Washington – Wyoming Congresswoman and House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) joined Fox News‘ Brian Kilmeade this morning to discuss her recent Washington Post op-ed cautioning the United States against trusting the al Qaeda-allied Taliban and repeating Obama’s mistakes. Click here to listen to her full interview and read an excerpt of the transcript below:

BRIAN KILMEADE: It turns out today they’re meeting again in Doha, possibly to finalize it. It looks like the President got presented over the weekend with where the deal is at, and he green-lighted Ambassador Khalilzad to go ahead and lock down negotiations. Guess who’s missing? The sitting Afghan government. Guess who’s missing? Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Pakistan, the surrounding players in the region. We are, after 18 years and all the sacrifice, taking our boot off the throat of our No. 1 or No. 2 enemy in the world. It makes no sense.

REP. LIZ CHENEY: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think that what we have to understand is that at the end of the day, this is about America’s security. The question is, are we going to maintain the kind of presence we need in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, to prevent the formation of a terrorist safe haven from which they can attack us again. That’s what’s at stake here. There’s a lot of talk about, you know, are we doing this for other nations? Are we doing this for nation building? This is, at the end of the day, fundamentally, about America’s security. If we sign an agreement that pretends that the Taliban is somehow going to guarantee our security—now the Taliban, just within the last several weeks, released a video celebrating the 9/11 attacks. They have never renounced al-Qaeda. ISIS is resurgent across the region, ISIS is resurgent in Afghanistan. You’ve seen mentions already in the Taliban press about the extent to which they’re winning. This would be a huge, catastrophic mistake, particularly given that Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned. If we don’t fight these groups there, we will have to fight them here. And we’re not talking about a large force, but we must maintain sufficient military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan to protect our own security. We can’t lose this war, we can’t leave the American people at risk and I’m very concerned, given what I’m hearing about this deal, that is is a really bad deal that would do exactly that. 

KILMEADE: In fact, since the talks started, the attacks have picked up. Police and soldiers are stuck in their bases, according to an Afghan official, one of the officials that we support. Essentially, in any province, the Taliban are killing security forces easily, and no one is paying attention. The Taliban, these Afghan forces, they’re going to go to the stronger horse. So they control half the country, and we’re about to leave. Now, a lot of my listeners agree with the President. They just want to get out after 18 years. Liz Cheney, could you explain the way the President should be selling the reason why we’re there and how every day that we’re there keeps us safer here?

REP. CHENEY: Yeah, absolutely. And look, I know the President recognizes that as well. We saw what happened with President Obama when he established a political timeline. When he said we’re going to withdraw our forces based on this timeline set in Washington; not based on the conditions on the ground. And when he did that we saw the resurgence of ISIS, we saw the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate across Iraq and Syria. We simply cannot repeat the mistakes of the Obama Administration. And the reason that we’re there is for our own security because we need our forces on the ground, we need our intelligence folks on the ground thwarting attacks, capturing al-Qaeda and ISIS leadership as we’ve done over the course of the last many years. Nobody denies that it has been a long time. Nobody denies that people are very war weary. But we don’t have the luxury to say, “You know what, because it has been an X number of years, we’re gonna stop fighting the terrorists.” Because if we stop fighting them there, if we let up, if we allow them the kind of luxury, time, and space to establish safe havens, they will be able to plot and plan attacks against us. The losses we have faced in Afghanistan have been tragic in terms of our military, our soldiers; but the worse thing would be losing the war, and, even worse than that, would be the chance that we would have another 9/11 attack and the devastation that we saw. The choice is we fight them there or we fight them here. And we can’t simply pretend the the Taliban can guarantee our security so that we can withdraw all of our forces. That would be, as I said, a catastrophic and tragic mistake that we simply should not allow to happen.

KILMEADE: Congresswoman Liz Cheney joining us now, building off her editorial, talking about how, and the headline is so apt, “How to Lose a War, But Not End It.” Because we leave, the war is not over. In fact, it goes on steroids because they can honestly say they won. And then you compound that with our decrease in troops in Syria and the resurgence of ISIS with $400 million that they managed to stock away as we were putting them away. So this is a bad series of events that the President could quickly correct. He really respects you.