Update: The Pro-War Bias Of The Media Has Failed Us In Covering The ‘Forever Wars’ For 20 Years

Above: Aboard an evacuation flight from Kabul.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell continues his excellent commentary taking the pro-war media, who were complicit in lying us into the “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq and keeping us there for 20 years, for misrepresenting the American evacuation from Kabul and arguing that the U.S. needs to stay. O’Donnell is speaking truth to power, and is to be commended for taking on the military-industrial-congressional-media complex that lied us into the “forever wars.”

Transcript:

O`DONNELL: The latest guidance from the White House at this hour tonight is that a total of 53,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan — 48,000 of those people were evacuated after the president of Afghanistan evacuated himself and the country fell under the complete control of the Taliban. With 53,000 people already evacuated, the Biden administration and the American military continue tonight, as they did last week, to manage the most successful evacuation from a war that America lost.

And the Washington press corps continues to portray that evacuation as a debacle. That is because most of them, if not all of them, were not old enough or not yet born the first time the United States lost a much bigger foreign war, and fled that country while being shot at by the people the United States then called the enemy, and who the United States now treats as one of its friends and trading partners in Asia.

Our relations with Vietnam are so friendly tonight that it is the next stop on Vice President Kamala Harris`s Asia trip. To call something a debacle suggests that there is a better way of doing it, and we know how to do it better. If you are rowing a boat in a hurricane and it sinks, do we call that a debacle? Or do we call that inevitable?

When you hear people calling the evacuation from Afghanistan a debacle, ask them “compared to what?” When has any country ever evacuated from a foreign war that they lost, in a way that is better than what we are seeing now? The answer is never. This is the best version of an evacuation from a lost war that the world has ever seen.

That doesn`t make it good. That doesn`t make it orderly. That doesn`t make it safe for everyone involved. But it does mean that nothing else was realistically possible.

In the White House press briefing room, in 1975, the day after the last American helicopter left Vietnam, Republican President Ford`s — Gerald Ford`s press secretary, Ron Nessen, who he had inherited from the disgraced President Nixon who was forced to resign the office was asked what the reaction was to South Vietnam`s surrender North Vietnam to which the press secretary said, quote, given the military situation, this did seem to be the inevitable result.

No one in the White House press corps then asked why President Ford did not publicly say it was inevitable that the side we had been fighting for would surrender before they surrendered. Because the reporters were all adults then, who understood that the president of the United States, even if he believed it, could not publicly predict the surrender of the weak government we had been fighting for.

Then, in that 1975 press briefing in the White House, there was this question. Question: Are there any plans by the United States government to attempt to evacuate any other south Vietnamese now that all Americans have left? Mr. Nessen: no.

Question: There will be no further effort to bring out any South Vietnamese, is that right? Mr. Nessen: That is correct. Some South Vietnamese, I understand, are making their way by various boats out into the South China Sea. And I suspect they probably will be picked up.

Those people, at the time, were called boat people in our news coverage. Some of them drowned. Some of them were picked up.

And then, at that White House press beefing the day after the last helicopter left Vietnam, there was this question: is the president disappointed that he was not able to get between 100,000 and 200,000 out, as he had originally opened? Mr. Nessen: as many were evacuated as was realistically possible.

Question: Do you have any sort of figure on that? We have had figures all the way from 45,000 to 70,000. Mr. Nessen: It is not possible, yet, because some left on their own and have gone to various places, and there is no complete count.

No complete count. Realistically possible. As many were evacuated as realistically possible.

And no one challenged that. No reporters challenged that. Everyone accepted that there would be no complete count of how many people got out of Vietnam at the end of a war we lost. No one on the White House press corps believed they were better at evacuation logistics than the American military.

The American news media was not yet in the business of paying generals to come on TV and tell you that they are smarter than the current generals in command, and parenthetically, smarter than they, themselves, were when they were busy losing the Vietnam war or the war in Afghanistan.

Was the evacuation from Vietnam a debacle? Well, you could call it that. But we all knew, at the time, every day of our military involvement in Vietnam was a debacle and a moral disgrace.

During the evacuation, pilots in the South Vietnamese military flew helicopters we had given them to our aircraft carriers which were already too crowded servicing the American helicopters that were actually busy conducting the final days of the evacuation from Vietnam. And so, the American-built helicopters that we gave to the South Vietnamese army, that they used to save themselves were simply pushed off the aircraft carriers into the ocean. Now, you can see debacle in that imagery.

Or — or you can see doing what was realistically possible. We`ve done this sort of thing only once in our history before last week, 46 years ago in Vietnam. We did it while the capital city of South Vietnam was falling under the control of the North Vietnamese army. And American soldiers were being shot at.

I told you the story last week of the last two American combat casualties in Vietnam. Two Marine buddies, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge. They were killed the day before our last helicopter left Vietnam. They were killed in a rocket attack at the airport in Saigon.

The reason we were using helicopters instead of military transport planes is that the north Vietnamese controlled the airport after killing American soldiers to gain control of the airport. And so, the American military heroically did what was realistically possible. And what was realistically possible did not include bringing back the bodies of the final two American casualties of that war. Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge. Their bodies were left behind in a hospital in Saigon.

