The News Agents: This week on The News Agents USA: Is Biden going to Israel a bad idea?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

On this episode of Newsagents USA, we're concentrating on the desperate situation in the Middle East

and what might unfold with President Biden due in the region.

We've been speaking to David Petraeus, the general who was in charge of US forces in

Iraq, Afghanistan, and became the head of the CIA.

I think it's worse than the 9-11 moment, but I think it's instructive to recall, again,

the understandable outrage, desire for revenge, the urgency of taking out the al-Qaeda sanctuary

in which the 9-11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan and then taking down the Taliban

because they refused to bring the al-Qaeda leaders to justice and so forth.

But we conducted some actions that, when you look back later, are instructive.

For example, in particular, what do you do after you've taken down a regime?

The post-conflict planning, obviously, for Iraq proved to be wholly inadequate.

And then there were some decisions made that made that even more challenging, firing the

Iraqi military without telling them how they'd provide for their families and firing the

government bureaucrats, basically, without an agreed reconciliation process.

So there are some very instructive moments here, but I think this is far worse.

We lost nearly 3,000 innocent civilians and the horrific attacks on 9-11.

The Israelis lost the equivalent of well over, well over that, and they're still doing the

accounting.

As you know, right now they're at 1,300 innocent Israeli civilians and, of course, done in

a way that's truly unspeakable and barbaric.

Newsagents USA, available on Global Player.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.