Afghanistan: Is America's longest war nearing an end?

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Afghanistan: Is America's longest war nearing an end?

Pentagon insists that any peace deal with the Taliban will be 'condition-based'; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," August 28, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ESPER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I'm not going to make any comments with regard to the diplomatic negotiations going on right now. They are where they are, and we've got to let this play out.

GEN. JOSEPH DUNFORD, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: We don't want Afghanistan to be a sanctuary from which the homeland can be threatened, the American people and our allies can be threatened. I'm not using the "withdraw" word right now. Anything agreement is going to be conditions-based.

ROYA RAHMANI, AFGHANISTAN AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: We had the exact same goals. We will make sure that Afghanistan will never fall back to the dark days where extremism and terrorism find its most fertile ground to grow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S. there at the end talking about the possibility of U.S. troops in bigger numbers coming home from Afghanistan. This as the former defense secretary, General Mattis, Jim Mattis, in an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal," quote, "What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries. It is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and mutual disdain. All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment and one that can be reversed. We all know that we're better than our current politics. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment." Big words from General Mattis there.

Let's bring in our panel, Byron York, chief political correspondent for the "Washington Examiner," Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for "Reuters."

We should point out the beginning sound was the current defense secretary who said he's going to do these press briefings more regularly, sort of like then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld used to do back in the day. We will see. But on Afghanistan, what about what was said?

BRYON YORK, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Well, the first thing to remember is we are in the 18th year in the war in Afghanistan. That's just kind of crazy on the face of it. And so what you see here is this update on the talks that are going on in which the Taliban, which now controls more territory than it has since 2001, it has been gaining from this insurgency. The Taliban is supposed to promise to be good and not to support militancy inside Afghanistan and not to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorism like it did before 2001.

When you listen to General Dunford, he said we're not going to -- he didn't want to use the "withdraw" word. We're not going to withdraw. We currently have 14,000 troops, meaning some number of troops will still be there. And this is a president who promised to get us out in the last campaign and to keep us out of endless wars. So this is not a situation I think where the president's campaign promise is ever going to be kept.

BAIER: Mollie?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Exactly, this has been a war that's been going on for decades. If our goal, as stated here is to make sure that this doesn't become a haven for terrorists, that was pretty much our goal at the outset when we wanted to go after the people who had attacked her country and make sure people understood that countries should not harbor terrorists.

I'm not sure if a 20-year friendly occupation is the best way to send that message, and if it couldn't have been handled better. But really, this is a war that was won pretty early on, and we have continued to stay there. And President Trump is not the first person to say he wanted to get out, but 18 to 24 more months, we are going to be at the 20-year mark.

BAIER: For the critics who say believing the Taliban and what they tell us about security, what do you say to them?

HEMINGWAY: I think the important thing to do is send a very strong message that countries need to handle their own internal affairs and not allow terrorists to find safe harbor. And there are many countries with bad actors, many countries with people in them that would like to attack the United States. Afghanistan is not the only one. So sending a very strong message that won't go well for a country is good.

BAIER: It's clear that the president again and again and again has said he wants to bring troops home.

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Absolutely. I think it can't go fast enough for President Trump. But I think that there are some other people in the Republican Party, certainly in the foreign policy establishment, who want to make sure this doesn't go too fast even though it's taken so many years because of the potential impact that it could have on national security.

I think there are also a lot of unanswered questions, which may be eventually will be answered about those talks with the Taliban and some of the other ramifications if there is a deal, for example, on women's rights. To what extent has not been protected or brought up during these talks?

BAIER: Go ahead?

HEMINGWAY: This is not the first time we've been hearing that we are nearing a deal with the Taliban. They've broken down before. People shouldn't be surprised if that happens again.

YORK: This is part of what went wrong over these 18 years in which we got bogged down with the idea of making Afghanistan a better place. The idea was to go over there and kill everybody who had anything to do with September 11th, and we got bogged down in building schools and making sure there was education for girls and there was childhood vaccination and cell phone coverage and roads built, and all of this stuff. And that's what we're here now.

