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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. It's good to have you with us. Now, to understand the present, it's important to revisit the past. On October 7th, 2001, President George W. Bush addressed the American people.

President George W. Bush: The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan. We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Almost 15 years later, on July 6th, 2016, President Obama addressed the American people.

President Obama: We pushed Al-Qaeda out of its camps, helped the Afghan people topple the Taliban and helped them establish a democratic government. We dealt crippling blows to the Al-Qaeda leadership. We delivered justice to Osama bin Laden, and we trained Afghan forces to take responsibility for their own security.

Melissa Harris-Perry: More than five years after that, yesterday afternoon, President Biden addressed the American people.

President Biden: Here's what I believe to my core. It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan's own armed forces would not. The political leaders of Afghanistan were unable to come together for the good of their people, unable to negotiate for the future of their country when the chips were down. They would never have done so while US troops remained in Afghanistan bearing the brunt of the fighting for them.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In two decades, the office of the president has shifted from suggesting, under President Bush, that the Afghan people needed the US military to save them, to claiming, under President Obama, that the United States military did save the Afghan people, to arguing, under our President Biden, that the US military can't be expected to save the Afghan people who don't seem to have the will or courage to save themselves. None of these presidents expressed what I heard from former Afghan interpreter [unintelligible 00:02:13] when we spoke last week.

Speaker 4: First of all, these are unsung heroes and they worked so close to our American veterans. Most of the American veterans, they feel so bad for their friends, for their colleagues down in Afghanistan. We were working shoulder to shoulder with the US Army. We were on a battlefield together. We had the same uniform and most of the time, and we were in fighting directly with the insurgents or the Taliban. We were a soldier with them. Beside being an interpreter, beside being a linguist, we were a soldier. We have many instances that our interpreter saved too many American lives, our soldiers' lives.

We had the same duties as the US army had. We were the front liner. We went to district into district talking to people and explaining their needs and interpreting their needs and then telling them to our soldiers. We were the front liner all the time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Far from the oval office, the Afghan people are not helpless victims or heartless cowards. They are allies who spent two decades battling for their own nation, future and families while incurring unimaginable costs. With me now is James Miervaldis, who is chairman of No One Left Behind and a former army non-commissioned officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Welcome, James.

James Miervaldis: Thank you, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also joining me is Kristen Rouse, board member of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America. She is an army veteran who served in Afghanistan in 2006, 2010 and 2012. Thank you for being here, Kristen.

Kristen Rouse: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Kristen, let me begin with you. How are you doing right now given everything that's transpired in the last few days in Afghanistan?

Kristen Rouse: Well, it's been several days, I'm sure, as James can attest, not a lot of sleep, a lot of communications with folks on the ground who are just crying out for help, to not be abandoned, to not be left behind, for us to fulfill our promise of bringing them with us. We made promises to our translators saying that they can get a visa to come to the United States, because they served alongside us, because they wore our uniform, because they risked their lives just as we did and they are heroes and we made promises.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Kristen, based on what you're saying, what do you make of president Biden's speech?

Kristen: I take no issue with withdrawing troops. We've been told for years that there was no military solution in Afghanistan and troops should have come home long ago, but the catastrophe that is unfolding right now, the tens of thousands of Afghans, our allies, our translators, folks who worked in government, journalists, aid workers, everyone who took part in a democratic, modern developing Afghanistan, their lives are at risk right now and they know it.

They're being hunted down door to door by Taliban, and we have left them. We have left them and they are desperately trying to get out. They are messaging veterans. I'm just one of countless veterans who are hearing from everyone we ever knew in Afghanistan right now. People are desperate, desperate to get out.

Melissa Harris-Perry: James, obviously this is the work that your organization has been trying to do. I know that your interpreter was one of the lucky ones who did manage to make it here to the US but how long did that take?

James Miervaldis: That took three years, and he had a spotless case. He had a certificate of appreciation from ambassador Cunningham at the time. He had six passed polygraph tests. When we got to year three, I reached out to Senator Tim Kaine's team and asked them as a constituent to follow up with the state department. They did so every 90 days until we finally got an answer. My interpreter was sitting in administrative processing for well over a year.

