This evacuation will go down as one of the worst in history. Biden is trying to play it off as if it had to be done, and it may be that we needed to bring our troops home, but not like this. This was a failure of epic proportions. Thousands of ISIS prisoners have been freed and we still have numerous Americans left behind. To top it off we left them a stockpile of munitions and military vehicles/gear. There have also been reports that there was a pallet of American money found by the Taliban meant for the former Afghanistan leadership. But when Psaki was asked about the military munitions and their threat to Americans she downplayed it.
Psaki was asked during a recent press briefing.
Reporter: The President said he believed, and recently you followed and said the same that, “We believe that they were on pace,” this was before the attack, “On pace for the achievement of our objective.” So as we approach that deadline either tonight or tomorrow night, whatever it is, did the US accomplish its objective knowing that there will be likely thousands of SIV applicants and others still there and certainly some Americans as well? Did we achieve our objective?
Psaki: I think first we have to date evacuated more than 120,000 people. That’s 120,000 lives that we have saved, including 6,000 Americans and their families, many of them dual nationals. And we are continuing, our commitment is enduring to Afghan partners, to American citizens who may not have decided to leave. That is their right to determine when they want to leave. That commitment is enduring. But we have saved more than 120,000 lives and I would let you evaluate that for yourself. Go ahead.
Reporter: Can we talk about as the US prepares to leave, whether tonight or tomorrow, there are going to be billions of dollars worth of US-made munitions, arms, military aircraft, armored vehicles that have fallen in the hands of the Taliban here, giving them new capabilities they didn’t have before this. Are Americans less safe now because the Taliban now has access to billions of dollars worth of American-made weaponry?
Psaki: Well, let me unpack your question a little bit. Because the US military, part of their retrograde effort is to reduce the amount of military equipment or apparatus that anyone on the ground has access to. I’m not going to get into the details of how they do that, but that is part of their effort. I will also reiterate something that our National Security Advisor said just last week, we had to make an assessment several weeks ago about whether we provide materials to the Afghan National Security Forces so that they could fight the fight — obviously, they decided not to fight — or not. And we made the decision to provide them with that equipment and the material.
The third piece I would note that’s very important here is that we have not assessed that any group on the ground, whether it’s ISIS-K or the Taliban has the ability to attack the United States. Whoa. We clearly need to… Sorry, that was an aggressive bug. We need to ensure that remains the case, but that is not a capability that we have assessed to be the case at this point in time. There’s a difference between the threat that is posed to US men and women serving or people who are gathering outside of the gates in Kabul, and whether these individuals can attack the United States.”
There are reports that many of the vehicles and munitions were damaged to lessen the value/use of them by the Taliban and ISIS, but they didn’t get to them all. It doesn’t matter how much Psaki sugar-coats it, this was a failure on a grand scale and we have empowered ISIS and the Taliban in a big way with this poorly executed departure. It may be that they can’t use the weapons to get us now, but they could sell the weapons or use the pallet of money in an effort to hurt us later. This was such a cluster- that there are reports that Britain is not interested in working with our military on any future projects until Biden is out of office, and really can you blame them?