Pod Save the World - A civil, bipartisan foreign policy discussion (aka clickbait)

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Tommy talks with Republican Congressman and Air Force veteran Adam Kinzinger. They discuss Trump’s decision to decertify the Iran deal, North Korea, Senator Corker’s criticism of Trump, the war in Afghanistan and how to understand our fight against terrorism. 

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. Thank you all for tuning in. My guest this week is Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He is a Republican, say that again, a Republican representing the Illinois 16th Congressional District. He's an interesting member of Congress because he is really focused on foreign policy. I think that probably has a lot to do with the fact that he served in the Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he still serves near National Guard. We talked about the Iran deal and President Trump's decision to decertify it. We talked about his approach to the war on terror. into North Korea and why he's able to get along with and work with veterans from both parties better than he does sort of your average colleague in the house. I really appreciate the conversation because even though we probably don't agree on a single thing politically, we were able to talk reasonably and rationally about very complicated issues, so I appreciate that. Second, before we get to the interview, I just wanted to double back on an issue I covered a couple weeks back, which is the ongoing ethnic clenting against the Rohingya Muslim

minority in Burma. Unfortunately, nothing is happening to try and slow or stop horrific stories coming out of Burma. So I'd like to encourage people to call their members of Congress. The capital switchboard is 202-224-3121. You can call your member of Congress and ask them to do a couple of things. One, you can simply say, you know, what are you doing to help stop the violence happening in Burma? You can ask to speak to their staff are responsible for foreign policy. If you're want to be even more specific, you can ask them to sign on to a bipartisan, dear colleague letter on the Rohingya crisis in Burma that's being circulated by Congressman Joseph Crowley and Steve Shabbitt. Leave your name, leave your number, let them know where you live.

Call people from your district from your state because this is really important. We still have time to do something, but we need to act right away. So thanks for listening again, and here's the interview. My guest today on POTS day of the world is Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He is a Republican representing Illinois's 16th congressional district. He serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, among others, and he served in the United States Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan and still serves in the Air National Guard.

Congressman, thank you so much for doing the show. Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's great. I was talking with you about this off air, but I decided to pitch your staff on this interview after a conversation I had several months back with Congressman Moulton. Seth Moulton is a former Marine and a current member of Congress from Massachusetts, and he said something I thought was fascinating, which was that you guys are able to communicate on a different level and connect in a different way because you both served in the military.

And at a time when things feel pretty bleak and pretty partisan, it was nice to hear that. And I feel like, you know, that claim has been borne out by how much work you've done together. You guys have a bipartisan legislative group going on Iraq, another one on Syria. You do a whole bunch of joint statements. So I was just hoping we could start with you talking a little bit about that. Like, did serving in the military shape your... your worldviews in a similar way? Or do you guys just sort of understand each other and connect in a different way based on that shared experience? How does that work? You know, it's probably a little of both.

I mean, we, Seth and I probably don't agree on a lot of issues. I mean, he's a Democrat. I'm a Republican. You know, a lot of these issues that come up day to day. We'll have actual political disagreements. But the difference is, and I think this comes from the military. I also think it's a younger generational thing is that we don't make the differences. It doesn't become, you know, Seth Moulton believes this issue, which I don't, therefore, I don't like him. Because, you know, look, when you're in Iraq and when you're in the military, you can have political debates with people because sometimes you're bored and that's what you do. But you, you know, you still look at somebody as a Democrat or a Republican, say, that person, my life is in their hands. You learn how to trust each other.

You also learn that, frankly, honestly, America's bigger than these, like, momentary political disagreements. So something's lasted through really difficult time. really divided times. But the other thing, being young, you know, like, if you come into this in your 30s or even in your 40s, you typically don't see Congress as like your last job in life. You don't see that you're going to, you know, retire there at 80. Some probably do. But, you know, you look at it, you say, look, there's life after this. And I like to think that there's an old biblical principle. It's basically like the tighter you hang on to your life, the more apt you are to lose it. I think the tighter you hang on to this job, the more apt you are to lose it. So, you know, like, Seth's a great guy.

