The Ricochet Podcast - The Buck Stops Here

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Remember the good ol’ days when a president could be talked out of his worst impulses? So do we. This week the guys had a chance to chat with one of the people our current president should have listened to: Wisconsin Representative (and Marine Intelligence Officer) Mike Gallagher. The Congressman takes us through the poor leadership, political and operational failures, and the dangers we face now... Source

I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Ladies and gentlemen, I gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O'Donnell of NBC. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lallix and today we talk to Congressman Mike Gallagher about Afghanistan. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 558. I'm James Lylex in Minneapolis. Peter Robinson is somewhere in sunny California.

Rob Long, we believe, is in San Francisco and has elbowed his way through the homeless hordes and scraped the detritus off his shoes to be with us. He'll give us a report on Babylon and the Bay in just a little bit. But, of course, the big story. I don't know about you guys, but yesterday when I saw Biden put his head in his hands while answering a question or trying to, I imagine Putin sitting up straight in his chair and thinking, my God, I thought I was going to have the Baltics back by 2035, but I'm going to have them back by 2024. I've never seen an image like that portrayed.

And people are saying, oh, well, it's a sign of his compassion and his fellow feeling and all the rest of it. No, I did not get the feeling at all. I get the feeling of somebody who just seems to be falling apart in chunks before our face. Or is that just partisan hackery, taking advantage of the moment? Is that Republicans pouncing and hoping to use this to their advantage in 2022? I agree that that image is extremely striking. And as far as I can tell, I only watched a few moments of the event and did not see that bit of it. But as far as I can tell,

reading about that image, which is all over the web today, he had just been asked a question, a fairly straightforward question. And the reason he put his head in his hands was to gather his thoughts. We're at that stage. And it all happened so quickly too. I mean, yesterday we heard about ISIS for the first time in I don't know how many three years. Suddenly ISIS was back. I mean, I guess we all expected ISIS to come back, but not within 72 hours of the crisis. This seems to be an accelerating descent where the American casualties yesterday were greater than the last two in Afghanistan, the last two years or almost two and a half years combined. What's what's so astonishing about it

is just the just the sheer incompetence and the sheer slapdash way this was implemented, ordered, planned. I mean, it just boggles the mind. And in an actual country with leaders with dignity and honor, there would be resignations. People would be resigning in shame. I can't stay here anymore. I blew it. Let someone else try. It would be an honorable outcome for a lot of the people in the apparatus here. spin or work. Even CNN last night when I was watching it had a hard time turning this

into anything other than what it is, which is a gigantic disaster that was chosen and elected and selected and for no reason happened other than we have a president and a presidential leadership

that is incompetent. Yes. And apparently a military leadership that is not exactly the best and the brightest at this point, too, in some echelons. Right. We all know we've all gamed this out in our heads and how they seem to be doing this in absolute backwards fashion. If you're going to get out, you would do the exact opposite of what they do in the sequence that they did. But the part about the ISIS that you mentioned there, Rob, is interesting, too, because, A, we're told, no, Taliban and the ISIS, they hate each other. They hate each other. There's no way they would have worked together on this one. Call me a little bit cynical, perhaps, but it does not seem outside of the bounds of possibility that they would join forces against the infidel in this particular instance. ISIS gets to bomb a lot of

people and kill a lot of people, which is their thing. And Taliban gets to wash their hands of it. Hey, they make us look bad. Plausible deniability when it's entirely possible that they were working together on this. In any case, the presence of ISIS means that the doha accords are null and void they were supposed to keep out groups like isis they haven't so exactly what are we conforming to again are we simply sticking with this deal because it's the honorable thing to do yeah i'm struck again rob just made the central point again i to me that i to which i keep returning again and again and again this this was not like the fall of saigon no where there had been negotiations it was clear that the country had congress, demonstrations, the academy, Nixon recognizes the pressure. He and Kissinger spend the first term concentrating on the problem. They opened formal negotiations with the North

Vietnamese. That final image of people desperate to get under the last helicopter as it departs from the embassy roof in Saigon is a horrifying image, but that was deliberate and in some sense carefully and competently managed. You could even argue, in fact, I would argue that if the Democrats had not blocked a certain funding to the South Vietnamese that Gerald Ford requested after he became president. South Vietnam need not have fallen the way that it did. The boat people need, all right. In other words, the withdrawal itself took place intentionally and for the most part, competently, not that it didn't have its horrifying aspects. As John Pat Horowitz pointed out,

John, other people pointed this out but John's the one who tends to put things succinctly all Biden had to do in Afghanistan was nothing right nothing no American soldier had died there in the last I think it was 18 or 20 months or so our casualties were now down to zero our troop presence was down to what was it 3 500 a little under 3 500. we've got 20 000 and more in south korea we've got 20 000 and more in west germany to this day we have military over 100 military bases we still have a large naval presence in okinawa six six decades seven decades after the Second World War I myself thought the Afghanistan war was war HH we'll discuss this with the guests one of the things to discuss is where did the mistake was it a mistake to go in was it a mistake to stay

after the first three weeks where did the mistake start to it a mistake to go in? Was it a mistake to stay after the first three weeks? Where did the mistakes start to pile up? That's a good question. But the situation was under control and all Joe Biden had to do was nothing. Given that he chose to get out, this is the part that just, I don't understand. There should be, there should have been some reservoir of professionals around him.

And particularly, this is, you've both mentioned this, to me, the most shocking part is that this was a military failure. Those guys are supposed to be able to handle logistics. They didn't. They're supposed to be able to handle logistics. They didn't. They're supposed to be able to handle – I mean, let's just put it this way. Even the Bay of Pigs wasn't quite this kind of needless debacle. All right. I've said it.