BAIER: North Korea, here is the defense secretary on the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ESPER: Obviously we are concerned about their short-range ballistic missile test. We want to understand what they're doing, why they are doing it, et cetera. But on the other hand, we are not going to overreact. We want to take a measured response and make sure that we don't close the door to diplomacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There's a lot of things happening with North Korea now. You have this sub that is potentially able to fire nuclear missiles. We don't the extent of that. We've seen pictures of that. We've seen satellite images of their efforts moving things around and seven test fires of missiles in recent days.

MASON: And all of that against the context of the fact that the president continues to say he's really not worried about it and he really wants to maintain the friendship that he believes he has with Kim Jong-un. I asked him about it this weekend in the G7 and there was a clear difference between his views of those short-range missile launches and the views of Prime Minister Abe of Japan. It remains I think a conundrum and some way what Kim Jong-un would have to do to really upset President Trump.

BAIER: Where is the redline for North Korea or Iran?

HEMINGWAY: And the redline hasn't been there with North Korea. Obviously, it's concerning to see these missile tests, but there is no reason at this point to believe that they are not continuing to move towards talks, even if it's been frustrating at this point. And there might be something about trying to display strength in the anticipation of talks, which would be a very typical thing for North Korea.

BAIER: We'll leave it there. Next up, hurricane Dorian bears down on the eastern U.S. There is a political a political back-and-forth about disaster funding. And we'll touch on 2020 as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: You've got $91 billion, it's the largest amount of money ever given for hurricane to a state, to any element, and that's the way it is.

They haven't gotten the money, all of it, but they've gotten a lot of it. And that $92 billion is in the hands of incompetent people and very corrupt people.

CARMEN YULIN CRUZ, D-SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO MAYOR: The president continues to spread lies because the truth really does not suit him. It is not $92 billion. It's close to $42 billion. And still things have not worked appropriately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: As hurricane Dorian skirts Puerto Rico on its way to the southeastern United States, there is a back-and-forth politically as Democrats say there is funding being taken from disaster funding as this hurricane bears down. Nancy Pelosi saying "The President's brazen assault on the Congress's most fundamental Constitutional power, the power of the purse, is cruel, deeply dangerous, and made in bad faith. Stealing from appropriated funds is always unacceptable, but to pick the pockets of disaster relief funding in order to fund an appalling, inhumane, family incarceration plan is staggering -- and to do so on the eve of hurricane season is stunningly reckless." The White House responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOGAN GIDLEY, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: The Democrats know that this money isn't being diverted from anything that can be used for recovery efforts or preparedness efforts. They know that. So this is a flat out lie.

MARC SHORT, PENCE CHIEF OF STAFF: That's hysteria. And the reality is this is something that Republican and Democrat administrations do constantly is to reprogram dollars. And when you do that you submit the reprogramming up to Congress. And so this is pretty much standard of other administrations as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Most importantly we are tracking the hurricane, and the federal government and the authorities say they are prepared. We'll see. We're back with the panel. Mollie, what about this?

HEMINGWAY: I think the reporting earlier in the show did a really good job of clarifying some things, that President Trump was wrong with his dollar amount of how much has gone to Puerto Rico, that Democrats are expressing like a sudden newfound opposition to moving funds around for emergency issues.

But more importantly I just feel like there's this issue where people decide on different days of the week that we do have a crisis on the border or we don't have a crisis on the border, and I guess today is one of those days where we don't have a crisis on the border according to people who are opposed to the idea that we would spend emergency funds at the border. Previously we've been talking about the humanitarian crisis down there and all the problems that have been the result of Congress' long-standing bipartisan failure to handle border problems.

BAIER: Byron?

YORK: It is true, the fact is there is an actual crisis of the border, and Mollie is correct, Democrats were initially denying that. Then they agreed with it. And I think John Roberts made a pretty clear point that previous administrations have reprogrammed --

BAIER: Including President Obama.

YORK: -- hundreds of millions of dollars, similar to what we're seeing right now.

