Rep. Auchincloss: 'This Is A Political Battle In Afghanistan, Not A Military One'

President Biden has set the date for a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20 year war. In a speech yesterday, Biden stated, "I said we would be out by September and we're on track to meet that target. Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st." The withdrawal announcement comes with the message that this is an "unwinnable war," but also with the promise that the U.S. will help the Afghan translators and other allies who the president says will be welcome here, although there are laws in place that would prevent that, at least for some time. Rep. Jake Auchincloss spoke with GBH News' Morning Edition about the troop withdrawal. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Sean Corcoran: The U.S. first went into Afghanistan in 2001 following 9/11 intelligence that the terrorists had trained there. You arrived to lead Marines in that war in 2012. What was your understanding of the mission when you went to Afghanistan? And has that mission changed?

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: You know, the war on terror has been with me my whole life. I reported on 9/11 as the editor of my middle school newspaper. I joined the Marine Corps after graduating from college in 2010 and commanded a platoon in Afghanistan, as you said. And then just a few weeks ago, as a member of Congress, voted to repeal one of the [authorizations of military force] that have left us mired in the Middle East. So this has been a full 20 year journey for me as well. When I was there in 2012, in Afghanistan, I was a platoon commander, patrolling alongside an Afghan police unit in southern Helmand Province, through Taliban controlled villages. What was clear even then and is crystal clear now, is that there's no military solution to this problem. We could fight in Afghanistan for another century against the Taliban. We would win every battle as we did whenever we fought the Taliban, and we would still lose the war because this is a political challenge in Afghanistan, not a military one.

Corcoran: Is the United States leaving a strategic victory here for Vladimir Putin? Are you concerned we'll see greater Russian, Iranian, maybe even Chinese influence there going forward without American troops on the ground?

Auchincloss: I think enough nations have seen how intractable it is to nation build in Afghanistan. No, I'm not concerned that this is going to be an enticing vacuum for another power to want to engage in. What I will say is that the United States built Afghanistan an army. We decimated the Taliban. We killed Osama bin Laden with NATO. We helped craft the institutions of state with NGOs and women's rights groups. We made huge gains for economic and political empowerment of women and girls. We gave Afghanistan many of the tools of nationhood, but we cannot build a nation for them.

Corcoran: President Biden said Afghan translators will be welcome in the U.S., but they may have to spend some time in a third country until we're set with laws and regulations. What is your expectation that those men and women who help the U.S. will be protected?

Auchincloss: We made promises and we need to keep them. President Biden told us that in the first 100 days of his term, he was going to get 100 million shots and arms. You got 200 million. He said that he was going to deliver big, bold infrastructure investment. He's doing that as we speak. He says he’s going to honor the promises we made to the interpreters. And I have every reason to believe his word because he's kept it so far in his term.

WATCH: 'We could fight in Afghanistan for another century against the Taliban.'

Corcoran: What concerns you most about this drawdown? Is it protecting the allies? Is that the state we're leaving the country, as you were just alluding to, with the Taliban making military advances?

Auchincloss: I think it's a few things. One is we've got in the very short term to protect the 18,000 or so interpreters who served alongside us. I had multiple interpreters attached to my platoon. They were with me when we hit an IED. They were with me as we patrolled through Taliban controlled villages. They were heroes, and we made promises to them. And we need to keep them. We cannot do what President Trump did to the Kurds, where he turned his back on the Kurdish people and they were massacred. Frankly, it's a shameful episode in American history that cannot be repeated here in Afghanistan with the interpreters.

We also need to use full diplomatic and economic leverage to preserve hard won gains for the economic and political empowerment of women and girls in Afghanistan. That is a that is going to be the nucleus of that nation's rebuilding. And then we also need to do our best to help the central government keep Kabul. If the central government can hold on to the capital and can retain solid governance in the periphery of the capital, I think they can push back on the Taliban over the course of the next year.

Corcoran: The president said yesterday this is no mission accomplished, but added that we did not fail. Interesting. Where in that range do you think we've landed?

Auchincloss: Well, as I said earlier, we gave Afghanistan many of the tools to build a nation. We helped them build an army, architected many of the institutions of their state. NGOs did a huge amount for civil society. But nationhood is an organic process. It's one that must emerge from the people. Afghanistan has never really had a sense of itself as a nation. Kabul and southern Helmand Province, for example, they are separated by much more than just geography. There's huge cultural and ethnic divides there as well. And so the Afghan people need to self determine what they want to be.

Corcoran: Since the U.S. even contemplated going into Afghanistan, there have been questions about whether the U.S. would learn the lessons that Russia learned in the 1980s, as you alluded to earlier, where they got bogged down in a long, fruitless war. Did we learn some of those lessons that the Russians learned and even the British before them?

Auchincloss: I'm trying to make sure we do. I have called for vigorously, as we pivot to the Indo-Pacific and to great power competition with the Chinese Communist Party in the 21st century, that we take a long, hard look at our military spending and think about what true projection of power is going to look like in this new ideological and geostrategic competition. We don't need to be spending as much money as we're spending on the Pentagon right now. We need a beefed up Navy. We need a stronger cybersecurity and Air Force, but we need a streamlined and smaller army because we're not fighting anymore land wars in Central Asia, the Middle East. And if we're fighting a land war in China, then a whole lot of things went wrong along the way. So we need to right-size the Pentagon, cut spending there, and instead beef up spending on humanitarian aid, diplomacy, global public health and climate change — which are going to be the true markers of international leadership, both morally and strategically in the 21st century.

Corcoran: Lastly, we have 46,000 Haitians living in Massachusetts. Of course, they're concerned about the situation in Haiti. What are you hearing from your constituents about who might have family there?

Auchincloss: Anxiety and uncertainty. Since certainly the earthquake and then the hurricane, Haiti has been battered. It has not had the political or civil leadership that it deserves and its people deserve. The United States needs to continue to provide strong humanitarian aid to that nation.