'I Don't Know Who You're Talking To': GOP Senator Excoriates Blinken On Afghanistan Withdrawal

thank you mr chairman and i appreciate the fact you're having this critical hearing today i must say um i'm going to change what i was going to talk about based on the last interaction thank you for being here i wish general austin were here because secretary austin could answer many of the questions that have just been posed uh i've got respect for my colleague uh senator murphy as he knows but this was not a choice between either a dangerous escalation of the war which has just been laid out or a precipitous chaotic withdrawal that embarrassed us around the globe to say that it was not a sign of weakness the way we left i mean i don't know who you're talking to but if you're talking to our allies in nato they will say it was a sign of weakness if you're talking honestly to our adversaries they will certainly say it's a sign of weakness as will terrorist groups around the world so i i i hope the lesson we learn here isn't that this was the right way to leave i hope the lesson we learned here is that there was a better way to leave if the decision was made to pull out it should not have been a precipitous chaotic and unfortunately deadly departure this afternoon i'll be speaking on the floor about max soviet he's a navy corpsman who's one of the 13 american soldiers sailors and marines who were killed on the wall trying to help others escape from the tyranny of the taliban he should never have been put in that position it was an impossible position for our troops for your diplomats and the impossibility that they faced was due to our policy decisions there was an alternative bagram air base i mean it was shut down in the middle of the night with no notice to anybody it was a surprise i've talked to people who know a lot more about the military side of this and i do who tell me that yes the afghan troops were a disappointment but that's partly because they were used to having americans provide that close air support and if they had that they could have pushed back against the taliban i think you hear that from your military and if general austin were here we would hear this but we just left like just pulled out all the military underpinnings so without the cover literally of close air support and other military support yeah it became extremely dangerous and chaotic and we left a lot of people behind senator romney's asked you to give him some numbers and you said you're still working on that here are the numbers that i have the best that i have as the ranking member on the homeland security committee will be pushed and pushed and pushed eighteen 000 applicants for siv we got 705 out you said earlier the overwhelming number of people who were at risk got out i don't think that's true if i if i could just give you the numbers that i that i have we think about 30 000 at-risk afghans were evacuated out of an estimated 60 000. that's the best numbers we can come up with because we can't take good numbers from the administration but that's the best estimate so that's true that we left people behind who had stood with us and helped us obviously american citizens were left behind green card holders were left behind but thousands of people who stood with us and helped us and then let's ask about who came earlier there was discussion about what kind of vetting has taken place the best numbers we have is that about three quarters of the people who were evacuated were not green card holders we're not american citizens we're not siv applicants we're not p1 or p2 visa holders so about three quarters of these individuals may not have qualified in the sense now you say that they're being vetted good they should be and you know nobody knows because we can't get good information from the department of homeland security from the state department and others but you know from the start many of us have said what we do there needs to be based on conditions on the ground quite frankly the president's decision was not based on conditions on the ground that's why it was a disastrous withdrawal that's why it puts so many people at risk it should have been an orderly withdrawal under the cover of superior u.s and nato military force we did have 2 500 troops there but we had 7 500 nato troops with us too again many of their commanders were shocked at what happened because they were surprised because there was not good coordination there was a lack of coordination with the people who had stuck with us i talked about bagram there was also a lack of integrated interagency planning of course we've seen this in terms of how the chaotic withdrawal occurred these were preventable problems and they put our military and your diplomats in this impossible situation they did the best they could and i commend them for that in an impossible situation it's amazing that they were able to perform but it was so rushed and so chaotic that again we didn't get the right people out and many who we did get out seemed not to pollinate the categories that we were concerned about so now what do we do let's look forward as was suggested by senator coons and i agree with that you said that you don't believe it will be a platform for terrorism going forward that the current government the taliban government has said that they will fight back against terrorists do you believe that the haqqani network and particularly the new secretary of the interior who is a wanted terrorist based on your administration's assessment do you believe that that is an indication that they are going to fight back against terrorists the question um senator from our perspective and uh and our partners perspective is whether the taliban will make good on commitments to ensure that afghanistan is not used as a place for outwardly directed terrorist attacks and they've made commitments but we're not relying on those commitments we're going to make sure that we have in place the ability to detect any re-emergence of that threat and to be able to do something about it if it does re-emerge something that we can talk about in in more detail is the haqqani network considered a terrorist group uh it is is it true that the interior minister is a leader of the kanye network that is accurate i just think sadly we have shaken the foundations of a lot of our alliances and we have work to do and i think we have demonstrated weakness and made the world more dangerous as as a result um let me ask you about one specific question well i guess the time of the summer has expired i will follow up with regard to some of the international financing questions a letter we sent to secretary yellen uh from senator rubio and myself regarding foreign assets good thank you chairman thank you senator merkley

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 263,508

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Keywords: Sen. Rob Portman, Sec. Antony Blinken, Afghanistan

Id: kzUu9qc2Al4

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021