But there is a keyword in what DHS sent to Congress about the reprogramming, which is absent significant new catastrophic events, everything will be OK. That's a gamble. So the administration is making a gamble that you're not going to have some terrible catastrophe this year like we've had in recent past years.

BAIER: Obviously with a hurricane bearing down it takes on different importance even though the administration is clearly saying that that money is not affected that would affect that disaster relief. But the question is politically, Democrats, and as the point made by Mollie, whether they are missing the boat on the border crisis and dealing with it.

MASON: Yes, I think that's the question that will be litigated very much in the 2020 election, because it's something that President Trump is obviously going to continue talking about. Right now we're talking about it because of this funding issue, related to FEMA, but in general it's going to be one of the biggest topics of the 2020 campaign. And the president wants to make clear to his supporters that he is following through on the promises he made in 2020, building the wall. Democrats are going to say, a, you didn't fulfill that promise and, b, it's not one you should have made.

BAIER: Last word on this.

HEMINGWAY: Also issues of corruption for both FEMA and Puerto Rico. When you look at GAO reports, FEMA is one of those agencies that has the biggest problems with waste, fraud, and mismanagement, using money as a way to secure votes or whatnot, and Puerto Rico has longstanding problems with corruption, including in recent years arrests of public officials for misappropriation of taxpayer funds.

BAIER: The Democratic field smaller tonight as New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped out, and the president has weighed in during the show. He just tweeted. "Sad day for the Democrats. Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped out of the presidential primary. I'm glad they never found out that she was the one I was really afraid of." He is, at times, the troller in chief.

YORK: He is the troller in chief, he's having fun with this. Today was the last day for poles that could help a Democrat qualify for this debate on September the 12th. And in the Quinnipiac poll came out today there were 14 candidates at one percent or lower. It was time for people to get out. It's been passed time for people to get out. And this was the Democratic Party's plan all along, which was to have two debates that were very inclusive. They had two nights of 10 people on each night, but when September arrived, to start cutting this field. And now it looks like you're going to have a 10-person debate, which is a lot, but at least it's one night.

BAIER: We should point out that no candidate at this point, Republican or Democrat, has been one percent or less and gone on to win back the presidency. Jimmy Carter in 1975 was at two percent. Even though it is still early, it's still history.

OK, Mollie, what about the president weighing in here.

HEMINGWAY: I'm actually -- I previously placed a bet on the possibility that the eventual nominee hasn't even entered the race yet. So I feel like this might be one of those weird years where anything could happen. It does seem like people haven't coalesced around a particular person, but Kirsten Gillibrand was failing to gain anything in donor support or --

BAIER: Think about that. Two governors and a senator are now out of this race. Andrew Yang is going up in the polls and has made the debate stage.

MASON: It's ironic. It's really ironic to see who has made it this far and who is continuing to stay in. You have to wonder if Senator Gillibrand would have welcomed this kind trolling from the president earlier in her campaign because it might've given her something to use.

HEMINGWAY: But she had that big moment going against Biden and nothing came of that, so --

BAIER: Yes, she just didn't move the needle. But she was surprising at the beginning, she was one of the first in.

YORK: You would think why are they still hanging in? There are a couple of cases if you look back in previous races. Mike Huckabee at this time in 2007 was about two or three percent. Rick Santorum in 2012 was very, very low. They came up. They didn't when met, but they increased their profile, they got better speeches, they got jobs, they got TV contracts. That could be in the minds of some of these candidates.

BAIER: Maybe so. We'll follow it all. Thank you, panel.

When we come back, busted by police for a good deed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a good Samaritan teen spotted by an officer of the law. Officer Joseph Holt of the Independence, Missouri, police department spotted an African-American teenager sheltering and walking an elderly white woman to her car in the heavy rain over the weekend, covering her with his raincoat as he got soaked so she could stay dry and be safe getting to her car. Officer Holt told the young man's mother what an amazing job she did raising him. He also says that he owes the teenager dinner if he sees him again. Thought we'd share that.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That is it for the “Special Report.” We talk to Democrats, Republicans, and independents here. We call balls and strikes and try hard to cover the news fair, balanced, and unafraid.

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