I'm saying things that people – but I'm just astounded. I would say two things. One is that it, whoever, who's ever in the room making the, making these decisions, you know, the Saigon airlift photograph is going to be repeated. If you do it perfectly, that photograph is inevitable in the situation. And the second thing I'd say is that it's really interesting to go back. I mean, there has not been a wholesale change. I mean, I don't know. I'd be interested to know about the military aspect. There has not been a wholesale change in military leadership structure and military leaders from the Trump days to today. There really hasn't been. I mean, these are are the same people trump wanted to pull out of afghanistan in may i mean he wanted to pull out pretty much every other week and he was talked out of it correct they talked him out of it he wanted

to bring the taliban to camp david and he was talked out of it who talked him out of it well hr mcmaster for one i've talked about this there were professionals it wasn't easy to talk donald trump out of something but you could do it all those people aren't gone they're somewhere there's somewhere in uniform the adjutants whatever they didn't there's a maybe there's a there's a change. There's not a change in the joint chiefs. Who tried to talk Biden out of this? What do they say? Or did they not say anything?

Or he just didn't listen. Or he did not listen. That's the other problem. How do you go from a president who wants out so badly, he wants to bring the Taliban to Camp David and be out in May, and he's talked out of it to a president that wants to be out so badly he wants to bring the Taliban to Camp David and be out in May. And he's talked out of it to a president that wants to be out so badly for some weird, gruesome, strange anniversary, September 11th celebration, which is so weird anyway. Right. And he's not talked out of it. And I want to I think as an American, I deserve to know who said what in the meeting and who, as James put it, simply didn't listen or simply thought

he knew better. Could I tell two little stories and then the two of you feel totally free to say what I hear plenty as it is anyway. Oh, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, you're just bringing him up again. But something, okay. So the story number one is of course, in October 1980, what was it? 1983, the Marine barracks in Lebanon are bombed and we lose over a couple hundred men and instead of doubling down ronald reagan has a couple of meetings and it turns out honestly the diplomats are in favor of increasing our presence but he can't find any military rationale if he put Marines back in what's the military mission there was no answer to that question so he got out all right that's point number one point number two this is a story this this was told to me by Ed Meese who was in

the meeting Grenada this was Grenada as may recall, happens just a couple of days after the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks. There's just a huge amount going on over a course of about four days. And there's a request from the Caribbean states that we do something about Grenada, and it turns out our intelligence suggests that the Cubans are there,

and there's weapons caches and so forth. Ed Meese said, General Vesey, who was then the, Jack Vesey, I think I'm pronouncing it correct, suggests that the cubans are there and there's weapons caches and so forth ed me said general vesey who was then the chair jack vesey i think i'm pronouncing it correct i know i'm pronouncing jack correctly ed meese is in the situation room and ronald reagan gets a briefing they pull together the military operation over the weekend and ronald reagan asks one question how many Americans involved in this operation and general VC thinks through the as many ships as many so and he gives the president an answer and then Ronald Reagan says just two words double it double it I want to go in so big that this happens very quickly and it keeps our casualties down and it keeps their casualties down so there's some kind of basic

willingness to willingness to assume the role of commander of chief over the military combined with a real recognition that war is i i don't, it's not risk averseness. What do you see in that story? It's partially risk averse now. I mean, what's there that Joe Biden is lacking? Oh, any number of things. Where do we begin? Where do I begin to tell a sweet love story?

It's great to talk about Reagan, but the depressing thing about that is that it's 40 years ago. It's like at the beginning of World War One, talking about American character in 1903. As a matter of fact, it's ancient history to be talking about what Trump did in 2020. What matters is on the ground now and what's happening and the fact that we got a guy at the top who is utterly, completely convinced of his brilliance. And I don't think that he actually thinks about it anymore. I just think it's an assumption that he's been working with for the entire years of his effortless, meaningless, gas filled career that he is the smartest guy in the room. And nobody's ever, ever stepped up and said, on the contrary, on the contrary, when we graph this out, you are somewhere down near the dimmest. That's part of the problem. So he believes in his own instincts, I think, to the point where he would making or he liked delegating or the person had flattered him on the way into the conversation, any number of those things. But the idea of having somebody who was capable and confident in projecting power is gone with this party because they're all about the

international covenants and the fact this is a post-national, transnational era. Biden is the inheritor of the worst ideas of the left in the last 40 years. And it's being played out with a guy who is one of the least capable minds we've had in that office for decades. Yeah, I kind of just I used to say that that Trump was the the or the by the Obama was the NPR version of Trump. I would say, like, you know, I mean, I'm sure not by Obama was the NPR version of Trump. I would say, like, you know, I mean, I'm sure not by Obama was the NPR version of Trump. Arrogant thinks he knows everything, has a bunch of slavish acolytes in the press and sort of in the public who think everything he does is brilliant. He thinks he's brilliant. Obama was the nice version of the narcissist. Trump is the you know, the, the Fox News version of that.

Biden is the NPR version of Trump, I think. So we're not getting any we're not improving. Things are not getting better. They're just sort of going sideways. And so I do I just think that I would just say the difference between those 40 years, which I think is important to understand, is that it was probably an easier argument. Literally was an easier argument i remember i was around then when reagan went to grenada grenada is an island in the caribbean

it is within our sphere of influence it is yes according to the monroe doctrine we get to do that and not doing that it was clearly in american interest there were american citizens there all sorts of things the second thing I would say is... Rob, I'm going to have to stop you right there. We're going to hear the second point in just a second, but I got to tell you about this. I don't want to just bowl over Rob and say, shut up, I got things to do. No, it's the way you deal with people, the way you talk to people, the way you treat people, it adds up to your legacy. You don't want anybody thinking you're a jerk, do you? No, it's little details in life. And the details in life extend not just how you behave and not just the things you want

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Promo code RICOSHET. We thank Bolan Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And at some point, Rob is going to tell us his second point, but more to the point for the moment. We've got to get to our guest, and we cannot wait to do so. Mike Gallagher.

