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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. This is not the story anyone wanted to be talking about in connection with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which, of course, is in just a few weeks, and we're all beginning to talk about it. We wanted to be talking about a resilient New York City, honoring the victims and the heroes, things like that.

Instead, it's one of the worst things anyone on earth has seen since 9/11. People dying from trying to cling to departing airplanes that they're so desperate to get out on. The anticipation and at least some reality already being reported of any Afghans who helped the US or the old Afghan government losing their lives in revenge killings and intimidation killings. The fate of women and girls under the medieval Taliban patriarchy, rapes and forced marriages are already being reported.

The US failing to anticipate how this would go, and go so quickly. The 20th anniversary of 9/11 is approaching with defeat, humiliation, and a new generation of victims. President Biden yesterday attempted to shift the blame.

President Biden: The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden yesterday. With us now, Robin Wright. New Yorker contributor, a distinguished fellow at the Global Affairs Think Tank, the Wilson Center, an expert on Islamist extremism in the Muslim world, she is a former diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post. Her Wilson Center bio page says she has reported for more than 140 countries. Wow.

She is the author of numerous books, including the much-read Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World. Her new article in The New Yorker, Does the Great Retreat from Afghanistan Mark the End of the American Era? Robin, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC. Welcome back, I should say, to WNYC.

Robin Wright: It's always great to be with you, Brian. I look forward to the conversation.

Brian Lehrer: I want to focus on the current humanitarian crisis before we get to the big historic picture and the place of America in the world. The president acknowledged in that clip that this did unfold more quickly than they anticipated. What has that assessment failure led to in terms of Afghans who are in danger right now, as far as you can assess it?

Robin Wright: The dangers on humanitarian level [unintelligible 00:03:06] a lot of different levels. There are the immediate Afghans and dual citizen Afghan Americans who the United States wants to get out. The number bandied around is 10,000. I suspect it's more. There are tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of Afghans who work for our allies, be it France, Germany, Britain, Australia, Japan, Canada.

They all relied very heavily on translators, facilitators, local staff. It's really hard to see how you get that many people out of Afghanistan by August 31st, which is the original deadline, particularly given the logistical hassles at the airport, which has become chaotic. [unintelligible 00:03:59] the United States to send in another troop just to restore order at the airport.

Brian Lehrer: Jake Wood, a vet who wrote a book called Once a Warrior, tweeted this, "We should have reinforced Kabul until our evacuation of Afghan allies was completed. That should have included a clear-eyed threat to the Taliban that any of their forces that came within 50 miles of the city would be destroyed, then leave." Do you think that scenario was considered or would have been viable?

Robin Wright: General McKenzie, who is in charge of Central Command, the area in the Middle East and South Asia that is part of CENTCOM, Central Command, has held talks with the Taliban in Doha on that very subject to try to say, "We want an orderly exit. We will use our force and our vast array of tools if you attack us." I think the Taliban actually has an interest in getting the Americans out and not facing any kind of challenge on the ground. Remember, it's a lot of NATO countries, too. This is not just the United States withdrawing. There'll be an enormous number of people who want out.

I think it won't end when US planes stop coming into Kabul because there will be a lot of people who couldn't get to Kabul who may try to flee across land borders, whether to Iran or Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, there are a lot of options. I think we're going to see real instability in the aftermath of the US withdrawal.

Brian Lehrer: Here's the president again from yesterday's speech, specifically on the timing of the evacuation.

President Biden: I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghans, civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. Part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, does it sound credible to you that the evacuation didn't begin earlier because the Afghan government discouraged the US from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering a crisis of confidence as they were preparing to try to resist the Taliban without US troops?

Robin Wright: That may have been an element, Brian. I suspect the bigger component is that US intelligence failed to identify the correct timeline. The United States just in the last two weeks, they said, "Well, they've got at least 30 or 60 or 90 days till the Taliban threatens Kabul, not takes Kabul." When you look at the array of failures, you can blame some of it on the military, some on the politicians and diplomats, some on the Intelligence. The whole array of the US government just got this wrong, and repeatedly got it wrong.

One of the great tragedies is that over 20 years, we kept changing our strategy and we never really understood that all the weaponry we have, whether it's B-52 bombers or missiles and drones, tanks and armored personnel carriers, are not enough to beat a militant ideology that has strong local support. That's a reality. It's stunning that the country that is arguably the most powerful in the world has been unable to hold in check a ragtag militia that has no significant air power, no armor and artillery, except the things that they've confiscated in their march to Kabul in one of the poorest countries in the world.

