 or afternoon depending on where you are welcome everyone to rule of law in a new abnormal and think take Hawaii. Keep think take in mind when you're feeling charitable or you're getting toward the end of the year and it's donation time. We try to make difficult conversations for good thoughts and good exchanges possible. And we're going to try and do some of that today. And with the intrepid group of Professor Vernalia Randall Emerita from University of Dayton School of Law and Professor Ben Davis Emerita from University of Toledo School of Law and now teaching virtual online courses I believe for the University of Chicago, Illinois School of Law University of Illinois at Chicago School of Law. Hey, Jim Alfini who's been dean at Northern Illinois and Southern Texas and professor at both and constitutional law expert. Hey, and one of our own Hawaii constitutionals especially first amendment law experts and raconteurs and insightful commentator on just about anything from sports to politics Jeff Fortnoy. Hey, welcome back, Jeff, Jim. Hey, welcome, Ben Vernalia. Hello everybody. Hello. One of the questions that we've been thrown is the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Might there have been a way to do it better? Any thoughts on how? Well, could there be any question that there had to be other ways of doing it better? I mean, I think that's the easy question to answer. Is it a disaster? I mean, I'm not talking about withdrawing. I think that was something that should have been done a long time ago and that's a political issue. But as far as the way it was carried out, I don't think there's any excuse. And frankly, I think the Biden administration in its efforts to try to explain it has simply exacerbated the political consequences. And I think if I was a Democrat looking towards 2022, this is a very serious issue that they're gonna be facing in the coming months, which is unfortunate, as we all know, because we often discuss all of the serious domestic issues, including what happened late last night at the United States Supreme Court, in an outrageous, just totally outrageous decision not stopping this Texas law, which actually caused an emotion like that, the dissent to just point out that it's unjustifiable. So we're dealing with people's preoccupation with how we get out of Afghanistan when our own country is in a mess. I thought that the Biden's administration mistake was not taking a good look at what it would take to get out, get everybody out, get all of the allies out, and just say, look, we're not leaving until we do that. We're not gonna set an artificial deadline that can then be used to make us leave things behind, people buy. Biden says he doesn't wanna forever war, well, a forever exit, I think is his word, but this is worse, where we left people behind Americans and allies and not to speak of the millions of dollars of military equipment. His administration should have just said, you know what, I know what deal you made with Trump, but I'm not Trump. And so here's the deal, we don't leave. If you want us out of here, you have to expedite us getting all of the people out because that's what it's gonna take. And closing the only airport that was secure is beyond me. And again, I'm just like everybody else, I'm just listening and reading, but I do not see a single justification that makes sense to me to close the military airport where you could have gotten everybody out because you have secured perimeters and you use the airport in downtown Kabul. I mean, it's beyond me, but what do I know? Well, yeah, so I guess I have a different point of view on all of this. I guess the way I look at it is 125,000 people did get out in the period that was there, which I would say from what I saw on the TV on the first day, I was like, I don't know, you know, this is not, this is a disaster, but they did get the flights and that happened. And they did do it by the August 31st deadline. And I hear the points of view that people are saying, but you know, it's important to keep in mind that when the President of the United States makes a deal with a foreigner, it's not just his deal. It's the United States has made that deal. So you can disagree with or maybe think that the Trump deal was a bad deal, but it's not a Trump deal. It's a deal the United States did with the Taliban to basically have this set up this way. So for now, the new President to come in to say, no, I wanna do it a different way, it's not his deal. It's the United States has basically stated one way of approaching it, it's a question with a new President, are we going to change that deal? Can we change it? Yes. With the other side, obviously the United States and we can always call it now the effective government of Afghanistan can change the deal. But the deal that was there before has these obligations that come out of it with regards to the two states and their relationships with each other. Yeah, but Ben, Ben, I'm not, there was a deadline. I don't have a problem with the deadline. I have a problem with, by the way, 13 dead Marines I think is a pretty big price to pay in saying we got 125,000 people out because we probably could have gotten them out without any dead if we had secured the perimeters and not allowed thousands of people to mob the airport. But having said that, you don't start your evacuations till the week before or 10 days before. I mean, Biden knew what the deal was and I know there's been a lot of talk about whether the deal was ever confirmed by the Taliban. Forget that. You're gonna evacuate 100,000 people. You don't start one week before. Start in April, start in May, start in June. You know what the deadline is. So I think on this one, you and I disagree which is such a shock. No, I don't think it's so much we disagree is that we're sitting here