Elected in 2016, Mike Gallagher represents Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District. He was a United States Marine Corps intelligence officer serving seven years from 2006 to 2013 on active duty. We met him on last week, but an impromptu national security briefing forced us to reschedule. We've got him here now to tell us about what's going on in Afghanistan. And then later, we can possibly discuss why the Vikings are going to dominate Green Bay this year. But that's, that's at the

end of the podcast. So what should we know about things on the ground today? Well, obviously, it was a tragic day yesterday, 13 Marines, well, 12 Marines and one Navy corpsman killed and, you know, made all the more tragic because they didn't have to die. You know, obviously, it's been killing Americans for 20 years to guarantee the security of the perimeter at HKIA, Hamid Karzai International Airport. By the way, they're planning to have to rename that airport soon. It's just astounding to me. And the irony is in a desire to avoid further casualties in Afghanistan, you know, a lot of these tragic incidents. Beirut comes to mind. The Mayagas crisis comes to mind. And sadly, now we've added Kabul to that list. So just a gut punch to every Marine and, you know, puts an exclamation point on a complete fiasco of a military operation. And so a sad day. Hey, Mike, Peter Robinson here. United States Marine Corps, intel officer, now member of Congress. You're talking to three laymen,

but we're as baffled as anybody in the country. Of course, the short question is, how could this have happened? As far as I can tell, and what do I do? I'm not going to briefings the way you are in Congress. I'm reading the newspaper. But as far as I can tell, we built an Afghan military that was built, constructed, trained to rely on American air cover. And then we withdrew the air cover. We knew roughly, we didn't know, it turns out, in any detail how many American citizens were in Afghanistan, but we knew roughly that there were some thousands. And we gave up Bagram Airport, which is outside Kabul and has two runways and which we controlled until we simply surrendered it and instead took the Kabul Airport, which has one runway and is in the middle of Kabul. And apparently, there doesn't seem to have been any planning to get the military out. That was planned. But there doesn't seem to have been any planning to get the military out. That was planned, but there doesn't seem to

have been any planning. No, none of the sequencing that I think you'd expect in a carefully planned operation. So it sounds to this layman like one military failure after another, a failure of planning, a failure of logistics, a failure of intel. Is that right? I think it's partially right. You know, early on, I actually had said that this was a massive intelligence failure, and I'm not sure that's actually true anymore. In other words, and I say this as an intelligence officer, I mean, the intelligence community had very dire assessments about what would happen if we pulled out precipitously. Now, I don't think there were sufficient indications and warnings of what was happening. Basically, after the Doha deal, the Trump administration's deal with the Taliban, Taliban commanders started signing all these local surrender agreements with

Afghan National Army officials, local government officials. And that should have been a bigger, you know, system is blinking red moment than it was. But, you know, the intelligence community doesn't give you like a script of exactly what's going to happen in the future on a precise timeline. They provide estimates, you know, based on what information they have. And I was a human intelligence guy. And as we used to say, the problem with humans is that it involves humans, you know, humans can mislead humans can misremember, it's never precise, it's an area of fire weapon. So I'm not sure it's accurate to call it intelligence failure, I do think it's primarily a political failure. And

everything ultimately has to do with poor political leadership at the top. But clearly there is a planning disconnect within DOD. And I think more to the point, a lack of sufficient communication between the State Department and the Defense Department. And my understanding is that for months leading up to this, military officials urged on by members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, veterans, usually, were trying to get the State Department to take the SIV issue more seriously and figure out what's the plan. The Special Immigrant Visa. So basically, if you're a translator or you fought with us, you qualify for the special program we brought about. I think a little less than 20,000 people in the country under an SIV issue. Incidentally, there's a TV show now called United States of Al about a Marine veteran and a translator. That's based on my buddy, a former Marine captain.

He took over my job on the Center for Relations Committee. So but there was just no plan from state and then and then more to the point i think the president has been deliberately revising history and outright lying about the military advice he got i mean the reason it wasn't as if um the military came to him and said you you know what, Bagram has no value. Let's get rid of Bagram. The administration imposed an arbitrary cap on the number of troops we could have in the country. And then based on that, the military said, well, with this number of people, we can't secure both the embassy and Bagram. So that's a combination of a lot of different things. I do think operational failure,

a political failure to sort of make the case as to why a small presence made sense, what the value of Bagram would be, not just in the counterterrorism fight, but also in the competition with China over the long term as a way to threaten assets on their Western flank, particularly their space and counter space assets. And then add on to that sort of the imprecision of intelligence. You have a toxic stew. But ultimately, the buck stops at Biden. As much as I would love to just burst in here and interrupt a congressperson, we just don't

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now. And you don't have to be a crazed right winger to look at the comments in Twitter and begin to wonder, whoa, he's 78 years old. He seems to be having trouble grasping questions, formulating answers quickly. What's absolutely unambiguous is that if you contrast the Biden we've seen over the last few days with the Biden who was vice president just five, six years ago, this is a different man. So the question is, is this something that's getting talked about in Congress? And is there, that's to you as a congressman, now here's to you as a former Marine. What happens when the chain of command seems to be fuzzy at the very top, because nobody can be quite sure who's running things to the extent to which the commander in chief actually is making decisions. Of course, he has subordinates around him in the White House and the extent to which. Well, you get the question. So how do you handle the problem of old Joe Biden? Yeah, well, the old Joe Biden has much in common with young Joe Biden.