There's a lot of good veterans out here that do just great things. We get along. Yeah. Well, I also think you're wise as a politician representing Illinois to try to have an exit strategy because, boy, what an interesting tradition here with our friend Rod Blagojevich and Yeah. I'm not going to go out the same way, though. Don't worry.

No, I know you're not. I know you're not. Cars, could you just talk for a minute about, like, what kind of missions you were flying in Iraq and Afghanistan? I think it's fascinating to hear that history. Yeah. So, you know, initially I flew like KC-135. It's mid-air refueler.

That's where I did most of my Afghanistan stuff, kind of all over the world with that. I enjoyed it. I liked the plane. The mission, you know, it was in the height of the surge and everything else. And I said, you know, I want to do something a little more down in the dirt, if you will, a little more into the action. And there was this plane, the RC26, that had just been deployed to Iraq and as an ISR asset. So basically it does reconnaissance. We find people and things like that.

And they had a program. They said we want, they called us mercenaries, but we could stay. in our main airframe, the KC-135, and also dual train in this plane and deploy with it. And so I decided to do it, and I fell in love with the mission immediately. I mean, we have guys that come into this from men and women that come into this plane from fighters or from heavies or other aircraft, and they just love this mission. We're doing real world stuff. We're finding people that you read about in the newspaper the next day.

And so I transitioned to doing that job full time. So I left the tanker and came to the mighty condor, the RC-26. and I'll tell you it's a rough plane to fly. It's really actually difficult to fly, but the mission's bar none. And I still get to do it in the Guard. And, you know, stateside, we do counter-narcotics work. We do border stuff.

These guys just got back from South America doing some counter-drug work. So it's really fascinating. And I tell you, I absolutely love the military and love what I do in it. I feel like my dad was in the Air Force International Guard and flew fighter jets. And, like, I don't think he ever shook how much he loved that job. Yeah. Yeah, and the more you fly as a pilot, the more you fly, the more you actually fall in love with it. It's like the opposite of every other job, you know, where it's like the more you do it.

You're like, I'm tired of it. No, flying, you just fall more and more in love with it. That's cool. Okay. Enough of this kumbaya bullshit. Let's talk about the Iran deal. Okay. President Trump is reportedly about to decertify the Iran deal.

It may have already happened by the time this interview is published. So basically that means Congress has 60 days to decide whether or not to put sanctions back on Iran. The Trump administration is certified that Iran is complying with the deal. the IAEA seems to have confirmed that they're complying with the deal. Do you think it's wise or appropriate for President Trump to decertify the deal when they're in compliance? And do you expect Congress will put more sanctions back on Iran? So I actually do think this is a good move by the president because it falls short of

stepping out of the deal. I think it probably would have been the wrong move to say we're tearing it out right now. We're withdrawing. The reality is the deal has a lot of flaws in loopholes. And I even had an administration official in front of our committee that basically admitted the same thing, you know, an administration being prior administration or President Obama. And so I think this is an opportunity. The president has said I'm decertifying it. Congress needs to come up with potential sanctions snapback. But also, I think what's really going to be

happening here is not so much what's going on in Congress, but what's going on internationally. This is an opportunity for the president, I think, to show that he's going to potentially use a hammer, an economic hammer, but with the hope of saying, let's get some of these loopholes closed. Now, Europeans may or may not be on board and happy with it, but the fact is, he said, if Congress doesn't act and we don't get a change, we're out. And so it's kind of that looming stick that says, okay, things like Iran sending in its own soil samples for testing, military sites that are restricted from us inspecting mainly at the behest of the Russians, honestly, the development of ballistic missile technology.

That's what's getting all the attention in North Korea is this missile development. Iran's allowed to do that theoretically unabetted. So he outlined a much broader strategy to Iran. This is just part of it. But I think this is a good first step. Now, the question of what comes next in Congress, I don't have the answer to that, like what it's going to look like. But I think there's going to be a lot of movement soon. So I'm with you on the inspections issue.