on the outside looking at it and we're not seeing what was going on in the inside. I mean, on the inside, I guarantee, I'm guessing that you don't get to that point that they got to unless at least knowing what the military are like, they plan out everything. And so there've probably been things planned out for months on how to do this. And I know that there were people who were talking to the military a way back about precisely how to get out these SIVs and all that stuff were talking to the White House, the Trump White House as well as the Biden White House about how to do it. So all I'm trying to say is that the actual execution in the event at the place was what it was. Why did, was the execution of no doubt a plan that probably took into account certain different things like, for example, that there would actually still be an Afghan government as opposed to the Taliban which that's a collapse that happens. And you have to adjust to that collapse. Wait a minute, wait a minute. On the perimeter, I mean, to me it's like you can keep adding troops and making the perimeter bigger but you're always gonna end up with a perimeter and there's gonna be that stuff that happens at the perimeter. And it's awful that 13 people, 13 were killed and many injured and I think tens of hundreds of Afghans. I mean, it's awful, okay? But that's the problem. That's such a minimization of what's happened to just say it's awful. If it was preventable, it's more than awful. Okay, I'm gonna say. Like, okay, you know. I don't believe it's, you know, I'm saying that a wind up of a war is going to have awful things that happen. That's why they call war as hell. That's that, I mean, it's not minimizing it's just recognizing that, you know, we want it all neat and clean with a little bowl on it. That's not what's gonna happen in a war zone. You know. Which is why they should have been prepared to say as a part of the negotiated agreement and the renegotiated agreement, because I understand that there that the deal was with the United States and the Taliban. But when Biden got in, he had an opportunity to renegotiate stuff. To say this is how, you know, to move around the edges and the 13 deaths is not what really bothers me that bothers me, but what is really concerned for me because I keep thinking, what if my family spent 20 years helping the United States government and got left behind? What if because in a system in which we expect people to be killed and abused? It's not like they got left behind in Sweden. They got left behind in a culture and what we are saying is one of the most oppressive governments that is going to kill people. Oh, no, no, this is a new, this is a new kindly Taliban. Haven't you been hearing? This is not the old Taliban. This is, these are our buddies now. These are friendly allies in the fight against ISIS. They've even given up on stoning women. That's right, that's right. Wait a minute. I think you guys are just, with all due respect, you folks are mischaracterizing what's going on. I don't think anybody is saying that Taliban are sweetness and light anymore. The only issue is whether it's in the Taliban's interest in the cruel vision of statecraft to do things this way or that way, just like for the United States, what's in its interest in the cruel business of statecraft. Okay, let's move on. Let's move on after Jim. After Jim's comment. Yeah. Can I ask us to step back for a moment because I think one of the things that no one in the Trump administration or in the Biden administration would have predicted was the rapid takeover by the Taliban. I mean, things happened so quickly. The government basically ceased to exist. The military put down their arms. I mean, it was a coup that, it was a silent coup for all intents and purposes. Why did that happen? I mean, we were there for 20 years, just like we were in Vietnam, and this is where Vietnam, I think, and the Afghan situation do stand some comparison. Ultimately, we were there to win over the minds and hearts of the people, and it didn't work. It never works. Why don't we learn our lesson? One of the things that I was in the army during the Vietnam War, luckily I didn't get to Vietnam, but I certainly had thoughts about many things. I don't think we would have gotten out of Vietnam as quickly as we did, although it seemed like it was forever. If we had an all volunteer army. You remember right after Vietnam, the conservatives in Congress pushed for a volunteer army. Why? Because if you have a draft, the government is that much more accountable. People are involuntarily being pulled into the war, and their families, their mothers are gonna be on the front lines of getting us out of that war. So I mean, one of the things I would ask is would things a bit different in Afghanistan if we still had a draft? Well, I can't answer that, but I'll tell you this, Jim, and this kind of gets to what Ben was alluding to, but you really have to question the intelligence of our military and our intelligence agencies. The collapse of this army that we trained for 20 years, not to have been foreseen, is to me a very scary element of everything that occurred thereafter. I am, you know, who knows, but I am convinced that the military people told Biden that these forces of the government, including the government itself, would defend themselves. And after 20 years and how many trillions of dollars, the second they faced adversity, they put their arms down and embraced the Taliban. I mean, that's the scary thing that we were not knowledgeable that that was gonna happen. What does it take to Taliban a week, a week to take over the country? I'm not even sure that, you know, the thing is that we like the popular kind of vision in our mind is that no one knew. I think they all knew. They had political reasons for wanting to