They both seem to be very bad at making foreign policy decisions and judgment. I mean, he has a near perfect record of failure when it comes to foreign policy. And make no mistake, I mean, this is the same cast of characters that gave us the precipitous Iraq withdrawal, right? I mean, this is the job for which General Austin was hired. He was sent time commander and was responsible for the Iraq withdrawal. That's part of the reason that I opposed his confirmation and wrote an op-ed in Wall Street Journal to that effect at the time. You know, this is why McCain opposed then-Deputy Secretary Blinken's nomination. Sullivan was in a key role. Colin Call,

architect of the Iran deal, has had a policy at the Pentagon. I mean, it's just the same cast of characters, so we shouldn't be surprised that we're getting a similar outcome. As for the question about Biden, and by the way, I'd add to the toxic student, come back to this, the intense politicization of the highest ranks of the military. And they've been thinking fights with us on a bunch of woke nonsense for months now. And it's fair to say, I think they took their eye off the ball in many cases. As for Biden, he clearly has lost a step. He does not inspire confidence. As for his mental state, all I would be doing is speculating. But I think anyone who's watched him this past two weeks, even if you have confidence in his mental state, you shouldn't have confidence in his integrity because he's lied

repeatedly or he's just completely misinformed or out to lunch. But either way, he's failed utterly the form, the commander in chief test when faced with his first major foreign policy crisis. I mean, if he had a shred of honor, he would resign. But that's not going to happen. And I'm not necessarily necessarily sure we'd be upgrading with Kamala Harris. So what are we left to do? Well, someone needs to be held accountable. Congress needs to be leading a thorough investigation. I had a bill on the House floor earlier this week that would have required them to report to us every single day on the number of Americans left in country and not allow them to withdraw until we'd gotten every American out that wanted to get out. But all the

Democrats who in private were critical of the president and were questioning his leadership in public voted against that on the floor because they didn't want to endanger the sort of $5 trillion authorization for the Bernie Sanders budget. So we're in a very dangerous situation right now. And it's hard for me, I think the White House is cynically betting that this is a news cycle that will blow over, that this is a messaging problem, and that a month from now, two months from now, the American people won't care. And, you know, Biden is with the even those who want to get rid of our presence in Afghanistan. And I think just the lack of strength and leadership from the commander in chief has disillusioned a lot of people. And once you lose that confidence, it's really hard to get it back. And I think this is going to be a very big problem for the Biden administration politically and a massive problem for America geopolitically

for at least the next three years. Wow. Congressman, this is Rob Long. When you ended with the words next three years, I suddenly got optimistic because I think we can last three years. I was worried we're talking about a stain for the next 30 or 40. So, yeah, you're right. It is Biden's first giant global political crisis. But of course, it's his own of his own making. Often these things are, you know, it's the what is it, the famous TV ad, you know, the telephone call that comes in the middle of the night. The president is supposed to be ready to handle whatever crazy random things occur. This was not a crazy random thing that occurred. It was a crazy random thing that was planned and executed. And I guess here's my question. I mean, we had a president not too long ago.

And, you know, full disclosure, always bugs people listening to this podcast i was not a fan um and he wanted to he wanted to um pull out of afghanistan on in in may in may of 2020 before the election he was talked out of it he wanted to bring the taliban to the camp to camp david for a treaty signing he was talked out of it who are those people who talked him out of it? Surely some of them still have White House passes. Surely some of them still are are advisors to the press. Any president. You just mentioned a cast of characters. Weren't there any isn't there anybody in the cast who's been in the cast was in the cast four years ago or eight years ago well i guess my question is why did nobody why could nobody talk this president out of such an outrageously foolhardy and painfully costly blunder you know it's interesting i was in some of those rooms i'm not saying like i talked to trump out of some of those decisions, but at least on the, for example, when he was trying to pull everybody out of Syria,

precipitously, a group of us, myself, Dan Crenshaw, a few others went to the White House and made a counter argument. We ended up landing somewhere in the middle. And there were a variety of occasions where I got called to the principal's office because, you know, I had a different view of the world. And Trump would often change his position. And then Trump would do things that I think had a positive impact on the credibility of our military deterrent that were very gutsy decisions, foremost among them the decision to take Qasem Soleimani off the battlefield. In this case, you know, I just, I think it's fair to say that Secretary Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan, to the extent they were even willing to push back, didn't push back forcefully. I guess we won't know until a lot of transcripts of these discussions are

declassified. There's been some suggestion that, you know, General Milley was telling them that this was going to be a disaster. I don't know if that's true or just sort of like CYA maneuvering behind the scenes. But Austin, again, Will we ever know? Do you think we'll ever know? I think we will. I mean, listen, it might take a while, but my whole orientation is as an early Cold War guy, and there's a process through, these debates subsequently get unearthed and the historical record gets corrected. It's hard for us now to

get to the bottom of what happened, particularly being in the minority in the house where we don't have any subpoena power. But I do think, I do think we'll know, but I just think they made a political bet. They thought we can get out. You know, of course it's going to be a disaster, but someone's got to pull the bandaid off. And at the end of the day, you know, Americans want to end endless wars, we'll get the talking point. And then some stupid 23 year old White House staffer came up with a good idea to make September 11 2021. The official date of the war mission accomplished. It's just bizarre. A huge propaganda victory. So I don't know.

I don't have a good answer to your question. It amazes me. I know I have Democratic colleagues, at least in the last week, that have spent significant time in the White House, in the Oval Office, trying to convince the president to reconsider the August 31st gate. But he is inflexible. He has tripled down on this position and you know, it's, it's astounding to me. Um, incidentally, go ahead. Sorry. I would say it's a sunk cost fallacy. Um, yeah.

Oh, what's going on there. Um, but I also, I, I have a couple other questions I want to say to you, I, I'm thrilled to know that you were, um, you're at least a part of the inspiration for the United States of Al. One of my oldest and best friends is the creator of that show. They do have a GoFundMe. One of the writers got his family out, I think, yesterday and is trying to get some more people out. And we'll post a link to the GoFundMe in our show notes. But I was thrilled to hear that. After Vietnam, the U.S. military, which was reeling from that failure, went on a kind of a, you know, a vision quest.

