I'm John Bachelors with my colleague Bill Rajo of the Foundation for the Defense of

Democracy's Senior Fellow.

He keeps the Long War Journal with his colleagues, and Bill writing a very

provocative essay, Who Lost Afghanistan? Reminding of Who Lost China?

That was a big question in the immediate years after the Second War when China converted to a communist state.

Who lost Afghanistan? Bill's answer is everyone. But let us begin with the Bush

administration. The Bush administration began with the remarks by the

president himself. My memory is that it was the day after night with the going to hear from us and there was a cheer as I recall. It's all very indistinct now. I haven't reviewed the video. But in any event, the Bush administration then using special forces and air, moved into Afghanistan and within several weeks Al Qaeda was fleeing,

bin Laden was escaping, and the Taliban crumbled and disappeared. What can we now know about

those times, the early days of the US and in Afghanistan that created the conditions of the present day.

Yes, John, I think this is a very important question when looking at, you know,

how did we lose Afghanistan and it started all four

administrations bear responsibility the Bush administration tried but made mistakes

the three subsequent administrations they just wanted to leave

Afghanistan but the Bush administration's fault in my estimation was

Donald Rumpfeld's insistence on keeping a small footprint in Afghanistan.

He wanted to do it with special forces and working with tribal militias and working with the Northern Alliance.

Those are things we could do, but in my opinion we needed to go in

heavy in Afghanistan. We needed to crush the Taliban, kill and capture as many of its leaders that we could, and as well as be sure to have the resources to destroy al-Qaeda.

Because what happened at the second battle, Toribor, that bin Laden escaped. We relied on local militias to

surround the to cover the escape routes in the Pakistan and surround bin Laden.

And bin Laden was able to get past.

...