Michael Baumgartner: “Afghanistan was the most challenging development case in the…”

“And I had seen some really good things in the Iraq surge. And I thought. And then I saw some things we were doing in Afghanistan that I thought, why are we doing this? Afghanistan was the most challenging development case in the world, even if there wasn't a war. And the idea that we were spending all this blood and treasure trying to build a democracy there, when, in my view, we should have been handling Afghanistan like we handled the Maghreb or Somalia, other places where there's open space for transnational terrorist groups.” (58:21–58:27)

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