They they they the internal reforms of the U.S. military in the 1970s were pretty top to bottom. They were pretty radical. They brought Seymour Hersh, the muckraking sort of anti-military reporter, into West Point to lecture. They brought in all their critics. They rethought their way of making decisions. Do you see anything like that coming? Or I would say rather than making a prognostication, do you think that the U.S. military after this should be rethinking its decision making, logistics forming, mission architecture? 100%. 100%. There's a few obvious things that need to happen. One, we need to revisit entirely the Goldwater-Nichols reforms, some of which were good, but some of which have resulted in a dysfunctional strategy and planning process, as well as a joint staff that is out of control. There's about 80 generals on the joint staff with 2,000 staffers, and it is the impediment to quick decision-making and creativity within the five

sides of the building. The second thing we need to do is be very wary about the arguments that have already started to be deployed by Secretary Austin. He's sort of pushing this concept of integrated deterrence, which is a jargony buzzword intended to cover for the fact that what they are trying to do at the end of the day is cut conventional hard power in the areas where we need it most. And they do not want to make the hard decisions necessary to free up resources to field a posture of deterrence by denial, specifically in Indo Paycom, even more specifically in the first violent chain. And the big decision you need to make is between the services. We have an arbitrary one-third, one-third, one-third budgetary split.

But if you look at a map of our priority theater in the Pacific, one thing becomes apparent. There's a lot of water on that map. So it probably doesn't make sense to grow the size of the Army. You need a smaller Army in return for a bigger Navy and an Air Force that has a longer range, as well as a naval carrier strike group that has a longer range, as well as a naval carrier strike group that has a longer range in terms of their assets.

Good luck, Congressman. Good luck at that committee hearing. Can I offer a final answer to your previous question that just came to me? Are we out of time? Sure, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how much time you've got. I have one more question.

I've got to turn you over to James. Mike, you're nobody in politics unless you can wrangle Rob Long and tell them to back off and give you time to answer what you want to answer. Push Rob around. I mean, yeah, it's taken me years, but you're a former Marine and a member of Congress. Just roll him back. Dang it, Long. Don't you know who I am? I'm 250th in seniority in the House. I'm right in the line of succession. No, quickly, on the why did no one push back, something I've been thinking about, and I'd be curious to get your thoughts. You hear Biden and his advisors talk about

these past two weeks. Well, you know, it is in the Taliban's interest to help us safely get out. The Taliban, you know, if they want to be responsible members of the international community, we've gotten assurances from the Taliban. I think this betrays some worldview that is really misguided, which is to say they they're sort of like grafting their own ivory tower, Western mindset onto the Taliban. And I think this model that sort of envisions the Taliban sitting back, rationally calculating their economic utility and worrying about their invite to Davos is a very problematic one. Right. If for no other reason than the Taliban is not a monolithic entity, it has a variety of factions.

And the Taliban's interest may be in humiliating us as much as possible on the way out. Right. It may be in taking as many American hostages as possible. And then selling those hostages to Al Qaeda or Iran in order to mess with us for decades to come. I don't think the Biden administration has the faintest clue what the Taliban's interest is, because they're sort of thinking about the Taliban in the way they think about themselves. Can you imagine Winston Churchill on the day that Hitler rolled

into Paris saying that Mr. Hitler has to,'s having I believe Hitler is having an existential crisis and that he doesn't know if he wants to be a uniter of Europe or a tyrant. You're right. It betrays an absolute naivete about these people. And it's stunning to find it in people at that level of government. Rob, I think you had one. Yeah, just one more question. I agree with you. I mean, in a in a I don't know what i would say but in a different time in a more honorable time those people would resign that's what you do when you blow it you resign um they i think they tend to feel as narcissists do that we can't resign we're we're the best you've got uh whereas they could all be replaced by better people probably in 24 hours

so my final question is this i mean, and I have my answer to it. Shouldn't we just have stayed? Yes. I mean, that was the argument I was making was that a small force working largely by, with, and through Afghan partners who aren't perfect, got it. You understand I spent the better part of my 20s working with, you know, Anbari tribal leaders in Western Iraq. I understand the imperfections of our partners on the ground, particularly in the Middle East, where the fundamental rule is that

things can always get worse. So I'm not looking at this through rose-colored glasses, but clearly, compared with the chaos we have right now, and I think the chaos we're going to see in the weeks and months and years to come, that was a very low cost, high impact investment. And I think where we failed, and I point the finger at myself here, because I feel like I didn't make good enough arguments, was to talk about the value of Bagram, as I said before, not just as a counterterrorism asset, but as a long-term asset that you need in the global competition with China. And, you know, keep in mind, we hadn't lost an American in the previous 18 months. So I fully believe

we should have stayed. And I think through a very unscientific and inefficient process of trial and error that cost us a lot in terms of blood and treasure, we actually arrived at a pretty sustainable posture in both Iraq, Afghanistan, which is what I call the highlight approach. It's high impact, light footprint, force your local allies through the majority of the fighting. We act as enablers. We provide logistics, intel, air support. That's a workable strategy over the long term. And that ultimately frees up resources to deal with

China while not irresponsibly creating vacuums that suck you back in. And ultimately, that's what I think will happen here. Sort of tragically and ironically, the Biden foreign policy will suffer the same fate as Obama's, which is to say their well-intentioned effort to pivot to the Pacific will fail because they misunderstand the basic alliance structure in a different region. And they just misunderstand how power works in a different region of the world. And so they'll create chaos and get sucked into it. On a simple blunt level, and I know Peter wants to jump in again, and I'm done, but a simple blunt level, it seems to me Taliban in caves equals good. And that's what we achieved. And I think we got into trouble when we decided we needed American interest in Afghanistan and the region in general. Taliban in caves at a very and we levered it pretty well, it seems to me.

