By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Missouri U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt worries the chaotic, deadly evacuation from Afghanistan sends a negative message to the world.
Blunt says the whole plan backed by President Joe Biden was faulty.
“Really sent a message to the world that one, our commitment may not be a commitment you can rely on, and two, our execution and planning may not be the execution and planning that people have for a long time thought that the United States could be counted on to perform,” Blunt tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in an interview.
Thirteen American service members and at least 169 Afghans died in suicide bombings at the Kabul airport as the United States airlifted Americans and Afghan allies out of the country. Biden, a Democrat, called the airlift to extract more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and others from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success.”
Blunt, a Republican, doesn’t see it that way. He faults Biden for relying on the Taliban to provide security during the evacuation.
“A faulty plan and pretty poorly executed and I’m afraid the rest of the world saw this plan the same way,” according to Blunt.
Blunt never backed calls to remove the American military presence from Afghanistan, a withdrawal that began during the tenure of President Donald Trump, a Republican.
Still, Blunt says if the United States was determined to leave, it should not have left Bagram Air Field which had two secured runways. He says the Biden Administration should have brought the Afghan government into talks with the Taliban about the plan for the U.S. military to withdraw from the country. He says NATO allies should have been consulted, noting that while the United States had 2,500 troops there, NATO had 7,500 troops in the country.
Blunt says it was a poor plan, poorly carried out.
“We left people behind. We left Americans behind that want to leave the country and I think we’ll regret that as we try to deal with the Taliban to get them out,” Blunt says. “And we left a number of people behind that clearly had been so identified with our efforts there and that helped us there that they’re in imminent danger.”
Blunt questions Biden’s assertion the U.S. has leverage to get those left behind out.
“It’s hard to imagine what leverage we have now that we didn’t have 90 days ago or 120 days ago,” Blunt says. “Clearly, the decision was wrong in terms of how quickly the government of Afghanistan would fall. And it may very well turn out to be wrong in how much leverage that we have.”
Blunt says the rushed evacuation has damaged America’s relationship with its NATO allies, pointing to one European leader’s assessment that it was the lowest moment in the 70-year history of NATO.
Blunt says the duty of Congress now is to investigate whether the president had been given wrong information that led to the troubled military exit from Afghanistan.