threat we damn well better do what we have to do to protect our security secretary donald trump has said this would not have happened if he were president do you believe that uh no i don't as a matter of fact uh i think it was donald trump's decision uh to to get out of afghanistan uh he's the one who at doha basically cut the agreement to do it i think the taliban very frankly got the best of us at doha they got everything they wanted and we got very little in return and i think he would have he would have gotten us out of afghanistan you know as quickly as he could and probably made some of the same mistakes so look i you know in some ways i guess i don't question the fact that the president made the decision that it was time to take our forces out of afghanistan i think the question comes down to execution uh and were the were the right questions asked uh in terms of were we going to effectively execute that decision in a way that would accomplish his decision uh and yet do it in a way that would also protect our people and the afghans who fought with us that's that's the question that i think uh hopefully congress will continue to ask uh and one that we need need to know the answers to in order to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes in the future do you think anthony lincoln should resign well you know i i'm a believer that the president decides who stays and who goes uh in an administration uh and if the president has confidence in tony blinken as secretary of state then i think he should stay but that's a decision frankly between the president and the secretary of state finally when you mention the bay of pigs thing referring to the incident with a young u.s president jfk just a few months into office uh you know leading this debacle that that failed uh it did trigger a number of tests and challenges to the new president around the world uh some say the biggest of course was the setup for the cuban missile crisis do you think that some of the things that have occurred since the collapse of afghanistan uh including now north korea launching still more long-range cruise missiles china getting very provocative uh recommending that it send ships to rcs as we send ships to their seas even though they're not their seas but you get my point that that these things are not happening in a vacuum they're happening post this collapse and it it is because of that that that they're getting increasingly provocative and in our face well neil look i i think i think the united states is confronting a dangerous world and it's been dangerous for a while because i think our adversaries have read weakness on the part of the united states i think that's why russia has been more aggressive in the way they've handled themselves and come after us i think china reads weakness and so they're being much more aggressive and i think that's true for other adversaries we've got a dangerous world we've got to confront not just china and russia we've got to confront iran we've got to confront north korea uh and the testing that they're doing we've got to confront terrorism we've got to confront cyber attacks which are without question the battlefield of the future so there is a lot that we have to worry about as a country in terms of protecting our national security when anytime something happens that sends a message out to our adversaries that somehow the united states doesn't have its act together clearly that creates a certain vacuum it is very important for the president for this administration to make very clear that the united states is going to be a world leader in terms of of dealing with national security that we are going to work with our allies in trying to protect our national security and try to advance peace in the world and it is very important for the united states to make clear that when we give our word about what we're going to do that we stick to it so i i think without question the united states now has to make clear that we have a strong steady foreign policy a strong set steady national security policy and that we have a clear vision about what is going to be necessary in order to tell our adversaries wherever they are that the united states is strong and will stand up to protect the united states of america that is a message that now has to go out to the world leon panetta former secretary of defense chief of staff so many important positions in the history of this country thank you for taking the time leon you bet good to talk to you hey sean hannity here hey click here to subscribe to fox news youtube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis you will not get it anywhere else

Channel: Fox News

Views: 118,346

Rating: 4.5694189 out of 5

Keywords: fnc, fox news, fox news channel, fox news media, fox news network, Your World Neil Cavuto, Neil Cavuto, Your World, afghanistan, afghanistan news, afghanistan news today, afghanistan taliban, afghanistan taliban kabul, biden, biden afghanistan, biden afghanistan address, biden speech afghanistan, joe biden, joe biden afghanistan, kabul afghanistan, kabul afghanistan taliban, taliban, taliban afghanistan, taliban afghanistan news, taliban fighting in afghanistan, taliban news

Id: GwlWsSxc0k4

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021