And no one criticized President Ford for that. No one attacked the American military for only doing what was realistically possible in that evacuation. The opponents of the war only wished that that evacuation had taken place years earlier. No one, so far, is shooting at the American military as they do what is realistically possible in the current evacuation.

And that is because the Biden state department has been negotiating with the Taliban about the evacuation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We are engaging with the Taliban. Consulting with the Taliban on every aspect of what`s happening in Kabul right now, on what`s happening at the airport, on how we need to ensure that there is facilitated passage to the airport for American citizens, SIVs, third-country nationals, and so forth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That is something we did not do and could not do during the evacuation of Vietnam.

Here is more of what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had to say today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SULLIVAN: In the last 24 hours alone, 28 U.S. military flights have evacuated approximately 10,400 people from Kabul. In addition, 61 coalition aircraft have evacuated approximately 5,900 additional people. That is more than 16,000 people in 24 hours, and the flights are continuing, hour by hour, as we speak.

We believe we are making enormous progress. And taking a step back, a week ago, I don`t think almost anyone in this briefing room would have thought we`d be standing here today with 37,000 people already evacuated from the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Enormous progress. That`s the phrase he just used. You will not see those words and headlines written by a news media that is committed to the debacle story.

The Biden administration has made enormous progress. Over the last time we did this in the evacuation from Vietnam.

The next time we lose a foreign war and flee that country, you will see these images again, because no one in history, no country has ever evacuated from a lost war without the kind of final images we saw in Vietnam and the final images we are seeing now in Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE SULLIVAN, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: No operation like this, no evacuation from a capital that has fallen into civil war could unfold without those images.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me be clear. The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started or when we began. It would have been true if we had started a month ago or a month from now.

There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television. It`s just a fact. My heart aches for those — those people you see.

SULLIVAN: So, an evacuation operation in a dangerous situation was going to have to happen, at some point. And when you run an operation like that, when you are trying to position assets to go in and secure an airfield in a city that has been taken by opposing forces with a government that`s collapsed. Your contingency plan is going to hit head on, with reality. And there are going to be complexities and challenges and difficulties.

And you work through them. You make adjustments, and you ultimately get an operation going that is moving out thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people daily. That is what we have accomplished over the course of the week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And so, you can look at the evacuation from Afghanistan and say it`s a mess and chaotic, which it is. And you can look at the evacuation from Afghanistan and say it is the best organized evacuation by the American military and the State Department from a war we have lost which it is.

It is impossible to lose a foreign war and evacuate that country safely and honorably, leaving no one behind. That has never happened in human history. And it is — was not going to happen in Afghanistan.

And the American news media`s naive presumption that the evacuation from Afghanistan could have run smoothly is part of the naive belief system in the American military`s invincibility that allowed the Afghanistan war to go on for 20 years.

Our next guest uses the word “inevitable” to describe what you are seeing in Afghanistan. That is the same word that the White House press secretary used on the last day of the Vietnam War to describe the surrender of the side that we had been fighting for there. “Inevitable”. That`s what the White House called it in 1975.

Our next guest, Lucas Kunce served two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a captain in the Marine Corps. In an article for the “Kansas City Star“, he writes, quote, “What happened last week was inevitable and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.” I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences.

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

[A]nd it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.

You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.

War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.

Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened last week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?

We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.

I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.

The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.

[T]he only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:

For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

In the interview with Captain Lucas Kunce that followed O’Donnell’s commentary, Kunce had more to say. Transcript:

KUNCE: You know, the people who paid the price for this war were normal, everyday human beings both in America and in Afghanistan. You know, we are the people who died. We`re the people who paid for the war.

And the people who really made out were the elites on both sides. You know, contract — defense contractors here, Politicians who used the war to — to get into office.

And then, on that side, you know, there — there are all these commanders who would just take American money. Not push the food or supplies down to their troops. I don`t blame the troops there at all for what happened. They were undersupplied and underfed.

The elites made out here and it`s not surprising to me at all that when, you know, when push came to shove, they fled and what happened in Afghanistan happened.

O`DONNELL: The news media attached great respect, sometimes awe and hopes in various succession of commanders in these military operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq at different times. General — General Petraeus comes to mind.

Was there ever a command change or a tactical change in Afghanistan after you served there that made you think, oh, this might work?

KUNCE: No, I think that this has been inevitable from the very beginning. And it was just — you know, there was a systematic institutional lie in place that was, I think, perpetuated just to make sure that the American people believed that this investment in Afghanistan of, you know, 20 years, almost 2,500 U.S. service members` lives and $2.25 trillion was worth it so that we could keep staying there.

And they are perpetuating that on the news right now. They`re getting out there and almost saying that we need to go back because they are trying to somehow say that it was worthwhile. The same way that they are saying that Iraq was worthwhile, that the $6.4 trillion we spent over there was OK.

And you know, these are the same people that refused to spend just a fraction of that amount of money right here in America building up our infrastructure.

And so, for me, like — like the real shock and surprise in this whole thing for me isn`t what`s happening there. It`s the fact that the American people didn`t realize that this was inevitable when so many military people on the ground did.

And the reason for that is because we have been lied to, over and over again about what was happening in Afghanistan, what their capabilities were and what we were getting for that investment.

We weren`t getting anything for that investment and it`s a real shame that places like where I grew up in Missouri are falling apart now. And they could have really used the investment, instead.