ignore it. You know, it doesn't take, it doesn't take a, and I'm definitely not a brain scientist to say, but it takes the worst case scenario to spurs in the mix to be able to say, okay, what's the worst possible thing can happen and how do we prepare for that? But nobody went to prepare for that because that required them to do things differently along each step of the way in terms of protecting the, in terms of different, to just take different acts. So I'm not, I don't think it caught anybody. I don't think it caught the intelligence and military by surprise. I don't think it caught Biden by surprise. I just think that that was not a choice they decided to plan around. And it's like when you got the, you know, faulty pipes in your house and you got a faulty roof, you decide to put the money in the roof, but the pipes is really where it needs to go. Well, you knew that, that's not a surprise. I'm gonna second Professor Randall on that because I would, the things that I read along the way here have pointed out basically that kind of argument about the actual stand-up ability of the Afghan army that was supposed to defend the government that was in place. One of the things that I hear about is, for example, if you're out there in Podunk Afghanistan and you're at a post and you don't have bullets or you don't have enough bullets fighting against the other side, you lay down your arms. I mean, that's what you're doing. Why don't you have bullets? Cause the supply lines that are supposed to be there for the bullets to get to you, you know, and then maybe somebody back at the headquarters alleged to be actually selling off the bullets to the highest bidder as opposed to resupplying you. I mean, there's a million things like that that make me say that, no, somebody's not sort of falling on their sword or is sort of acting with lack of courage or anything, but they're looking at the reality of their situation where they don't have the ability to fight the other side. And if they can't fight the other side, not with all that money that was spent, if you're that person, what are you gonna do? You've got to surrender and run. Retreat. No, Ben, I have to take issue with you there. I don't think you can say they didn't have the ability to fight. After all those billions of dollars of armaments that we put in there, they had the ability. They certainly had the ability. What they didn't have was the will. And I think there's a big difference. Well, I mean, you can talk about ability and will of the will of the person on the front line, the will of the person who's the minister of defense up at the top to actually provide the stuff to the folks down on the front line. I mean, there's different levels of will. You see what I'm saying? And my view is that if you're on that front line there and you don't have bullets, you're gonna retreat. That's what you do. That's what you do. You don't have to backup. That's what you do. I don't know if you're either. And who knows how our drone bombing eroded Afghan people's support? Because we hardly talked about the thousands and thousands of people who were killed during the 20 year war and 40% of them children. So, you know, it's kind of like, how do I want my evil? Do I want my evil in the Taliban? Which I don't know really know about to, I mean, which doesn't seem hard. Do I want my evil in the United States that just sends this drone over my land, dropping bombs? You know? Maybe the bottom line, Jim, I think you raised a good point about the volunteer army. We know what happened in Vietnam and how much political pressure there was to get out. There wasn't a lot of political pressure to get out of Afghanistan. There weren't mothers arguing because their sons and daughters weren't being drafted. It's a totally different thing. And I think you've raised a really good point. But maybe the bottom line is the Afghans, the majority of Afghans are happy with the Taliban. Maybe that's the case. Maybe not unhappy. Well, okay. You know, maybe not the hundred thousand that we enlisted and paid to be our allies in the fight, either as soldiers or as mercenaries or as spies or whatever. But I haven't seen the Gallup poll of the folks in Afghanistan as to the choices they had to lead their government. Who would be in the majority? I don't know. But maybe the fact that the government's forces put down their arms is an indication that, you know what? Maybe they're the best of the worst. But I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm more cynical. I'm excuse me, folks. I'm sorry. I'm a little more cynical than all of you and all this. I'm saying that what I'm saying, I don't know if the word is cynical, but what I'm trying to say is that, no, I don't think that the majority of Afghans are happy with the Taliban or not happy with them are. I think that they are people who are just trying to survive, okay? Good point. And so it's like, whoever runs around saying that I run the thing, I will have to deal with them because we're all Afghans here and, you know, in different types of tribes and things like that there too. And it's just like, what do I have to do to survive? Okay? No. So the Americans are here now? Okay, great. Well, I'm gonna survive with them. Oh, the Americans are leaving? Okay, well, who's left? Okay, well, I'm gonna survive with them because, you know, and I don't think that is a bad thing. I think that is like reality of how humans are, you know? No, I think that's right. I think that if we look at, a lot of us are horribly unhappy with the government we live under. Whether it's Trump or Biden, I'm unhappy with both of them all of the time. And so my view to life is, I do the best I can in the circumstance I'm in because I know I can't change it. So I just need to just kind of, what do I do to live on? As you said, you know, and live my life here with my sons and whatever. