I'm John Bastard with my colleague Colonel Jeff McCuson in United States Army Retired

CBS News, August 16th, 2021.

In for me, watching that retreat from Kabul, from gangsters, from the Taliban, and watching

people trying to climb onto ramps, to get down to aircraft, almost reminiscent of my

youth watching the same in Saigon, those last hours, when they quit the U.S. embassy.

And the North Vietnamese tanks were at the gates of the city.

Reminds me of always of that image.

However, two years later, Jeff, I report to you that the Taliban has not in any fashion

changed its way, brutal, sadistic, murderous, and you'd have to say, providing refuge to

gangsters, just like them.

ISIS, as mentioned, Al Qaeda's mentioned, the Pakistan Taliban are mentioned.

But across the border in Pakistan, they're now going for new elections, and there's

reason to believe that Pakistan is no more stable now than it was two years ago.

So I'm not looking to blame, I'm looking to remember, Jeff.

What do we remember now about what went wrong in Afghanistan so that we can avoid it again?

Thanks, John.

I think the important things remember are two decisions.

There was a decision to withdraw from our support for Afghanistan after 20 plus years of

trying to accomplish that mission.

That was one decision.

And then the second decision was how that withdrawal was going to actually be conducted.

So I think one, and say that after 20 years, we hadn't got it right, we had done the

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