It's absurd if they say you can't go to X site or Y site. but why not just take that concern to the UN Security Council and try to push for that access and if they won't give it snap back in a coordinated way with the entire UN Security Council or with the Europeans as opposed to sort of this strategy, which I think is being interpreted in Europe as a go-it-alone strategy? Yeah, I see that. And I think there's actually been a lot of behind-the-scenes work that's been going on prior to this with our European allies. I don't want to reveal some conversations I had because they were in kind of closed-dust. doors in the situation room about what the broader strategy is. But I think that's the intention is to say, okay, can we bring the Europeans along? Can we get the Iranians to agree to something? And I think one of the other important ones is the sunset provisions. It begins to sunset soon. So the part of the problem with taking the issue of the military sites directly to the UN Security Council is Russia is part of the reason that these are being denied. Russians are not on the side

of being able to go and inspect these military sites. And so in a security council setting, it would be well expected they'd veto that. You know, and whether this repair of the deal or whatever leads to a full renegotiation or an amendment or maybe a resolution in the security council outside of it, my belief is that is what the administration is going for is some way to shore that up in a better way. And I think, you know, I think everybody, ultimately, when we kind of get past our, one of the things that's bothered me about foreign policy lately, and it's our side's fault, too, under the last president, is it's become partisan.

And I think foreign policy, we can have disagreements, but should come back to being, you know, politics ends at the water's edge. Yeah, I agree with you. And look, I've read a ton of your stuff and watched speeches you've given. Like, I believe you're very sincere when you're talking about these issues and sincerely want to get there.

I don't know that President Trump is in the same place because you pick up the Washington Post and you read that every single one of his national security team members doesn't want him to decertify, but he erupted and said, this was what I promised in the campaign, and I'm going to do it. And I read that the chairman of joint chief says they're complying. Mattis says he thinks it's in our national security interest to keep the Iran deal. Ahud Barak says, if we pull out, no one's going to join us. I'm trying to figure out, like, what is the end game here?

Because some of the things you don't love about the deal, the sunset provisions that allow them to sort of restart parts of their program at like 2025, 2030, or the ICBM tests that I agree with you are a huge problem, but we're not a part of the deal. The things that we in America call loopholes, Iran might say that's either the letter of the deal or not part of the deal. Like, I don't see the world coming with us. And I wish I had some way of having confidence that that might happen. Are you seeing something that we're not? Not yet. I mean, this is all new. As I'd mentioned, you know, I think the discussions have been going on with the administration, with our allies. I think, I believe the French president recently had even expressed some concerns with Iranian activity.

So, yeah, I mean, as far as the kind of internal disagreement is going on, yeah, I think, you know, I think Mattis was clear that he said, I think we should stay in the deal. And so maybe that's where there's kind of a middle ground to say, you know, the president didn't tear up the agreement like he said he would, frankly, in the campaign. Decertification gives it an opportunity. Look, if Congress doesn't act. Short of the president pulling out of the deal totally, it really stays in place. So I think my hope, and, you know, again, I don't know all the discussions within the administration. I'll tell you, I've met with H.R. McMaster about it, and he actually seems very sold on this strategy. So when I had heard that he was against it from some report, I'm not sure I necessarily believed that, because I think

he's convinced this the right way to go. Well, that's good news. So the other brewing nuclear crisis is North Korea. You wrote something really interesting recently. You said the, threat from North Korea is very real, but there is hysteria and hysteria is unnecessary and a disservice to our national offense. Can you talk a bit about that? Like, what did you mean by hysteria? How serious to think the threat is? And what part of the conversation do you think is irrational or hysterical? So I think the threat is very real. I actually think this is probably our top national security threat. We've, for too long, not kind of, we've taken North Korea as a bit of a joke. They're not. And this is very dangerous. When I talk about the hysteria, though,

it's not so much the hysteria over what's actually going on in North Korea. It's telling people to understand, look, you live in a country that can defend you. Your way of life is safe. Yeah, it all kind of stemmed from I was talking to a couple at an event I was at, and they said, hey, we just canceled our trip to Hawaii because we're worried about, you know, North Korean nukes. And I said, well, that's totally irrational, you know, go to Hawaii. And so that's where the kind of the idea of hysteria, it's the same thing.

it's why terrorism's so effective, right? Your chance of actually being killed by a terrorist is like less than it is being struck by lightning or something like that in this country. Yet, you know, we don't tape up the doors because we fear a thunderstorm. And so that's how terrorism wins is creating fright. And to an extent when North Korea can cause the American people to not go to Hawaii, for instance, that's the kind of thing that we need to sit back on and say, look, we've got, we've invested in the strongest military that's ever existed. and, you know, we can defend you. We need to do a better job at building missile defense.