Melissa, just a couple of points, I really appreciated you bringing up the past speeches from our presidents. When this all happened. I got to have to go back. I think I was 17 when 9/11 happened, about to turn 17. There's a quote in president Bush's speech that you read, where he finishes the speech and he says, "We will not waver. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." For the last 10 years I personally have just been trying to struggle with whether we have wavered, we have tired, we have faltered, and I think as a country, we have, but I'd always hoped that we hadn't failed yet, until Sunday.

It's heartbreaking. Veterans like Kristen are just being inundated right now. To that point, this is hitting the veteran community in a disproportionate manner than the rest of America. Representative Ruben Gallego had a very, very insightful post that he's suffering just like all of the other Afghan veterans out there, worried about their interpreters feeling helpless, but he noted this silence he's hearing from his constituents.

This is an incredible highlight of the civilian military divide that our country is now enduring. There are significant questions that need to be asked as we go forward.

Melissa Harris-Perry: James, I so appreciate that perspective because there's been a lot of criticism, but one of the things I feel like we haven't criticized is ourselves as an American population. For you to say that you were 17 when 9/11 happened, just hit me in a particular way, because the idea that we have sent our sons and our daughters and our husbands and our wives and our parents to Afghanistan for 20 years and we seem to have taken our eyes off of what was happening there until this moment. James, is there a way that we can still rescue this sense of failure? Is there a way we can still succeed?

James Miervaldis: Yes, Melissa. We had a great success at the end of June. A family arrived. They were one of the last ones to get a visa prior to the embassy shutting down again from COVID. They arrived in Dallas and we took this incredible picture of a three-year-old girl who had no fear in her eyes. It's one of my favorite pictures from what we're doing. I bring that up because that's mission accomplished. I know the white house had previously said there would be no mission accomplished moment in Afghanistan.

Well, personally, just being able to bring a family over here, navigate the 14 step interagency process that had no leadership up until Ambassador Jacobson was appointed to lead it, that's the takeaway. That's where as veterans, we won't fail our allies. The biggest issue here now obviously is getting families out. No One Left Behind flew five families, about 30 people out, commercially, just for your listeners. We take exception with the president's two statements that there were SIVs that wanted to stay in Afghanistan. The reason they, to quote the president, had not exercised their right to come to America, was that they were waiting to hear from the embassy about evacuation, and had not.

They could not afford the $5,000 or $10,000 it costs in an airfare ticket, so we stepped in and were paying for that. We had another 50 families scheduled to fly out this week before everything shut down.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Kristen, help our audience to understand how much danger our allies are in right now, but also how much danger they understood as they were taking on this task and the reason that the promise mattered.

Kristen Rouse: Taliban are saying a lot of things right now that I hope are true, that there is an amnesty, that they are not going to harm people, and so on and so on. We know from the last 20 plus years that the Taliban, as a characteristic, has lied. I hope they are not lying now as they have over the last 20 years. We have seen executions in Kandahar already. I've spoken with a veteran tracking a dear friend of hers on the ground outside of Kabul, who they were internally displaced persons corralled by Taliban, and then she lost touch with them.

Taliban are tightening up checkpoints all across the country. They control all of the border crossing points. As far as I understand from the messages that I'm getting, the airport is the only way out for anybody who is identifiable as having worked for the United States. When Taliban captured all of the bases and took all of the equipment, to include equipment that the US had, to include biometric technology, that includes facial recognition and retinal scans, there's a database of everyone, every Afghan who has ever worked for the United States. They have that, and so our allies can easily be identified if someone comes door to door or if they try to pass through any checkpoint.

A lot of our allies, they are hunkering down at home.

Some are desperate enough to risk their lives out at the airport. I messaged with one who was shot at, an interpreter who was shot at yesterday trying desperately to get out, but the controlled movements, no one can get passports right now. Nobody can get a visa right now. Banks are out of money. They can't even get cash. There are food shortages. There is a massive humanitarian crisis happening, and our allies and all Afghans are caught in this. The ones who have targets on their heads are those who have worked for the US, who have worked in journalism, who have worked in aid organizations, who have worked in government.

Educators have been assassinated already. This has been a continuation of what the Taliban has done over the last 20 years. This has been just an escalation of what the Taliban has been doing to Afghan leaders who have been risking their lives for the last 20 years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Kristen Rouse, board member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and James Miervaldis, chairman of No One Left Behind. Thank you both for your service, and thank you both for joining us.

Kristen Rouse: Thank you so much.

James Miervaldis: Bye.

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