CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Mike Turner

Interview

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TAPPER: All right, Oren Liebermann at the Pentagon for us, thanks so much.

Let's discuss this with Republican Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

Congressman, thanks so much for being here.

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH), ARMED SERVICE COMMITTEE: Thanks for having me.

TAPPER: I want to start with this report. Obviously, we're all skeptical of the Taliban and skeptical of the idea that they're any different than the nihilistic extremists that the U.S. has been fighting for two decades. But does the fact that they were willing to work with the U.S. to evacuate American citizens in such an organized way give you any moment of pause that maybe there is some hope?

[17:05:06]

TURNER: Absolutely not. You know the President completely overstated today when he said the war is over because we've left Afghanistan. You know, the other side gets to decide too.

I was in (INAUDIBLE) Afghanistan and I was there just before COVID hit. And I asked our commander, I said, is the area where the Taliban control peaceful? And he said, no, they remain a murderous and lawless group and organization. They will be that.

Now, I'm certainly there were times where that was in their best interest to assist this administration after the debacle and the chaos that unfolded with the Taliban taking Kabul where the administration was saying it was, you know, unknowable and clearly it was foreseeable. So, I wouldn't take this as a new sign of a new Taliban and the fact that they were working with United States. Unfortunately, we were forced in that situation to try to save American lives to work with them since Kabul had fallen, the government had fallen and the Taliban were at the door of the airport.

TAPPER: How do you think this would have been any different or why do you think it would have been any different if President Trump had been reelected, and they had gone through with the May 1 deadline? I mean, President Biden makes the argument and there are others who are not knee jerk, Biden defenders who say he has a point, which is that there always would have been chaos, there always would have been an ugly ending to this. And it was President Trump's administration that negotiated the exit with the Taliban at May 1. Why would it have been any different?

TURNER: Well, the President undermines his own argument when he reminds the American public over and over again that he wanted to do this since 2009, because certainly, Trump was even on the horizon in 2009. So this has been part of the basic belief system that Biden had of wanting to leave Afghanistan without understanding it abandons our allies, abandons the Afghan people. And really, you know, less than a third of the people in Afghanistan support the Taliban, they're now going to be subject to an authoritarian, murderous regime.

But there was a significant difference between what Trump was doing and what Biden is doing. Biden's doing a date certain pullout to Trump had a conditions based plan. In addition, we all know that that Donald Trump would never have let it unfold this way. Biden himself --

TAPPER: Why do you know that?

TURNER: Well, because first of all, it was so embarrassing to United States, it was so detrimental, there were so many lives at risk. And when President Biden himself said he wouldn't, if Biden wouldn't, then Trump certainly wouldn't. And Biden said, we will not run for the exits. And he did so in the middle of the night.

And he did though, that in a manner which he completely undermined the Taliban -- excuse me, the Afghan National Army making them vulnerable to the Taliban by giving them no plan, no chain of command, no even understanding of what we're doing, no passing of the baton.

TAPPER: So, one of the things -- I've spoken to a lot of experts on this before this documentary we're doing about the whole 20-year wars of Afghanistan. And one of the things that -- one of the arguments being made is that it wasn't -- that the Afghan National Army or the Afghan forces were unwilling to fight, it was -- they lost the will. They lost the will to fight in addition to some theories that that may be that there were individual corrupt generals and politicians that were negotiating deals with the Taliban separately.

And the reason they lost the will is because in this argument President Biden and President Trump both negotiated with the Taliban and headed for the exits and there was nothing left for the Afghan fighting forces to fight for in terms of a cause, because they felt like the government wasn't on their side anymore, because it was corrupt and the U.S. wasn't there to help support them.

TURNER: Sure. I understand the cause argument. I think it's more of a logistical argument, though.

You actually physically can't fight unless you have the ability to move from point A to point B, ammunition instructions, chain of command. Where you had NATO who which was then committed by the United States that was integrated into the Afghan National Military, and had that pulled out without any plan left behind. There was no plan for the Afghan National Army to be able to sustain and defend the country.

They had no choice in many situations, but to go ahead and concede. As we heard, there were Afghan military that ran out of bullets and then had to surrender.

TAPPER: Yes, but that had been going on for a long time. I mean, the logistical challenges, the bigger argument about that. And I understand, look, in addition to criticizing the evacuation, you also disagree with the idea of withdrawing. You think that there should be a residual force of a few 1000 counterterrorism at Bagram Airbase and, you know, people disagree on that, President Trump disagreed with that. He thought that the U.S. needed to get out.

But the question about if it is -- if U.S. had been there for 20 years and the Afghan military was still relying on the U.S. to provide them with support, provide them with intelligence, provide them with air support, et cetera. How much long was the U.S. supposed to be there? What's your argument to that?

TURNER: Well, I wasn't there. I wasn't -- I didn't believe we needed to have a force there forever. And I believed that the goals of the Trump administration were incredibly important and could be achievable. With the right negotiations with the right structure, the right plan, we could exit.

[17:10:04]

Now maybe that'd be a residual force doesn't have to be a couple 1000, but it's in the issue of the Afghan National Military having the ability to coordinate and to defend the country. It's not just a will to fight. It's not just as you had said, you know, they're being concerned that they've been abandoned by the Trump administration or the Biden administration, I think it was also that they didn't have the mechanism to fight. And that's where this administration failed to give them a plan, to give them what was necessary in order to do so.

TAPPER: All right, Republican Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio, thank you. We always appreciate you coming here.

TURNER: Thank you.

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