And just know, if we need to, we can destroy the North Korean regime, even though we don't want to get to that point. Do you have confidence in our missile defense systems? We have ground-based interceptors in Alaska. You know, Aegis destroyers have, what, SM3 batteries on them that can take down certain ICBMs? Do you feel like that technology is working and getting where it needs to be? You know, what I've seen in terms of testing and intercept.

for ICBM, for instance, which is a very new thing. I have confidence that will get to where we need to be. I think if there's a situation, God forbid, tomorrow Kim Jong unlaunches an ICBM at the United States, we'll definitely test the interceptor. I don't have full faith that it would hit the missile every time. That's why we have to continue to invest. But I think we're obviously way further along than we've ever been.

But to say I have full confidence, I don't yet, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. and it's still really in the, not the inception stage, but in kind of the deployment stage. Now the fads are really good system and Aegis is a really good system, but it's the ICBM stuff that's pretty new. And that technologically,

I mean, intercepting and intercontinental ballistic missiles are really big and difficult deal because they go way out in space, as you know. Yeah, that's not simple. This is not creating the next iPod. So President Trump's about to take like an 11-day trip to Asia to start pressuring countries to do on more, more on North Korea. What do you want to see him do?

I think we focus a lot on the tweets. I don't love them. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to piss off a nuclear-armed clown over North Korea. But like the real diplomatic spadework people need to understand is like it's not necessarily just the sanctions or the statements. It's the implementation of those sanctions and pushing countries to like lock down on individual countries. So what do you want to see him do on that trip? Well, specifically on North Korea, I think building or continuing to build and strengthen, an alliance against North Korean aggression. You look at, you know, North Korean labor that they

basically farm out and then garnish the wage of those of those laborers to fund the regime. Trade routes. You know, we need basically a de facto blockade of North Korea. China's the key player. The vast majority of commerce in North Korea is Chinese. They could stop that if they wanted to. But on a broader scope, too, it's not just, you know, we focus a lot on punitive measures. I think we need to strengthen our alliance. And I'm not sure. of I'm going to see the president do this. You know, I thought our withdrawal from the trade agreement in Asia was a, was a terrible mistake. But it did seem that the president might have left a room in that to say, we'll negotiate some one-on-one trade agreements. Now, I'd like to see that because, you know,

look, when we are in trade agreements, we're obviously the dominant economy. For us to write the rules of the economic road is beneficial, not just to our economy, but to national defense. You now have countries more reliant on the United States, and you can build. those soft alliances like that. So I think strengthening our economic influence in that area would be fantastic. I'm not sure if I really expect any trade agreements announced out of this trip. But then on the other side with North Korea, bringing attention to it. And this is as much, by the way, target audiences as much China right now as it is North Korea. Right. Yeah, it was very annoying in the Democratic primary to see Hillary Clinton who had negotiated

the TPP and Bernie Sanders and then Trump. Everyone just decided to pile on it because suddenly that was good politics. The weird thing is that Americans still support trade. But yeah, for some reason in that election, nobody did. Yeah, 2016, let's just pretend it never happened. It was a little weird year. So you said some really interesting things about the war on terror. And I think what I like about it is that you do a lot of honesty in the sort of expectation setting, which is to say that this is a generational fight that's not going to end in our lifetime. When we defeat the current iteration of ISIS, it's going to regenerate its ISIS 2.0. or al-Qaeda 2.0.

And one of the things you often say is that we have to worry about the battlefield today and then the 7-8 or 8-year-olds who could be recruited. And we have to help those kids get an education and jobs down the road to prevent them from being susceptible to ISIS propaganda. That is not a politically satisfying answer, but it is honest and it is good expectations setting. Do you think we have a strategy in place to achieve that goal when you see the proposed 30% cuts at a state or the USAID budget?

