Blinken defends US withdrawal from Afghanistan in House of Representatives session
The chaotic and hasty withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan has left the Joe Biden administration facing a severe crisis. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the US government's performance in this regard in the face of strong criticism from representatives.
At a meeting of the US House of Representatives Foreign Policy Committee, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken rejected all the harsh criticism from Republican representatives of the performance of the Joe Biden administration regarding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
He, who participated in a video conference with representatives of the committee on Tuesday, September 13 (September 22), emphasized: "Even the most pessimistic predictions did not say that the Kabul government would fall while American forces were still there."
The US Secretary of State emphasized that Joe Biden had said even before the presidential election that either American troops must withdraw from Afghanistan or the war with Taliban militants would intensify.
Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan “an epic, unprecedented disaster.” “I never thought I would experience an unconditional surrender to the Taliban in my lifetime,” he said.
Blinken, however, attributed the main cause of the chaos surrounding the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan to the Republican Trump administration, not the Biden administration. He recalled that Trump had agreed with the Taliban to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by May 1, and had not prepared any plan for that.
The US Secretary of State said: “We inherited a deadline for which there was no plan.” He also defended the Biden administration’s adherence to its promise to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by August 31.
He said in this regard: "There is no indication that our longer stay would have increased the resistance of the Afghan security forces and government or made them more independent."
Blinken continued: "When 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on support, equipment, and training have been of no use, why should one or five or ten more years be of any use?"
Referring to the American military equipment that has fallen into the hands of the Taliban, Blinken clarified that this issue “has no great strategic value.” According to him, this equipment “is either not usable now or will soon become unusable due to lack of maintenance.”
Source: DW
