Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm pleased to have back today. I'm a good friend, Eric Edelman, a long time foreign service officer, culminating in ambassadorships to a couple of countries.

One of them, Turkey, a complicated tenure, which we discussed, I think, on an earlier conversation. Eric then served at the end of the last three and a half years of the Bush administration as number three person in the Defense Department, a very senior position where he was involved in all kinds of every policy matter, really.

We've had conversations before, Eric, on which you've sort of given an excellent job, I think, of helping us think about foreign policy broadly and the challenges we face and covering the waterfront toward our resolve.

Today, we're going to focus on one topic, which is very much in the news, Afghanistan, which you've obviously been very involved in that policy too for a couple of decades and commented on it.

So today, just to locate people is July 8th, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan is near to complete. We read this warning. So anyway, Eric, thank you for joining me.

Bill, it's always great to be with you.

I don't know that it's going to be our most upbeat discussion, but I think it's an important one, and one that hasn't gotten the attention that it deserves.

Do you think it's a pretty momentous decision, simply to pull out and apart from people saying, well, it's been a long time and it was going to happen anyway.

And it hasn't really, I don't know, from my point of view, it's surprising how little coverage has really gotten, and then people have into this is what we'll do today.

I think thought through the implications of what may well happen.

No, I very much agree. I would say that in the first six months of the Biden administration, this is probably the most consequential thing in international affairs that Biden has done.

I mean, there are a couple of other candidates in there, but right now, this looks like the most important thing, and I agree with you.

I think it hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves, and I don't think either the administration or the commentary it has done a very good job of really thinking through a lot of the second or third order consequences, because much of the, much of the punditry and commentary has just been focused on, you know, ending endless wars,

which is really kind of mindless way to look at this whole problem.

Yeah, that would be that's a big statement and an interesting one that it could be the most consequential decision.

I don't think that's, let's hope it all works out, but I worry that it's both consequential and damaging.

So let's talk about that. I mean, what, why did President Biden make the decision, would give us a little bit of the backdrop of that.

Obviously, we all know why we intervened in the first place and the ups and downs of the war to some degree.

Vice President Biden came into office as vice president, president Biden came into office as vice president in January of 2009, and there was a.

On the heels of some policy reviews, I think you were involved in one of them very directly on what we should do in Afghanistan and the Obama administration in order to surge or troops in its first year in Afghanistan.

Yeah, there is a, you know, a long backstory to this. Obviously, this is, has been America's longest war.

We've been at it for 20 years, which is, you know, very atypical for Americans in a George Marshall famously said that Americans can only fight wars for four years.

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