So I'm on your side there. And I know Peter's Peter's law waving. He's jumping. Mike, we're running over the time that we told you as staff we would keep you. On the other hand, be honest. Do you really have anything more important to do now than answer one more question from me? Really? Well, I'm actually driving now to Fort McCoy to visit and inspect the area where we're going to be receiving some of these Afghan refugees. So the answer is you do have something important to do. Well, no, I have 15 minutes. We don't need to do all of that, but I'm at your disposal for that. So here's the question we were talking,

Rob and James and I were talking before you came on about past big presidential decisions. The Marines get hit in Beirut and Ronald Reagan can't find out from Cap Weinberg or anybody else what the military mission is supposed to be, so he pulls out. We want to go into Grenada, and I was told by Ed Meese, who was in the Situation Room, that when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs finished his briefing, the president asked how many soldiers and seamen involved, and he got the answer, and Reagan said, double it, double it. Let's go in big so it happens fast, reduce the casualties on our side and theirs. You think back to John Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs. He sees a debacle taking shape and he knows something about debacles because the operation in the Pacific in which he got

his PT boat shot out from under him was itself a debacle. If you read up on that PT boat engagement, none of them even got a torpedo off. It was badly planned, badly executed. John Kennedy knew when he saw a bad operation. And Kennedy, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan had bad eyes, so he made morale films, but his good friend Jimmy Stewart flew combat missions over Germany in the Air Force. Joe Biden never served. We have an entire generation. Well, let's put it this way. Rob on the GLOP podcast the other day made a point that right through the end of the 60s, the backstory was that a lot of the characters in sitcoms had met each other during the service because that was a common American experience and it isn't anymore.

How in a democracy do you operate a first rate military when the public has no experience of war and even the commander in chief and those around him have only the most minimal experience of war? How do you do it? Well, I wrote a 600-page dissertation that was pretty much on this question, this question of foreign policy experience and presidential decision-making and the extent to which presidents learn from failure. And I arrived at no conclusions, which illustrates that political science is a broken institution. And the fact that they passed me also, I think,

really puts the stake in the heart of the value of political science. But it's interesting. I think the type of, by the traditional metrics that academics use to measure foreign policy experience, Biden scores very high, right? He was on the Foreign Relations Committee. He's, you know, spent, you know, the 20 decades he was in the Senate or however long it was flying around the world, talking to foreign leaders, you know, his vice president, that counts for something, certainly counted for something in Nixon's case.

And yet, it doesn't seem to have improved his decision making or given him a coherent view of the world that would be useful in this case. So the type of experience I think does matter. And operational experience, those who have sort of seen how decisions made in DC can become very messy when implemented at the point of the spear is a very useful type of experience. So, for example, Truman scores very low by traditional metrics on foreign policy experience, but he also had a pretty decent military record, which I think helped him. He was also a student of history, which helped him in office. Eisenhower scores off the charts and obviously had personal relationships with a lot of his subordinates that helped him form what was probably the most

coherent and effective decision-making structure in history. I think part of the reason why we need to support and encourage veterans running for office in Congress, and I think it puts them in a better position to do oversight of the executive branch in general and the military in particular, because having been at the pointy end of the spear with an understanding of how complicated that can get, I think they're in a better position to push back on military leadership and challenge their assumptions and ensure that we are investing our money wisely, and also that we have coherent war plans, right, that we can actually explain in a non-acronym filled, non-jargon filled way, okay, what is our plan for deterring the Chinese from invading Taiwan? How are we in concert with our NATO partners deterring Russia from, you know, invading with little green men or in other fashion, Baltic states,

et cetera, et cetera. In other words, the promise of veterans serving is not that they're going to just give the Pentagon a blank check, but that they are willing to challenge generals and admirals on their thinking. And when it comes to the commander in chief, that's a harder thing to do. I think the historical record is mixed. Some presidents with foreign policy experience did very well, like Eisenhower, others with little to no foreign policy experience. You know, Lincoln, Reagan come to mind, did very well. And then some with amazing foreign policy experience are not remembered as great presidents. So I don't know. In general,

the all-volunteer force is a positive thing. It's a great thing for our military. But at least the one thing that gives me hope is that we're starting to see 9-11 generation veterans run for Congress and flex their oversight muscles in a way that I think Congress has failed to flex in recent decades. Congressman Gallagher, it's been great having you on again. We really appreciate it. I invite you to come to Minnesota where our cell phone coverage is extraordinary because we've solved the problem. The cow is knocking over all the towers. So, but good luck on your mission. Thank you for joining us.

We hope to talk to you again soon, sometime down the road. And I was lying before. I know the green Bay is going to swap the floor with the Vikings and done. Just going to, I'm just going to say it right now. Yeah. I was going to say it right now. Yeah. I was going to say, have you solved the problem of not having won any Superbowls? Is that a problem?

No, not, not a problem that we've solved. As a matter of fact, that's why I'm not even going to start because I know I'm, I'm beginning from such a weak position, but then again, you know,

things can change any given Sunday. So we may gloat or taunt later in the year or the season, but I really doubt it. Anyway, thanks for your service and always. And we hope to speak to you again. Thank you. That is a, you know, that Superbowl thing just, just stings, just stings. So we've had cell problems today, of course, which happens, you know, and they are frankly something of a miracle.