This is what makes the stakes, the rippling repercussions so profound. It's not just Afghanistan, it's, does the US know how to fight these kinds of wars? We didn't do well in Iraq, we pulled out and ISIS came in and seized a third of the country. We didn't do very well in Beirut where we pulled Marine peacekeepers out in 1984 because of bombing attacks by what was then the nascent cells of Hezbollah.

That this is a pattern that we have not developed a response or an effective program that will contain these groups. We keep getting pushed out. I think that the toll long-term to the United States' image in the world, the perception that Jihadism has just won a key battle against democracy, that there'll be a lot of bottom lines about our 20-year engagement, our longest war, for decades to come, we're only beginning to see the outlines of what this means.

Brian Lehrer: What do you see as the choices for the US government right now in terms of how many Afghans they can evacuate from country, how they'll figure out who those people are, and how they can do it?

Robin Wright: I suspect the United States hasn't answered all those questions either. I think one of the dimensions we don't talk about a lot is that many of the people who have been evacuated are men. Their wives and children stay behind. They will be extremely vulnerable as the Taliban sort through, "Where is your husband? What job did he do? We can all hope there's no slaughter, that there is no purge, but I think it's going to be tough for a lot of people who don't get out.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, how is it possible? This is the first I've heard this described in this way. How is it possible that the US would be evacuating men, but not their wives and children who arguably would be even more vulnerable?

Robin Wright: That's absolutely true, but the people who were employed by the United States were predominantly men, some women of course, but it's the family issue that complicates this. I have a colleague who managed to get out his interpreter, but the family is still there, his little kids and his wife and there's no prospect of getting out. The US has a very complicated legal system, a lot of paperwork. How do you qualify for one of these SIV visas?

It takes a long time and needless to say, with the drawdown of the embassy, you have a very small number of diplomats left at the airport who have to sort through this. Of course, one of the problems is not all the people who work for us are in Kabul. Many of them are stranded in provinces taken over by the Taliban.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anything you want to say or ask about the situation in Afghanistan is welcome here now with Robin Wright from The New Yorker, 646-435-728O, 646-435-728O. Any Afghans or Afghan Americans listening right now, or anyone may call 646-435-728O, 646-435-728O or tweet at Brian Lehrer. Let's take a phone call right now, Jim in spring lake, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Robin Wright. Hello, Jim.

Jim: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me on. Robin, I appreciate your reporting on this and your perspective. I run a small scale NGO and had done work on the island of Lesbos. Everybody talks about the Syrian refugee crisis there, but I met more Afghans in the refugee camps there and this was back in 2015 and 2016. This unmitigated failure on the part of the United States government stands three administrations.

I was telling everybody that I could back, excuse me, five or six years ago, "We need to have a plan." I was meeting guys from the Afghan national army, I was meeting people that worked in technical operations, people that were mopping the floors in our forward operating bases, who were already being hunted by the Taliban. I've spent the last 24 hours on frenzy phone calls and text messages with Afghan nationals. I'm working to get two families outright now.

The level [unintelligible 00:12:57] we dropped the ball on this one guy [unintelligible 00:13:00] strike force. This is one of the most elite forces working with our CIA. Recruited, trained, paid, sent out on ops by our CIA. His missions at times were watched by drone by president Obama, and this guy has been left behind with his family. He was captured once, they bound him, they beat him in front of his family, took away his firearms, told him to wait there. He escaped in the middle of the night to get to where he's hiding right now and we're trying to get him and his family out.

This is one of the highest level operatives that we've left behind. God help, again, those folks who were just helping on lower levels and the humanitarian workers as well, and another young guy that I had helped get to Germany as an Afghan refugee through the refugee camps, he sent me a message yesterday. "My brother works for the UN. If they find him, they'll kill him," and we're trying now to get his brother and the rest of the family out.

There were years to plan for this and at the failure of the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration, and as Americans, we should be utterly embarrassed.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you, unfortunately for your call. Robin.

Robin Wright: I totally agree with him. I actually think that all four precedents deserve some of the blame. There have been miscalculations by each administration, whether it was about whether a surge would work or how much longer to stay or changing the kind of strategy or tactics. In the early years it was said, we're not fighting a 10 year war, we're fighting 10 one-year wars. Every time a new commander came in and they changed strategy and that took overhaul the premise of the fight.

