(PresidentialWire.com)- While all hell broke loose in Afghanistan and President Biden stayed hidden at Camp David, Administration officials were forced to appear on cable news to make excuses for their disastrous pull-out.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had the thankless job of defending the mess to CNN’s Jake Tapper during Sunday’s “State of the Union.”
Blinken claimed that if the they left the US forces in place within Afghanistan after the May 1 deadline, the Taliban would have attacked them and the US would then have had to deploy thousands more to fight the Taliban, and the withdrawal wouldn’t have happened.
This is why, Blinken argues, they withdrew the 2,500 that were still stationed in Afghanistan before they removed the American civilians.
Of course since the withdrawal was so completely bungled and civilians were evacuated last, Biden was forced to send thousands of troops back to Afghanistan in order to evacuate the civilians left behind.
But Blinken’s excuse for Biden’s bungling is the White House’s go-to defense all week: Trump made them do it. It’s Trump’s fault they didn’t have civilians leave before the troops left. That’s what he’s saying here.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken defends the Biden administration's decision to pull US forces out of Afghanistan: "The idea that the status quo could have been maintained by keeping our forces there, I think, is simply wrong." #CNNSOTU https://t.co/5uk1k2vMbY pic.twitter.com/qlX6LU7BTB
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) August 15, 2021
Blinken was unwilling to deal with Tapper’s question about how the administration could’ve been so completely wrong about how quickly the Taliban would take over.
This is the one problem the White House is unwilling to address. No matter how many excuses they make to try and absolve themselves of responsibility for this failure, the administration is stuck with that July 8 press conference when President Biden confidently dismissed any concerns that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable – a confidence that was shared by the Pentagon at the time.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Milley claimed that neither he nor anybody else anticipated that the Afghan army would be defeated in eleven days. If that’s the case, then people need to start resigning.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in the briefing that they do not have the capability to go out and “collect” all the Americans now stranded in Afghanistan. It isn’t a lack of capability that’s preventing them; it’s a President and Commander-in-Chief who doesn’t want to rescue those Americans because it might throw off his timeline and stop him from spiking the football on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.
