CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Interview with Seth Moulton

Interview

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BURNETT: All right. Nick, thank you very much. I want to go now to Congressman Seth Moulton, a Democrat member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Marine, a veteran and Tim Naftali, Presidential Historian and former Director of the Nixon Presidential Library.

So Congressman Moulton, let me start with you. I know this is personal for you as a veteran and I know you think there was a failure here. Today we heard President Biden put the blame on a lot of people, but he was very clear he stands squarely behind his decision. And he was really angry at the Afghan President and the Afghan soldiers. Do you think he's right to double down on what he did?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): I mean, look, we can debate this for years, historians can talk about it for decades. But what matters today is the operation that's ongoing in Afghanistan. That's the failure that we're talking about. That's the operation that we need to fix, because there are thousands of innocent lives on the line. And make no mistake, it is still within the power of the United States to save those lives.

So I appreciate the fact that Joe Biden made, in some ways, a compelling case for his decision. But what we should be focused on right now is what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan.

BURNETT: So Tim, Biden said the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, referring to all the comparisons that have been made with Vietnam in Saigon. He went right there.

[19:15:05]

Ambassador Hank Crumpton, though, came out today who, of course, was on the ground at the beginning to topple the Taliban. He says it's worse than Saigon. So one thing is for sure, though, like Vietnam, we saw government collapse at a speed that the United States President was completely blown away by. How similar is this, Tim?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Vietnam was a war of choice. The war in Afghanistan was a necessary war for our country and that's why I side more with Mr. Crumpton's view of what's happening now.

Let's not forget who the Taliban were in the 1990s. They wanted Afghanistan to be the center of Jihad. They open their doors to al- Qaeda. And after 9/11, the government of George W. Bush offered the Taliban a deal. You turn over al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, we won't attack you. The Taliban said, we can't, we won't do that. We are hosts to Osama bin Laden, the murderer of so many people.

And so the United States had no choice but to overturn the Taliban, 20 years later, are these the same people and if they are, they will once again make Afghanistan a center for Jihad, which means this effort to end a war may actually lead to another war. It is a terrible time.

The issue for all Americans is how this country uses its power abroad and there are moments and times in places where our power is indispensable. And as we see these scenes today in Kabul, it raises, in my mind, the point that maybe in Afghanistan our presence was indispensable.

BURNETT: Congressman Moulton, President Biden said the Taliban wouldn't take over and he was very clear about it. I mean, he went into detail in July, there's no way they're going to be overrun. There's no way you're going to get images like people being evacuated out of an embassy like Saigon. I mean, it couldn't have been scripted what actually ended up happening.

So today, he did admit it unfolded more quickly than we had anticipated. But the real question for you, Congressman, is how in the world could this happen. You have a president of Afghanistan, who just turns around and flees. The government completely caves. The whole thing falls apart in a few days. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan troops just throw down their weapons and the United States thought they were going to fight? How in the world could this have been a surprise of this magnitude, Congressman?

MOULTON: Well, the President said in his speech that they plan for every contingency.

BURNETT: Except for this one.

MOULTON: But if they had planned for this contingency, then they would have gotten our friends and allies out of Afghanistan a long time ago. And that's why I've been calling on the administration for the last several months to evacuate our allies, to evacuate American citizens despite (ph) with this bureaucratic special immigrant visa process, you can sort that out once they get to a safe place, just get these people out.

If they had done that, we wouldn't see the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport today. So I don't see how he can make the case that he planned for this contingency. It's clearly catching us by surprise.

BURNETT: And Congressman, you're saying you made the case to his team and was it just falling on deaf ears?

MOULTON: Absolutely. I mean, look, and it wasn't just me. I mean, there was a bipartisan group of members of Congress who said, we've got to start this. When Secretary Austin came before the House Armed Services Committee two months ago, my very first question to him was why have you not started the evacuation already. Just do the math, it takes 800 days to process a single Special Immigrant Visa. You don't have enough time. You need to do this now.

BURNETT: So Tim, Biden served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was involved with foreign policy as vice president. Of course, he took the helm on a lot of those issues. But the former defense Secretary Robert Gates who served in the Obama Biden administration wrote about Biden in 2014 and I quote, Secretary Gates.

"I think has been wrong in nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." And you have a comment like that and then you have these images of bodies falling off a plane, an American plane taking off out of that airport, I mean, it's horrific. Could these be images that become part of Biden's legacy?

NAFTALI: Well, to be fair to President Biden, Bob Gates is a little bit less critical of the Biden approach to Afghanistan in his more recent book.

BURNETT: Fair.

NAFTALI: But let's put it this way, the issue is this if what happens in Afghanistan is a return to a safe haven for Jihadists, for Islamists, then the images we see today will be an albatross around the legacy of Joe Biden forever. If the Taliban of today are somehow different than the Taliban of the 1990s and I have no reason to believe they are different, then perhaps this chaotic end to our 20- year odyssey in Afghanistan will not seem like such a horrible finish.

[19:20:07]

I don't know. Right now, this looks like a mess and it looks like we didn't predict it.

BURNETT: All right. Well, I thank both of you very much for your time and your thoughts, Congressman Moulton and Tim Naftali.

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