The danger of all these people leaving is that this is a brain drain. What will Afghans be able to achieve under a Taliban government? If those who are the best educated, speak [unintelligible 00:15:11] variety of languages leave the country, who's left behind? We made enormous progress as a nation and in overseeing the development of a political system. We saw the transfer of power more than once, democratic elections, more than once. We saw the opening up of schools by the time as we leave, there are 37% of girls who can read according to human rights watch.

There's an independent media and will all of this just evaporate? This is a society. We're not talking just about the arms of who controls the presidential palace and who is the security force, it really is what happens to a whole society. That's, I think, the danger that we go back if, as the Taliban said, women now have to wear a niqab, which is not just a hijab scarf, but this is what covers the face. If we were going back to the dark ages, and this is what worries me a great deal, that our losses are not just militarily, that the real loss will be the implosion or Exodus of those people most capable of helping transform Afghanistan into a modern nation.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that exodus and the oppression of those who remain. To that point, Robin, and I think this is so important to get your take on. The lead headlines on the New York Times website this morning were, Taliban vow no reprisal killings, but Afghans are desperate to escape. As pressure mounted on president Biden to do more, the Taliban presented themselves as a responsible steward of Afghanistan. What's your take on the Taliban promising no reprisal killings, vowing to respect women's rights, which they have also said, and trying to present themselves as responsible stewards in general? Why do they even care what the outside world thinks of that, for one thing, and how much do you think they're just plain lying?

Robin Wright: I think that they're trying to portray or create an image that the world will accept and we'll leave them alone. I don't believe it. I believe that with girls behind niqab, as they call it, the all enveloping robes or burkas that cover the face as well, that the rights of women will be trashed. One of my concerns about education is whether the Taliban will allow girls to learn their ABCs and their two plus twos, rather than just stuffing a Koran in their face and teaching them how to recite religious verses.

There are different standards of education and one broader issue and that is the Taliban is a multifaceted organization. It has different wings. It has hardliners who've engaged in hostage taking and rape and there are others who have engaged in diplomacy with our representative to the peace talks, Zal Khalilzad. This is where I don't think that they speak with one voice. This is that moment where the Taliban was able to prove what it didn't want and to fight to destroy it. What's not clear is what they want to create now and how different it will be from its rule in the 1990s.

I went to Afghanistan for the first time in 1999. I drove across the Khyber pass, past the fortified estates of the drug Lords along the rutted, axle busting roads to Kabul. I remember seeing the little kids out begging or shoe shining on the street because their widowed mothers weren't able to go out in public, couldn't work, needed a man to go to the grocery store, to escort them and so the little kids were working. The idea that there is going to be a rich 21st century culture as reflected, is endangered because the Taliban doesn't like the human image. I remember going through checkpoints, Taliban checkpoints on the road into Kabul, a lot of them and they had taken out video and tape cassettes, taken out the ribbons, and strewn them around the gateways to whatever town or village.

There is little tolerance. There is a rigid belief system and people who don't go along face serious repercussions, whether it's being hauled in front of courts, facing beatings. It's hard to believe that we'll not be going back to the barbaric practices that ruled in the 1990s.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, when we come back from a break, I'm going to play the line from President Biden's speech yesterday that may be sparking the most outrage and then we'll continue with the analysis from Robin Wright from The New Yorker and the Wilson Center and more of your calls. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about the Afghanistan situation with Robin Wright, New Yorker contributor, a distinguished fellow with the global affairs Think Tank, the Wilson Center, an expert on Islamist extremism and the Muslim world, former diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post and author of a number of books, including the much-read Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World. Her new article in The New Yorker, does the great retreat from Afghanistan mark the end of the American era? Robin, here's the line from the president's speech yesterday that may be sparking the most outrage.

President Biden: We will continue to support the Afghan people, we will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence, and our humanitarian aid. We'll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. We'll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people, of women and girls, just as we speak out all over the world.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, speak out, just sounds so lame to people when the threat to women and girls is physical and immediate and on a mass scale, and yet continuing to fight a war there seems pointless to so many. Your reaction to that.

Robin Wright: One of the questions is, how do you do that if you have no military? We've closed one of the largest embassies in the world, we've cut off relations with some of our local operatives, how do we know, what can we do? It sounds fine in principle, but I find it very difficult to see what we can actually do besides introduce some meaningless resolutions at the United Nations on principle. Now, the one small thing that the US has in the way of leverage is its aid. The economy in Afghanistan is heavily reliant on foreign aid. The United States basically paid for the Afghan army, we didn't just train and arm them, we paid their salaries.

