US Secretary of State Anthony Blankenship appeared before a congressional foreign affairs committee on Monday to try to answer questions about his withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, he acknowledged that their numbers were not enough to defeat President Donald Trump's administration.
However, the US Secretary of State also said that there was no point in staying longer in Afghanistan. "We inherited the deadline, but we did not inherit any plans in this regard," he said.
He said the agreement reached with the Taliban in February 2020 agreed to reduce the number of international forces in exchange for certain assurances from the Taliban, which would make the Taliban "stronger after 9/11". They managed to reach the highest military position.
Why didn't the US predict this fate for Afghanistan?
US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken said in response to questions from the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee that President Joe Biden and his staff focused on protecting civilians during the withdrawal of US troops.
He added that after the withdrawal of troops, the administration had "properly planned and used what was going to happen" and was constantly reviewing it. ۔
However, he acknowledged that their numbers were not enough to defeat US government forces in Kabul. He lauded the "extraordinary efforts" under which 124,000 people were airlifted from Kabul.
But Mike McCall, a Republican on the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, called the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan "an unlimited scale of destruction."
Could the US stay in Afghanistan longer?
"Afghanistan is now at the mercy of the Taliban's reign of terrorism and the black veil of Sharia law," said McCall, a Republican.
Another Republican, Greg Steve, said the Trump administration's agreement included certain conditions that were not met. "You can't blame the Trump administration for your failures," he told Anthony Blanken.
But Blanken responded by saying that the Taliban had violated the terms of the Trump agreement, but that Biden would have to send more American, "troops" there to regain control of them. There is no evidence that a longer stay would allow the Afghan security forces or the Afghan government to resist or sustain itself. ”
"If 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, equipment and training didn't prove to be enough, then why would another year, or five or ten more years, be enough?"
Concluding the debate, Gregory Max, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a Democrat, said he did not think "evacuation was so smooth after 20 years of chaos and chaos."
The US Secretary of State is scheduled to appear in the upper house, the Senate, on Tuesday, September 14, in connection with the Afghan war, where he will face similar tough questions. A large segment of the United States is unhappy with the withdrawal of Afghanistan and believes it could have been done better.
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