[ad_1]
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Secretary of State Anthony Blinken about President Biden’s claims about the crisis in Afghanistan, repeatedly calling the Commander-in-Chief’s statements “utterly false.”
“The president said that Al-Qaida was gone. It’s not gone, ”Wallace said at one point. “The president said he had heard no criticism from the allies. There was a lot of criticism from the allies. Words matter, and the president’s words matter most. “
In a speech on Friday, President Biden defended the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and efforts to withdraw thousands of Americans after the government fell to the Taliban. But several fact-checkers also noted that Biden made several inaccurate or misleading claims, including referring to al-Qaida as “part” of Afghanistan.
“What interest do we have in Afghanistan, at this stage, with the disappearance of Al Qaeda?” Biden said on Friday, speaking from the East Room of the White House. “We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of Al-Qaida in Afghanistan as well as securing Osama bin Laden, and we did.”
Although al-Qaida has been drastically reduced since the United States invaded Afghanistan two decades ago, elements of the terrorist group continue to exist in parts of the country. Wallace cited a United Nations Security Council report in June which estimated that Al-Qaida adherents remained in 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Shortly after Biden made the comments, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters: “We know al-Qaida is a presence, as well as ISIS, in Afghanistan, and we’ve been talking about this for some time.
“What the president said was just not true,” Wallace told Blinken during the “Fox News Sunday” interview.
Blinken responded by referring to Wallace’s original “successful” mission in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with a mission and a goal in mind,” he said. “And that was to deal with the people who attacked us on September 11, to bring Bin Laden to justice, which we did a decade ago, and to diminish Al-Qaida’s ability to do the same again.” thing, to attack us. from Afghanistan.
Wallace intervened, “Sir, the president said al-Qaida was ‘gone’. Simple question: Did al-Qaida leave Afghanistan?
Blinken reiterated that al-Qaida’s capacity in Afghanistan is “drastically, drastically diminished”, prompting Wallace to ask him a third time if the terrorist group has “disappeared”. Blinken replied that it was not completely gone, but argued that it was not Biden’s initial point.
“Are there any members or elements of Al-Qaida in Afghanistan? Yes. But what the president was referring to was his ability to do what he did on September 11. And that capacity has been reduced with great success, ”he said.
Wallace then moved on to what he called Biden’s “totally wrong” claim on Friday that he “saw no question of our credibility from our allies around the world.”
Some Allied government officials have sharply criticized the way the United States handled its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Armin Laschet, one of the main candidates to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called the situation “the biggest debacle NATO has known since its founding”. The chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee told Politico that the crisis had “done fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West”. And the chairman of the British Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted, “Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez. … In Kabul, we betrayed our friends and ourselves.
“Sir. Secretary, doesn’t the president know what’s going on?” Asked Wallace.
Blinken countered that the strong consensus of US allies is an appreciation of how the US handled the collapse of the government in Kabul.
“Chris, all I can tell you is what I heard,” the Secretary of State said. “And again, this is an extremely emotional time for many allies and partners – as for me, as for us. But I also heard this: I heard, at all levels, deep gratitude and thanks from allies and partners for all that we have done to put our allies and partners out of harm’s way.
____
Learn more about Yahoo News:
[ad_2]
Source link