Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, gave an unapologetic defence of the American military’s chaotic and bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan as he appeared before lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
In prepared remarks released ahead of a hearing before the House foreign affairs committee on Monday, Blinken said “even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that government forces in Kabul would collapse while US forces remained”, and there was “no evidence” that a longer presence would have changed the outcome.
“If 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in support, equipment, and training did not suffice, why would another year, or five, or 10, make a difference?” Blinken asked.
“Conversely, there is nothing that strategic competitors like China and Russia — or adversaries like Iran and North Korea — would have liked more than for the United States to re-up a 20-year war and remain bogged down in Afghanistan for another decade,” he added.
Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, called the Afghan pullout an “unmitigated disaster of epic proportions” at the start of Monday’s hearing, and warned that many Afghans now risked being executed by the Taliban. He said the US would be severely limited in countering the terrorist threat in the country.
“We have no eyes and ears on the ground. We’ve lost intelligence capability in the region,” McCaul said. Blinken responded that he believed the US could “effectively” deal with terrorism without “boots on the ground”.
“We lost some capacity for sure, in not having those boots on the ground in Afghanistan, but we have ways, and we are very actively working on that, to make up for that,” Blinken said.
Biden administration officials have said that their options for managing the withdrawal were limited by former president Donald Trump’s own deal with the Taliban, which originally set a May 1 date for the pullout. President Joe Biden later extended that to August 31.
Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, asked Blinken how “meticulous” the Trump administration’s planning had been for the military exit, to which Blinken responded: “We inherited a deadline. We did not inherit a plan.”
The Biden administration has been heavily criticised for misreading the situation on the ground in Afghanistan ahead of its withdrawal last month, and for ploughing ahead with the pullout by August 31 even as the Taliban captured the country’s main cities and took control of Kabul.
As thousands of people attempting to flee the country surrounded Hamid Karzai International Airport in the final days of the US’s military presence, a terrorist attack at the gates of the airport killed scores of people, including Afghan civilians and 13 members of the US military.
Meanwhile, thousands of vulnerable Afghans who had helped coalition forces during the 20-year conflict were left behind, as were up to 200 Americans, some of who remain in the country.
“We will continue to help Americans — and Afghans to whom we have a special commitment — depart Afghanistan if they choose, just as we’ve done in other countries where we’ve evacuated our embassy and hundreds or even thousands of Americans remained behind — for example, in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. There is no deadline to this mission,” Blinken said.
He said the US would continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the country, even though the Taliban, which is under US sanctions, now controls Afghanistan. “Consistent with sanctions, this aid will not flow through the government, but rather through independent organizations like NGOs and UN agencies.”
Democrats mostly supported Blinken’s defence. After Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, called on Blinken to resign, Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, said: “What we’re listening to on the other side of the aisle, sadly, is sort of a salad mix of selective facts — and a lot of amnesia in the salad dressing”.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzAxMDJlNDExLTBlZGQtNDVhNS1hMDVhLTg1NjMyZDUzOTdjN9IBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzAxMDJlNDExLTBlZGQtNDVhNS1hMDVhLTg1NjMyZDUzOTdjNw?oc=5
2021-09-13 19:31:29Z
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