NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Jack Reed
Interview
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Alright, joining me now is Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. He's the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Reed, welcome back to Meet the Press. I do want to make a note, by the way. We know that many of you expected to see National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan here. The White House -- he was scheduled to be here -- the White House told us yesterday he would be unable to appear for personal reasons. Senator Reed, this is the current headline in the current issue of The Economist: "America's Longest War is Ending in Crushing Defeat." It's a pretty rough headline. Do you agree with it?
SEN. JACK REED:
It's not accurate, the purpose that we went into Afghanistan for was to degrade and disrupt Al Qaeda, to limit their ability to project the attacks outside of Afghanistan. To a great degree, we've done that, but the job's not over. This is not a closure, this is a transition. We have to maintain continual involvement, both with the Afghan government by supporting them financially. Also, providing the kind of technical assistance they need for their air force and other elements. But I think the president was presented with a, a bad series of choices. The Trump administration had said we were leaving by May 1. The Taliban had no real responsibilities in that agreement, none that they carried out that I can see. And yet, that date I think would have prompted an incredible increase of violence directed against the United States. So, I think the president made a difficult, but the best of many poor choices.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, after your, I believe it may have been your first trip to Afghanistan in 2002, you said you reassured the leadership at the time, of Afghanistan, that America was going to be involved in the, for the long haul, but there was this fear -- constant fear -- among Afghan, among Afghan reformists that whatever we did, we were going to leave. Well, isn't that what's happening? Aren't their greatest fears being realized? Didn't you, basically -- is that an empty promise that was made? We've now turned tail?
SEN. JACK REED:
No, I think some of the factors that we have to consider is that in 2002, we were prepared, and we had a permissive situation. We had destroyed the Taliban. One of the critical strategic mistakes was the pivot to Iraq, which I opposed. And one reason I opposed it is I thought it would eventually lead to compromising our resources and our attention to Afghanistan, and it did. We've tried to resuscitate that approach to Afghanistan over several surges, they have not been successful, and 20 years of effort and thousands of American lives I don't think represents a, a shallow promise in 2002.
CHUCK TODD:
Let me ask you this. Had President Biden decided, that, you know, because there was this, there's a debate on are we at war or not at war. But there was some thought of a stabilizing force, some presence, not dissimilar to Japan, Korea, or Germany. Would there have been support for that in Congress for a stabilizing force that was basically at Bagram Air Base for an undetermined amount of time?
SEN. JACK REED:
Perhaps. But I don't think there was an overwhelming sense in the Congress that we should stay. I think the reaction to the departure has been one of generally acceptance. I think the other factor that should be considered is that, as long as the Taliban had a safe haven, which they do in Pakistan, they would continue to flow in, put pressure on. We could hold them, perhaps, at bay. But I think at this juncture, the president decided any type of increase in forces, increase in presence would be in the long term, ineffective. And 2,500 personnel is not exactly a decisive force to have, particularly if the Taliban continues to gain strength.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, I want to show what the Taliban strength here. We have this map, it's courtesy of the Foundation of the Defense of Democracy, their Long War Journal. And here, in the, in the dark red are where Taliban control things as of April 13. Now watch how this part of Afghanistan only gets redder, as you will see here, it gets redder and redder. The gray area is what is controlled by Afghan security forces, and the pink, by the way, is contested. The point is, the Taliban, Senator, now have over -- control of over half the territory. Do you think Kabul will hold?
SEN. JACK REED:
I think Kabul will hold. The question is, can it hold long enough to create a political solution between the sides? What is -- what you've seen is the encroachment of the Taliban, most of that has been without military action, most of that has been essentially going in and persuading or paying off the local leadership and, and they've been preparing for that for many, many months. Again, after Doha in February of 2020, they saw a, you know, free road ahead in terms of ingratiating themselves.
CHUCK TODD:
Do you think Doha was a mistake?
SEN. JACK REED:
I think though that --
CHUCK TODD:
By the way, you keep pointing back to this. You think doh -- the initial agreement that the Trump administration made with the Taliban was a mistake?
SEN. JACK REED:
I think it was, because I think it set a fixed date, rather than imposing conditions that would have then let us depart Afghanistan, and it also, most of the conditions on the, the Taliban were unenforceable. They claimed that they would disassociate themselves from al Qaeda, clearly that's not the case. It -- I think that some of the agreement was, you know, "If you don't bother us, Taliban, we won't bother you while we get out," and that was to protect the evacuation of U.S. forces. But it -- it's ended any sort of conditionality, and it set a date, and the most important thing was that people can grasp that, they can see, "Oh, May 1, the Americans didn't leave, they promised to leave, the Taliban was right," etc, etc. So I think it was, it did not help at all.
CHUCK TODD:
Alright. We're now, we're not going to be in Afghanistan. We're not going to be in Iraq. What's the future of Gitmo? Are we about to shut it down as a prison facility?
SEN. JACK REED:
I don't think we are. I think we're in a situation, and again, this is both legal and policy and political. There's still a reluctance, particularly among many of my colleagues on the other side, to bring these prisoners under jurisdiction of a federal court. By the way, that's where we've convicted most of the terrorists that we've captured. And then the legal situation has been so confused over the last 20 years in terms of, you know, what's the proper procedure. That's another complicating factor. One of the concerns we have, and we're trying to address it in the next National Defense Bill, is that at least the health care of these individuals will be appropriately monitored. Now, they're getting into their sixties and seventies. We want -- we have a humanitarian and a legal obligation to provide them adequate health care.
CHUCK TODD:
And very quickly, we're apparently, the reason we're delaying the, the, the issue of Afghan translators, is there's a debate about whether they should get legal standing in a U.S. territory. Are we really debating whether to give these Afghan translators due process rights? I mean, why shouldn't they get refugee status on an American territory like Guam?
SEN. JACK REED:
I completely agree with you. We have been trying through the appropriations process, not only to clarify that, or at least work with the administration to clarify that, but we have about 18,000 visas that are still being processed. Sam, the gentleman you interviewed is one of those. We probably need 20,000 more so that we can legally get them out, and Senator Shaheen and others have been leading that effort. We hope we can get that done quickly, but I know the military is planning contingency operations to get them to a safe place where we can process them effectively. We have a moral obligation to help get out people who risked their lives helping us.
CHUCK TODD:
That's for sure. Senator Jack Reed, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Appreciate you coming on with the last minute invite. Thank you, sir.
SEN. JACK REED:
Thanks, Chuck. Take care.
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