Do you think we're doing enough on that development side so that guys like you flying very cool jets have less work to do? I don't think we are doing enough. You know, short term, I think the counter ISIS strategy is good. I think, you know, engaging these terrorist groups all over where they exist, Africa and elsewhere is good. But that's a short-term strategy. That's destroying the current iteration, as we mentioned of ISIS. The real battle, so the reason I think this is going to be generational is it takes people within, whether it's a religion or a way of life. to ultimately reject it for it to come down.

Like in the Cold War, you know, we took the Soviet Union down really from within. It was people that had seen enough radio-free Europe or American movies that said they want that way of life. It's the same thing with terrorism. It's going to have to come from within. We don't have enough missiles. We don't have enough bombs. And frankly, you know, the number of terrorists or people that believe that ideology grows faster than we can kill them. So you look at Syria, for instance, this festering wound where there's half a million dead Syrians.

And what happens is somebody that initially maybe started because they wanted freedom. By the way, human freedom cannot be oppressed, especially with Facebook and everything out there. They decided that they wanted freedom and they get just, you know, their family gets killed by Assad. Now they're looking for an alternative to take out Assad. And in some cases, the only alternative they saw was ISIS. So some of them joined ISIS, not because they fell in love. with the ideology, but because of their condition was so bad that anything had to be better. And so the world, not just the United States, the world, I think, is missing the realization

that, you know, economic development, hope, opportunity, like breathing space for these seven and eight-year-olds in education to learn about a world bigger than just what's in front of their face is what we're going to do to disinfect the future breeding ground of terrorism. Because I don't have kids yet, but if I do, I don't want them fighting this. same war. Yeah. I love what people with military backgrounds make that point. I think it has a special residence and people listen. It does frustrating that like we've seemed to have lost a respect or appreciation or understanding of the need for development and diplomacy. And I don't know how to fix that culturally. Is that something you encounter? Yeah, I don't know how to fix it

culturally. I think, you know, part of it is, you know, we don't have, we've not had really good spokesmen as president that have explained the need to do that beyond saying, you know, how whatever's immediately in America's interest. So yeah, destroying ISIS is in America's interest because they target American citizens. But at the same time, a healthy and vibrant Middle East not just is disinfecting us from a future terrorism. It also could be a great trading partner. Look at our investments in Germany and Japan after World War II. There are a lot of people in America that said we're wasting money on enemies. And now, South Korea, I mean, look at that. Now our economic benefit has probably been a thousand times back what we ever put into that country. So beyond just, we have a good

heart we do, I think, and I've said this, America has a mission. It's not been articulated well, but that mission in my mind is to be an example of self-governance, to billions of people that live outside of our borders, but are desperate for just a taste of what we have. Yeah. Along those same lines of that sort of hearts and minds mission, I've seen you talk about the need to sort of loosen rules of engagement in places like Afghanistan and Iraq to allow our soldiers, airmen, Marines, to do their mission. You know, I was in a lot of debates about ROE. I mean, I don't have a military background. I don't profess to tell the combatant commanders how to fight the war, but I know that those rules of engagement were designed to prevent civilian casualties. And often those sort of civilian casualties are pointed to and said, of course, that kid is going to join ISIS or al-Qaeda, his or her father, mom was killed by U.S. munitions, even if they were civilians.

How do you find the right balance there? How do we get this right? Yeah, it's an art, not a science. And I mean, you know, you saw that in the V. I just watched until they put a paywall up, you know, that Vietnam documentary and you see how some of our tactics. You need my Hulu password? Yeah, that's what I need.

But it's like, you know, some of those tactics started basically recruiting more VC and emboldening North Vietnam. So it's a tough balancing act. it had gotten to a point, and it came from the right place in Afghanistan, it had gotten to a point where it's like a guy could shoot at you, but if he puts the gun down, you were not allowed to return fire until you see him with that gun again. That's obviously one extreme. The other extreme is, I think I got gunfire from a village, so let's destroy the whole village. You can't do that. But what it comes down to, I think, is giving Americans and the NATO troops the flexibility to use common sense.