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it would be a mistake in you right to impugn any kind of emotional attachment to the Taliban one way or the other because we don't know, I don't know. Oh, the other thing is, you know, we're all foreigners, right? I mean, the greatest joke I heard about the Iraq war was there was an American soldiers walking through some farmer's field and said to the farmer, excuse me, sir, have you seen any foreign fighters? And then the farmer said, yeah, you, you know what I mean? I mean, you know, I mean, we're not Afghans, right? How many, if you go back through the great game and alter back through history of different groups trying to take over Afghanistan, you know, it's always been true. No, but I think we have another topic, but I'm not looking at it from the Afghan's point of view. I'm looking at it from America's point of view and the impact on our country. And that's how I look at it. Are we gonna learn a lesson? We didn't learn a lesson in Vietnam. We didn't learn a lesson in Iraq. We obviously didn't, we didn't learn a lesson in Afghanistan. We're next. Well, you're back to Eisenhower. You're back to Eisenhower's military industrial complex in what, 1960 is last speech, right? We do this over and over, right? Okay. Keeps our economy going, come on. And we keep, we are an empire that occupies what, two thirds of the world with military basis until we recognize the military, the occupation that we make up countries. And we spend more money and I heard this and I, if anyone can correct me, that'd be fine, great. But I was astounded because I had never heard it before, but somewhere in the deep of night, Congress passed and signed a law restricting the closing of military bases. So it's sort of like, we have no control of military. They, the bases and the money is gonna be spent and there's not much can be done to get rid of it. And yeah, it's happening again. And Ben, just for a second here. So in our last couple of minutes, what are some of the most important lessons that we need to learn from Afghanistan that apparently we did not from Vietnam? Stay out of the people's business. You know, don't try to correct things with the military. Yeah, and I agree with Vanelia and sort of related to that is get a heck of a lot better at international diplomacy. Yeah, great. Yeah, yeah. Don't try to get 125,000 people out of an airport surrounded by military and mobs in a week. Right. And don't miss the opportunities to negotiate. No, absolutely. The guerrilla war victors need to transition as orderly and peacefully as possible to a ruling government. Right. We missed that in Vietnam. In fact, we intentionally screwed it up. A lot of people don't know. Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara got together and went to every other country in the world at the end of the American war in Vietnam. So don't give them anything, not even humanitarian aid. We definitely should not set up Afghanistan and Taliban as evil villains that we don't deal with, you know. That would be the worst thing to happen. We need to realize that that's one of our problems. I like their look. I think we should adopt their fashion. Right. Both clothes, facial hair. I mean, you know, that could be the next trend, the kind of the Taliban look. Well, I would just say that, you know, the rule in international law about, you know, who runs the state as the one who's in effective control. So if the Taliban appear to be in effective control, then that's who every state in the world is gonna deal with. And somebody, each state's gonna have their interests. So you've got China, India, Pakistan, Russia looking at Afghanistan in addition to the Europeans and ourselves and the Taliban government and trying to figure out and I can give them 180 odd states. And they're looking at in terms of what's their interest in working with this government that's in effective control or not. You know, that's the kind of, to me, that's the level of what happens here. And it's got nothing actually about morality to it at all. It's all about interests of each of the states in the manner of relationship they wanna have with the Taliban. Maybe the lesson we should have learned from Vietnam was along those lines, which is that, okay, so the North Vietnamese are in effective control, then we don't just walk away, we have to deal with who's in effective control. Part of our problem, the United States problem, I can't talk about for many other countries, the part of our problem is we do like, when we lose, we like to villainize the loser. And we'll hold on, I mean, it's kind of like, why are we still doing an economic embargo on Cuba? You know, it's sort of like we just won't give up, it becomes United States policy that as long as someone is in X is in control, we will have nothing to deal with them. And that to me is gonna be problematic if we do that with Afghanistan. Well, let me leave you with this because I started with the Texas decision. That law allows a private individual to file a civil lawsuit against anyone who they believe has assisted a woman in getting an abortion after six weeks. Think about that. Not the government, it allows me to sue you if I think you have directed your neighbor to a physician who will give an abortion and subject you, I believe to a mandatory $10,000 fine. We got something to talk about in two weeks because this is unbelievable. Yeah. So Jeff, professor, Ben, Jim, thanks so much for your time. I'm sorry we're out of time today, but there's still a lot more in the table. And please, viewers, listeners, support, thank Tech Hawaii and do give some thought to lessons to be learned in all these areas. Thank you all. Aloha, have a great rest of the week and Labor Day weekend.