We funded a lot of the development programs, some of the NGOs got grants to help women, help develop civil society, help create social media and independent media. I just don't know how you do that given the fact that we are basically trying to erase our presence. It would mean, in some ways, having a relationship with the Taliban and I think that will be very uncomfortable for the Biden administration.

Brian Lehrer: Some people will hear that answer and think, "Wait, we're going to give that government aid?"

Robin Wright: I think a lot of people will question that. Absolutely, but the Biden administration has said repeatedly that if the Taliban engages in any kind of mass human rights violations, that it jeopardizes the prospect of future aid. The United States is never going to be giving, in the near future, the kind of funding it provided the Afghan government, but the Taliban is going to need some funding, and they don't want to rely simply on the narcotics. Afghanistan is one of the homes of the greatest production of heroin in the world and the Taliban survived off that partly the last time it was in power.

What other governments, Russia, China, might give it aid, but will they want to be associated with giving a lot of aid to what is a potentially barbaric regime? There are a lot of hard questions, Brian. We're just at the beginning of a process that will not end on August 31 when US originally had a deadline to get out or even in the months as this plays out ahead. The United States will have to commit an estimated $2 trillion just to pay for the disability and medical treatment of soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. The peak may not be until 2048. The Long War doesn't end with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Brian Lehrer: You and the last caller talked about this as a failure of four successive presidents. I think Dennis in Brooklyn has a slightly different view of that. Dennis, you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Dennis: Hey, good morning. Good morning, Robin. How are you doing? Thanks for taking my call. I have to think that this is a failure of liberalism. When Trump was in office, they knew that if they stepped out of line, the Taliban, Trump would hit them with fire. Everything that the liberals WNYC, NPR, New York Times hated about Trump was exactly what the Taliban understood. The Taliban doesn't understand talk. It's like if I was calling to this program and talk French. They understood him and they knew that he would bomb them, and he would kill them like he did to Soleimani.

When Biden gets in, and he's afraid to say the word Islamic and he's just busy with silly things like the army having gender studies, it invites the Taliban. How do you explain that Obama released this guy, who's now running the Taliban? That's liberalism, that's afraid to say GTMO is the best place to put these people. This is a failure of liberalism.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you, I can't go over every one of those points but let me ask you about your understanding of President Trump's position because I thought President Trump's position was the United States should not be spending money on endless wars when that money should be going to help American citizens and our infrastructure and he set the May 1 withdrawal date from Afghanistan.

Dennis: Ah, here's the difference. You remember Trump loved the word surgically and he had his funny way of saying all these words. Trump said, "I'm going to withdraw, and Taliban, if you do something stupid, I will bomb you. My button is bigger than yours." They knew he meant it and Trump would keep his word on that. They knew he was a mean, tough guy who would destroy you if you get under his nerves. That was the single difference between Trump and Biden. American leadership, people are proud of America, and what American liberalism has turned into this, "Hey, America, you never let us say Islamic terrorism. You never let us say good or evil. There's no good and bad."

That is the single difference and that would have kept all these women and girls, all these people who are going to be beheaded and burnt alive, whatever is going to happen to them, God forbid, would all have been prevented if there would have been a strong man in the White House. It's time for people to realize there's good and bad, there's good and evil. You don't have to worry about the people in GTMO are being treated very nicely. Believe me, they have gyms, they have televisions. Let's not stop worrying about the people in GTMO and worry about the girls in Kabul. It is cruel to allow people in GTMO out and then have the girls in GTMO killed. You're a kind person if you keep the people in GTMO.

Brian Lehrer: The girls in Afghanistan. Dennis, thank you very much. I don't know that we need to get into the back and forth on conditions in GTMO and who, if anyone, should be sent there, Robin, but what about his take on the difference between what is most salient here, the difference between how Trump would have effected his own withdrawal date of May 1 and how Biden is withdrawing?

Robin Wright: Well, look, if you trace the turning point in the Afghan war, it was President Trump saying that the United States was going to withdraw. As you point out, the original date was May 1, but the classic mistake was he wasn't willing to use American leverage, which involved no guns, it was American diplomatic leverage, to try to push the Taliban and the Afghan government together in what would be a transition or shared government and that would have been the much better way out. The minute we said we're getting out whatever happens diplomatically or politically, then the Taliban had no incentive to hang around in the diplomacy, even though they stayed in Doha and they'd been in Doha to this day.

