REP. BARBARA LEE: I think we need an inquiry. I don't know if it's the same one. But, first of all, let me say I was one of the few members who got out there early, supporting the president: "You've made the absolute correct decision." And, in fact, I know that if we stayed there militarily for another five, 10, 15, 20 years, we'd be probably in a worse place, because there's no military solution in Afghanistan, and we can't nation build. That's a given.
And so, while it was difficult for him, we talked a lot about this during the campaign. And I was on the drafting committee of the platform, and you can go back and kind of look at what both Bernie and the Biden advisers on the platform came up with. So, it was promises made, promises kept. And he knew that this was a hard decision. He did the right thing.
But having said that, yes, the evacuation was really rocky in the beginning, and there was no plan. I mean, I don't guess; it didn't appear to me to be a plan. We did not know even, I don't think, the Intelligence Committee. At least, it was faulty or not or inconclusive intelligence, I assume, about the Taliban. And so, there were a lot of holes and gaps that we're going to have to learn about.
We have an oversight responsibility to find out, first of all, what happened as it relates to the evacuation, even though it was remarkable that so many what? over 120,000 people were evacuated. I mean, come on, in a few weeks? I think that that is an unbelievable evacuation that took place. Still people are left there, women and girls. We've got to secure, make sure they're secure, and make sure there's a way to help with their education and get every American out, every Afghan ally out. So there's still more work to do, which is going to require a lot of diplomatic many diplomatic initiatives to really accomplish that.
But finally, let me just say, you know, the special inspector for Afghanistan reconstruction, he's come out with reports over and over and over again. And the last one, I just want to read a little bit about what the last one just came out a couple weeks ago. He said, "We were not equipped to be in Afghanistan." He said, "This was a report that will outline the lessons learned and aim to pose questions to policymakers rather than making new recommendations." The report also found that the United States government and this is in the report "did not understand the Afghan context, including socially, culturally and politically." Additionally and this is the SIGAR, the special inspector general he said that the "U.S. officials rarely even had a mediocre understanding of the Afghan environment," I'm reading this from the report and "much less how it was responding to U.S. interventions," and that this ignorance often came from a "willful disregard for information that may have been available."
And he's been these reports have been coming out for the last 20 years. And we've been having hearings and forums and trying to make them public, because they are public. And so, yes, we need to go back and do a deep dive and a drill-down. But we also need to do our oversight responsibilities in terms of what just recently happened, so that it'll never happen again, but also so that the last 20 years, when we conduct our oversight of what happened, will never happen again, either.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, in this part of the evening, especially for young people, what gave you the courage to stand alone against war?
REP. BARBARA LEE: Oh gosh. Well, I'm a person of faith. First of all, I prayed. Secondly, I'm a Black woman in America. And I've been through a heck of a lot in this country, like all Black women.
My mother and I have to share this story, because it started at birth. I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. And my mother went to she needed a C-section and went to the hospital. They wouldn't admit her because she was Black. And it took a heck of a lot for her finally to be admitted into the hospital. A lot. And by the time she got in, it was too late for a C-section. And they just left her there. And someone saw her. She was unconscious. And then they, you know, just saw her laying on the hall. They just put her on, she said, a gurney and left her there. And so, finally, they didn't know what to do. And so they took her into and she told me it was an emergency room, wasn't even the delivery room. And they ended up trying to figure out how in the world they were going to save her life, because by then she was unconscious. And so they had to pull me out of my mother's womb using forceps, you hear me? Using forceps. So I almost didn't get here. I almost couldn't breathe. I almost died in childbirth. My mother almost died having me. So, you know, as a child, I mean, what can I say? If I had the courage to get here, and my mother had the courage to birth me, I guess everything else is like no problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Congressmember Lee, it's been a pleasure talking to you, a member of the House Democratic leadership, the highest-ranking
AMY GOODMAN: California Congressmember Barbara Lee, yes, now in her 12th term. She is the highest-ranking African American woman in Congress. In 2001, September 14th, just three days after the 9/11 attacks, she was the sole member of Congress to vote against military authorization the final vote, 420 to 1.
When I interviewed her Wednesday evening, she was in California campaigning in support of Governor Gavin Newsom ahead of this Tuesday's recall election, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, who was born in Oakland. Barbara Lee represents Oakland. On Monday, Newsom will campaign with President Joe Biden. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" by Charles Mingus. The Attica prison uprising began 50 years ago. Then, on September 13th, 1971, then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered armed state troopers to raid the prison. They killed 39 people, including prisoners and guards. On Monday, we'll look at the Attica uprising on the 50th anniversary.
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