Scott Mann

Everybody was fired up, and we were a nation at war.

And we deployed a very small percentage of these young men and women into a country that, frankly, had been at war for four decades.

Like, that's all that country knows is war.

And what's interesting, though, is you think about Osama bin Laden quietly killed Massoud's daddy, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days prior, because he knew

that was exactly what we were going to do.

And he knew that we would go to Panjshir and that we would partner with Massoud.

And he had the foresight, the strategic foresight to whack the resistance leader 48 hours before dropping through strategic surprise

the Twin Towers, hitting the Pentagon, and would have hit the Capitol.

So think about that for a second.

This was over 20 years ago.

This was the level of strategic breadth and depth that Al-Qaeda possessed, okay?

Today, through your interview with Sarah Adams and others, it's excruciatingly clear that they have far surpassed that capability today, not just in terms of fighters, but in their sophistication.

They're operating at a whole different level now.

And so they want us in the fight.

The enemy has a vote.

They want us to respond.

We may be done with Afghanistan, but it's not done with us.

And so what you can bet on is that they are going to outdo the last attack and they are going to do it at such a level of emotional impact that we will have no choice but to respond because it's gonna take us into a sympathetic state of retribution.

And there will be outcries for payback.

And all of these folks that have written checks to the Taliban and done all these policy, ill-advised policy moves, they'll just skulk back into the shadows.