I said before, I think all four presidents made mistakes. Joe Biden inherited a policy and he stayed a little bit longer to give the military time to do some planning. I think there was a colossal intelligence failure that no one understood how quickly they were moving and how easily they could take the capital. On Sunday, what was so staggering when we heard that the president of Afghanistan had fled, hadn't even told others in his government, that the Taliban just walked into Kabul and then walked into the presidential palace very quietly. There wasn't a lot of bugle.

Brian Lehrer: Is the only difference between what the Biden administration or the Trump administration thought would happen and what is actually happening, that a return to brutal patriarchal theocracy is happening now rather than in two or three months?

Robin Wright: Yes. I think until the end, the United States' hope that its envoy in Doha could broker some kind of agreement between the rival Afghan parties didn't happen. Taliban played the strategic game and they could afford to because the United States had already declared it was leaving. I think that the problem was this colossal intelligence failure. The military was stuck trying to get people out very expeditiously with real momentum.

It was weighed down by the chaos, which you can blame everybody for that. The Afghans, the Taliban, the Americans, that we didn't have a more orderly exit. You see that C-17 that carried 640 Afghans on a plane that has room for 150. They weren't supposed to be the passengers, but the ramp went down and they went in and the pilot decided, even though it was way over the weight load, to take them out. I actually flew on a C-17 into Kabul in March.

They're massive planes, but considering the numbers that'll have to be taken out, there are going to have to be an extraordinary number of flights.

Brian Lehrer: One more call.

Robin Wright: Remember that you have all these other nations, all our allies, the Brits, the French, the Canadians, the Germans, the Australians, the Japanese, and many others who were also trying to get out of their nationals, their dual citizens and the Afghan staff that helped them

Brian Lehrer: One more call for Robin Wright from The New Yorker then our coverage will continue with Sarah Chayes. Some of you will remember Sarah. She used to be an NPR correspondent covering Afghanistan at the very beginning of the war, and then she left journalism to stay there for a time and get involved with helping the people there. Sarah Chayes is coming up in just a minute, but one more call for Robin Wright from The New Yorker and it's Reihan in east Brunswick, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Reihan: Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I'm an American Muslim of Pakistan origin, and I find it extremely upsetting and disappointing when I hear the news about Al-Qaeda, Taliban, it's being referred to as Islamic. I'm not sure why no one wants to just refer to them as Muslim extremism or Muslim fundamentalists. I find it to be confusing as well. What's the difference between jihadism Islamist ideology, Islamist extremism and I find it to be very alienating to many Muslims.

Brian Lehrer: Are you saying it would be less alienating if people said Muslim instead of Islamist or Islamic?

Reihan: Yes, because I think that when you use the word Islamic or Islamist, it implies that it's originating from Islam and it's not. Whatever the Taliban is doing, whatever Al-Qaeda is doing has nothing to do with Islam. There are extremists of every religion, including Muslims, and they don't necessarily reflect the religion. Islam is a religion of peace. There are issues within the Muslim world in terms of its grappling with the complexities of the modern era.

It's wrong to say those words. I think Muslim would be much more appropriate and would be less alienating. I think a lot of the Muslims around the world are alienated when the West uses these kinds of terms. It sounds like west versus the Islamic world. It also implies that Muslim [inaudible 00:35:04] embrace modern era values and universal values. These values of women being educated are not Western, they're universal and it should be embraced as such.

Brian Lehrer: Reihan, I'm going to leave it there just because we have to end the segment, but thank you for a very important call. Please call us again. Robin, as somebody who has covered these kinds of issues for so long, you must have thought about this question of the precise choice of words and the difference between using Muslim or Islam or Islamic or Islamist in any of these contexts.

Robin Wright: Yes, there is a huge spectrum within the Islamic political community. You have groups like [unintelligible 00:35:58] in north Africa, in Tunisia, which has run for democratic elections and share power on coalition governments. On the other end of the spectrum, you have groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. There is a big spectrum and I think that Americans are not well-educated on Islam generally. After 9/11, there was a sense that Muslims were America's enemy.

I remember George Bush actually went to the Islamic center in Washington, DC to try to say our war is not against Islam. I think that in passing or the shorthand, we often use terms that are offensive and it's important to all racial or religious or sectarian groups to identify them accurately, thoughtfully and not to group them all together because there is huge diversity.

Brian Lehrer: Robin Wright, New Yorker contributor, distinguished fellow at the global affairs Think Tank, the Wilson center, author of books, including Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across The Islamic World. Her new article, does the great retreat from Afghanistan mark the end of the American era? Robin, thanks as always.

Robin Wright: Thank you, Brian.

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