From the Ingraham Angle
INGRAHAM: Colonel Doug MacGregor, former secretary of defense, senior advisor under Trump, joins me now. Colonel, did we, quote, achieve our objectives?
DOUGLAS MACGREGOR, RETIRED ARMY COLONEL: No, I don’t think we did. And like you, I am very happy that we are shutting down, or at least planning to shut down the blood and money pit called Afghanistan. But the truth is, we actually went there and created more enemies than we had when we went in. We were very narrowly focused at the beginning on the Al Qaeda group, which was probably 400 or 500 people. And then we rapidly expanded the operation to make more enemies, taking on the Taliban and virtually everyone else in Afghanistan that we thought had hosted Al Qaeda. So it was kind of a disaster, and things simply got worse from there.
INGRAHAM: I think people shouldn’t begin to think tonight that leaving Afghanistan means we are going to stop wasting tax dollars.
MACGREGOR: Well, I think you are right.
INGRAHAM: So the troops are coming out, but we are still spending money there. Colonel, is this wise?
MACGREGOR: Well, we are going to try —
INGRAHAM: It’s certainly better than having troops there.
MACGREGOR: Well, we are still going to have 18,000 contractors, Laura at least for the next couple months. And I think they will try to bring in special operators, potentially from the United States and the United Kingdom. We’ve also talked about putting a military headquarters in the embassy in Kabul, which is a very dumb idea since it turns out embassy into a legitimate target for just about everybody.
But ultimately, I think it will fail, Laura, all of it will, because the countries that surround Afghanistan have had it with us, and I think the Afghans are fed up with us. So I think while we will try to keep our fingers in the pot, so to say, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the various central Asian republics north of Afghanistan will all want us out.
INGRAHAM: But Colonel, in the end, it’s a tragic story. We had so many incredible young men and women deployed there, thousands lost their lives, families just shattered. Lesson, final lesson, sum it up in 15 for us.
MACGREGOR: Well, I remember Sergeant Tillman when he was killed, and he had kept a careful record of everything that was going on, and he was disgusted. He knew that the war wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Frankly, this is another lesson that we don’t go in for anything other than the narrow purpose of eliminating a specific enemy. We stay out of the nation-building and the occupation business. Occupations turn Soldiers into jailers.
INGRAHAM: Colonel MacGregor, thank you.
I am definitely in agreement with the Colonel.
This could have been finished years ago if we had actually fought a war instead of piecemeal battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. This war—any war— can be brought to a relatively quick finish by dedicating every military resource—tactical, strategic, and intelligence—to kill the enemy. They attack us, we annihilate them. Every single one of them. It isn’t hard. Pick your targets and commence fire. I’d have started with all the capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Kabul, Riyadh, Tehran, Islamabad, Amman, all of them.
I’d have rocked their fucking Casbah with neutron bombs and put a quick end to their quest for a new Caliphate. But then, I’m a former Soldier, not a politician.
Stop the nation building and occupation shit. It results in mission creep that lasts for years.