This is John Batcher, conversation with my colleague Bill Raggio of the Foundation for the Defense of democracies

about the four Presidencies of the Taliban, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, soon to be fifth.

What is to be done?

Bill here comments on the Bush administration, answering the question in part who lost Afghanistan.

From the very beginning mistakes were large and not

corrected. Bill explains very carefully from the initial moments in northern

Afghanistan to the second Battle of Tora Bora, the Bush administration.

Wrong from the start. More of this tonight.

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 needed a 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 estimation was Donald Rumsfeld'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 to

Toribura that bin Laden escaped. We relied on local militias to cover the escape routes into Pakistan and surround bin Laden.

And bin Laden was able to get passed.

If we had sent in the full 82nd Air

Air Assault, you know all of our air mobile or rapid deployment divisions and

...