Okay, that guy's a terrorist, even though he may not be holding a weapon, but also to be very careful with people to say, you know, look, if you kill the wrong person, you're going to recruit more enemies. And the last thing is this is, I think in the last administration towards the end, it was getting to where decisions to strike or not strike a target were made almost at the Pentagon. And it takes, as somebody that's been over there, I had a decision that I needed made. and we had to get approval, it had to go all the way up to the Pentagon. And by the time the decision came back that it was affirmative, we could do what we were supposed to do, it was almost too late. And so you learn in military art that the lowest chain, so in essence the lowest officer that can be empowered to make a decision, you get much better results.

And so there's no science to it. I think if there was, we'd have figured it out. It's an always moving art, though. Slightly changing gears here. Senator Corker, the Senate Form Relations chairman recently had some tough words, President Trump. He said his threats towards other countries could set the nation on a path towards World War III. The only thing separating the country from chaos were folks like General Kelly, Secretary of Defense Mattis, Rex Tillerson, who he said spend their days trying to contain him. You know, I'm not asking you to a comment on those comments, but the thing that was interesting is he said that those views are shared by every Republican in the caucus.

Is that something you hear, do we hear these concerns about a literal World War III? So, this is in all honesty. I don't. I don't think, you know, there's people that, there are people that are worried by some of the words. And I think some of the words are, in some cases, inappropriate. But I don't think there's really a fear that we're going to roll into World War III on this because I think there's an understanding that, yeah, somebody may perceive a common as reckless. At the same time, you know, we're the United States of America unchallenged military power with military, military might, and that alone sometimes makes war preventable. So there's a lot of concern in terms of,

you know, waking up in the morning and seeing what the next seven tweets are in the morning. I don't feel the concern about the World War III side of things. Because, you know, regardless of what you feel about President Trump, he has good people around him. And I think people that have the country's best interest in stake. And I think that's made people feel better. And I think, look, you know, looking back on just in general, obviously President Trump's very unique. But I think you look back, he's a human, you look back at like, you know, President Obama and our side was so ruthless against him. And even to the point when I was advocating for military strikes in 2013 against Syria and I was one of the few Republicans out there saying we have to give the president the authority he asked for. And I talked to members on my party that said, no, because, you know, it's President Obama.

And I'm like, you don't get to choose. I mean, he's the commander in chief. He won. And he's going to disagree, obviously with the decision to suspend him. But at that time, he was going to do what was in the national interest. So, you know, look, I think all in all, we have a very stable democracy, even if somebody at the point doesn't like who the president is. When you look back at that decision not to strike Syria after the red line, are you critical of that decision because of the message it's sent in terms of keeping our word, which is, I think, the usual criticism we hear, right? If you draw a red line need to enforce it.

Or do you think that striking then might have had a material difference on the ground? Because that is something I wrestle with all the time. With respect to the chemical weapons, they ultimately cut a deal with the OPCW and the international partners to get the vast majority of their chemical weapons out of the country. Obviously not all of it because some was used later. But in terms of efficacy, like some good things happen. I'm not saying that it was all drawn up with a great plan. But when I look at the civilian casualties and the toll of human suffering,

it destroys you to think about what happened there and to wonder what could have been done. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, I disagreed with his decision not to strike the presidents. I believe he thought he was making the right decision. So, you know, it is what it is. But I think in hindsight, the keeping the word thing is important. But I also don't want a president to feel like they have to do something, especially military action, simply because they have to, you know, they put down a red line mistakenly or not. where I do think the effect was, as we know now, basically all of the Syrian parliament had vacated, the government buildings were empty, and Bashar al-Assad's government was deserting him and left. And I think had the strikes gone through, I talked to somebody in the chain of command who's well known about what the actual plan was, had this gone about. And I thought it was a brilliant plan and probably would have led to the decapitation of the Syrian government with some sense then, you know, some state stuff still in place. place and giving the Syrians an opportunity to govern themselves. It'd be messy. But if you look like at Libya, Libya is a mess, but it's intervention there prevented a Syria. People often say, we can't get involved in Syria because, you know, look at Libya. I'm like, yeah, exactly,

look at Libya. It's way better off than Syria is right now. And I thought, you know, the president's decision to intervene in Libya was absolutely the right one. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, it's tragic. and nobody made the decision to not do this out of any sense of anything but what they thought was right. But I think, you know, if we had a time machine, I'd definitely go back and try to convince the president to follow through. I've seen you talk about how reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and setting a timetable for full withdrawal, sent a message to the Taliban that they could basically wait us out. And that's an argument I've heard a lot about timeframes where it was wrong. And it's one that I think is worth considering and discussing.