The fact that you could be driving around in a state like Wisconsin, Wisconsin, and you can talk to people all over the world. And Rob's in San Francisco, and he's talking to us through an iPad. I mean, all these little devices, but the thing of it is, is that cell phone tower is going to know where you are. And that browser is going to tell them, you know, what your IP address is. So how do you keep them from knowing that stuff? Well, we can talk about your browser, ExpressVPN. That's what you do. Look, going online without ExpressVPN is like leaving your kids with a nearest stranger while you're using the restroom. Most of the time is probably fine, but you never know who you're trusting. No. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network,

cafes, hotels, like Rob, airports, et cetera. Your online data is not secured at all. No hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal all kinds of data. This is valuable information. It doesn't take a genius level IQ to do it, either just the right hardware on a criminal mind. And I think there's lots of those out there. Well, ExpressVPN keeps you secure. They create a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. Encryption is so thorough, it'll take a supercomputer over a billion years to get through. And by that time, of course, you've disconnected and left. All it requires is that you fire up the app on your computer, phone, or tablet,

and make one click. It's first-rate security on the go. Rob, for example, I believe. Rob, you don't trust the networks that you're on when you're out there. So you just click that one button and chat away careful with your communications. I was talking to a member, a leader in the Senate just the other day, and he said, hey, are you on Signal or WhatsApp? That's how you would prefer to chat. And that's that goes to this other piece with VPNs, which I have. And I know more than I know a couple of people who've actually done this with with VPNs and I like it. And I've done it with ExpressVPN. Yeah. Well, whoever says, you know what? I want to be less secure.

I don't need more security. Listen, secure your online data today by visiting ExpressVPN dot com slash ricochet. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash ricochet. And if you do so, you can get three extra months free. Free! Expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Three months free. We thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast.

Well, here we are. So, Gavin Newsom, you guys are california what's the word on the streets i always i love what i'm in minnesota and people say what's the mood what's the mood in the international falls minnesota i'm the faintest idea i've been up there for six years well i have not been in california many in a couple years i think. Maybe a year and a half. I think the January before COVID. So the last time I was here. And it's like rare that you get to come from New York City and look down and go to California and think,

oh, you rubes. I mean, there's this terror. Everybody's terrified here of this. So I don't know what the mood is. What the mood certainly seems to me to be mask up six feet away. I'm looking out my window. Union Square.

It's a beautiful day. Union Square is empty. This is madness. It's madness. Yes, it is. They're all afraid of you. I would say get rid of Gavin Newsom, and I dare not hope that our friend of the podcast who came and gave,

you have not heard Larry Elder on the Ricochet podcast, you must go back into the, it was a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago, I forget what it was, and we kind of, I mean, honestly,

I was kind of rolling my eyes thinking, okay, you know, look, I love Larry, I listen to Larry all the time on the radio in LA. He's great. I do it in LA every now and then. He's not going to.

He can't. It's not going to. It can't. And then it can't. So it might. Well, as the newspaper said, he is the black face of white supremacy, which shows that actually they're taking his candidacy seriously yes yeah sure it was things like that yes they are he um gavin newsom is behaving at least if you look at the clips of him as he answers questions on the look at the evening news out here gavin newsom looks like a man who's scared and um and democratic donors are being shaken down

in a major way all over the state. One of the crazy pieces of the recall procedure is that the sitting candidate is not considered a candidate. Therefore, he's permitted to spend anything he wants in running against the recall. He's not considered to be running on his own behalf, but he's running against the recall. So Gavin Newsom is raising literally tens of millions of dollars to spend in this campaign. Larry Elder and the other 45 people who are listed on the ballot are legally considered candidates. So they fall under very strict campaign finance laws and can't spend much at all. And even at that, both of my bets on predicted are ahead. I'm above water and

predicted. I took the bet that the recall will pass. And I've made, I'm a big, let's put it this way. I'm not that confident. I put 10 bucks down that the recall will pass. That's up a little bit now. And then I put 10 bucks on Larry Elder to win and I'm doing all right. So if you believe in betting markets, you can believe you can really believe. But I actually, I really do truly think that Larry will win. And if you think of the set aside Afghanistan,

think of the earthquakes in the Democratic Party. First, Eric Adams, the most conservative, he's not conservative, but he's the most conservative. He's pro-safety in the streets. He's a former chief of police. He's a blue collar Democrat. And he won the Democratic primary in New York, defeating the Alexandria Ocasio-Crasio. There, that was rather Trump-like of me, wasn't it? You just did a thing. Yeah, I just did a thing. The progressive candidate.

And then Andrew Cuomo got his backside handed to him and is now the former governor of New York. And if Gavin Newsom loses in California, that will be the California earthquake. And the only people feeling the tectonic shift will be Democrats. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, the thing about Democrats is they own everything and they have almost universal control of everything in California. They can only lose. They can't win anymore.

That's a good point. They can't win anymore. That's a good point. They can only lose. And I do love the sort of tortured anti-recall logic that I've been seeing, which is that Dianne Feinstein's 9,000 years old. So you should make sure we keep Gavin Newsom in the state, in the governor's mansion. She could die at any moment. Because she could die at any moment. If the governor gets to appoint, then, you know,

knowing Gavin Newsom, he'd probably appoint himself but uh it just seems like that's very they're not even being like taxed full about it just like she's old she's something's gonna happen and uh and we don't want larry elder to select the next california uh senator because if he does the senate switches you're sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco. I looked this up the other day. Do you know the last year in which San Francisco elected a Republican mayor? 1906. Oh, it's like the 50s, right?