I was interviewing General Lute recently who led the Iraq. Afghanistan policy for President Bush and then Afghan policy for Obama, who told me he thinks that's a flawed argument because essentially the Taliban doesn't have anywhere to go. They have no choice but to wait us out. Do you disagree with that? And are we just not thinking about these commitments in long enough terms? Yeah, I think President Bush made a mistake when he basically didn't prepare people for how long this was going to be. And maybe they didn't think it was going to be this long. But now, you know, we kind of understand human behavior better because of 16 years of war and how that works. I think ultimately the fix in Afghanistan is going to be a negotiated solution.

It'll be getting the Taliban to the table under the right conditions and, you know, whether it's integrating some aspect of them into government or giving them a voice or, you know, not doing it, but ceasing the war. But the second you put a timeline on actual military troops there, you give them a horizon to look at. And a good friend of mine, Michael Walts, he wrote a book about his time in Afghanistan. He's a Green Beret officer. He said literally the day that announcement came out, he had been, you know, in these sessions with the village elders, I forget what they're called, but he said, after that announcement, they quit meeting with him. And they said simply, look, we love you guys, but you're leaving. And now we have to think about that in the long term. So yeah, again,

it's not a decision. I think anybody made out of a bad place, but I think when you put time lines down against a really determined enemy. You know, that's not good. At the same token, we have to understand no war has ended that I know of, you know, well, with the exception of where countries totally destroyed, without some version of a negotiated end. My last question for you is about exactly that. Like you said, wars end when people make a decision to end them.

It's very rare that there is some sort of, you know, you wipe out the entire enemy or there some unilateral, just disarmament. Part of that's going to involve a negotiation. It's going to be a negotiation between the United States. States, the Afghans, maybe the Pakistanis, and the Taliban. I saw firsthand how hard it is to do something that complicated with U.S. politics looming all over it. Specifically, it came with a guy named Bo Bergdahl, who went AWOL in Afghanistan, was held by the Taliban for five years. And getting him back was a priority in and of itself, but it became part of a process where we were talking

to the Afghans about essentially sending them doing a prisoner exchange where five, decrepit old Taliban creeps down and Gitmo got sent back. They gave us bow and it was sort of seen as a confidence building measure that would help us get to a negotiated solution or build confidence or allow like more important talks to go on. That decision became one of the most quickly politicized things I've ever seen. So I guess the question is how do we do something really hard and complicated in the context of U.S. politics where everything will be politicized? Yeah. You know what? That's a really good question and a really good point. point. And that's where I think leadership on, especially on issues of foreign policy is so

important, Americans typically follow what the leader articulates out as an objective. And whether it's President Obama, President Trump, or whoever comes next, when this war, and it'll end someday, when this war ends in Afghanistan, it's going to take a leader articulating what the endgame strategy is for the domestic politics. And I think, you know, when it comes to how does this war in someday. I think you have to have a stable, a state, more stable, you're not going to have completely stable, more stable Afghan government. You know, one thing people forget is something like 80% of the people of Afghanistan want us to be there. They believe in the partnership with America. So I think once you get that to stability, once you get Pakistan to wherever you need them,

we saw promising signs with them rescuing the family, I think then we can begin, you probably won't do this publicly. It'll be in secret to have negotiations. with the Taliban to see where an end is. The worry, though, is if you enter negotiations from a point of weakness, you're, I think, at that point, not going to have a successful conclusion or at least one that we'd like to see. Right. Congressman Kinsinger, thank you so much.

You bet. Thanks a lot. Thanks again to Congressman Kinsinger for being on the show. If you want to learn more about any of the things we talked about, check out the Potsafel World Facebook page or follow me on Twitter at at TBTor 08.