1959. 1959. San Francisco was a conservative town for a long time. George Michaels, who ran against Ronald Reagan in the primary for governor in 1966 as i recall yeah right right right it's the same with every major city in america yes i i mean rob's right they can't lose because they have everything but they have to keep conjuring up additional boogeymen in order to terrify people to keep voting for them i mean what is how do the how do californians peter probably speak to you about this explain why cities that used to be beautiful and livable have now become overrun with 10 cities and are

are not pleasant places to be it's it's not because of evil republicans it's not because nasty conservatives have put a bunch of uh you know, regulations that keep housing from being built. Right. It's not as if Arnold Schwarzenegger in his spare time was handing out fentanyl to get people. I mean, it has to, this is a failure of government, a failure to maintain a civil society on that level. How much of that is motivating people to vote? Because I saw a California Democratic politician who came out and said, I've been a democrat all my life and i'm voting for the recall and against this guy because of the disorder the bait that one of the things that we ask cities to do we had a post and ricochet from a member who was saying that uh they had denied a permit for some

scouts to go hiking i think in a park park because it was unsafe because of the homeless people, if I'm paraphrasing it correctly. They were giving precedence to people to live in squalor on a public park. And because of that, the citizens themselves couldn't use it safely. This is why Larry's candidacy is so thrilling, because the answer to your question is that rich white progressives have controlled the state with the complacent, not particularly with the support of minorities. African-Americans are only 8% of the population out here, which is well below the national average of about 13%, but also Latinos. Larry Elder is talking back, and one place his message seems to be resonating is among Latinos or Hispanics or whatever the correct,

Latinx, whatever the correct term is. That is not Latin. Do not say Latinx. Do never say Latinx. Never say Latinx. I never want to hear those phonemes come out of your mouth again. So ethnic group by ethnic group by ethnic group. I'm sort of opposed to the idea of polling that way, but that kind of polling is being done.

And the only ethnic group, which is majority for the recall is Hispanics. Right. They, they, they, they are, they smell the progressive rat at last. They are. But look,

I mean, the cities have become sort of these fever dreams for the far left, right? Very, very rich people living kind of Bohemian lifestyles and very, very poor people. Just kind of howhemian lifestyles and very, very poor people, just kind of how they like it. Middle-class strivers like Latinos get pushed out.

And that is a big problem. If you look at this, even the census date is pretty clear. The census date is really fascinating. So I guess the crunch of the number um the the the the drop in african black population in the cities all that sort of like faceted movements that have giant political repercussions and i suspect will have giant political repercussions uh for towards the center and towards the right and away from the left you know it's 20 years ago, was it? Roy Tixera and somebody else.

I forget his name. Rudy. Yeah. They wrote a book called The Coming Democratic. Yes. In which they proved incontrovertibly that there was a Democratic majority about to happen. And the only problem with that book was that it didn't happen. But for a while, it was absolutely the blueprint for the future.

Just sit back, relax, and the country moves Democrat. And it just didn't happen. And it's not happening now, which is sort of interesting. I mean, and I think what you said earlier is exactly what James said earlier is exactly a perfectly emblematic, right? Latinx, Latinx. When you pull white progressives, they say, we prefer Latinx, Latinx, we're going to use Latinx, Latinx. When you poll white progressives, they say, we prefer Latinx, Latinx. We're going to use Latinx. When you poll Latinos, they say, what? No. Latinx is preferred, I think, fewer than 5% of American Latinos like that phrase, mostly because they like Spanish, the language that they grew up with or their abuela spoke.

And in Spanish, unfortunately for the left, is a gendered language. Yes, it is. And the argument from the white progressives is your language is racist. You need to speak English, which is a kind of colonial, right? Isn't it? I mean, it's all about colonialism. It's all about enforcing and imposing values, just the proper ones. So they're not opposed to enforcing them. It's just as long as they're the right ones, that'll mean good things happen. You know, Rob mentioned that African-Americans are moving out

of the city. Was that what you were saying? Yeah. Or just the black population in the city is declining. Right. I think in Minneapolis, I don't know what the exact numbers are, but I know that the northern tier suburbs, the first ring post-war suburbs are becoming increasingly black and that the south ring suburbs, I think, are becoming increasingly Hispanic because they're affordable. And so the federal government, through their RFRA, what does that stand for again? Something about Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, wants to control the makeup, the ethnic makeup of every single little city by withholding funds to

make sure that there is equity, not equality, but equity, and that the population here is what we want it to be. And so it's all these top-down managed programs that praise density and the rest of it. They want to connect them all to light rail and the rest. When it turns out that what these people want when they get the chance is a house of their own. They don't want to live in a big cinder block Soviet beehive. They want a yard of their own and they want a backyard for the kids to play in. And they want good schools.

And the suburbs here are still places where they can go. But, and again, that's where they're going to lose a lot of these people because they're telling them, no, no, no, no density, move to the city, move in a dense place. And they say, no, I don't want to do that. And don't call me Latinks. Hey, we are going to call you, however, our grateful listeners for listening and sticking around.

I want to tell you that Bowling Branch and ExpressVPN and Fast Growing Trees, what a great idea. Support them for supporting us. And of course, why don't you join Ricochet today if you haven't? Why haven't you? What's your problem? Also, you might listen to the best of Ricochet radio show hosted by moi. Just speak a little French there. It's this weekend on the Radio American Network. Check your local listings, as we like to say. And give us that five star review at Apple Podcasts. And yes, this marks the 500th time I've begged you for that.

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I love the guests. You guys have had great questions. Thank you for listening. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. Her eyes were hazel and her nose was like a card We spent a lonely night at the memory motel It's on the ocean, I guess you know it well

It took a starry night, teeter my breath away Down on the waterfront, her hair all drenched in spray And her baby was a honey of a girl Her eyes were hazel, her teeth were slightly curved She took my guitar and she began to play She sang a song to me, stuck right in my brain. You're just a memory of a love that used to be. You're just a memory of a love that used to mean so much to me.

Ricochet. Join the conversation. She got a mind of her own And she used it well Yeah, yeah Well, she's one of a kind Got a mind She got a mighty button

And she used it mighty fine