President Joe Biden said that “we got all kinds of cables” when asked why he hadn’t done more to get Americans out of Afghanistan following a July dissent cable being sent from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to the State Department, warning about a swift Taliban takeover following the U.S. troop withdrawal in August.
“We got all kinds of cables, all kinds of advice. If you notice, it ranged from this group saying — they didn’t say it would fall when it would fall, when it did fall — but saying it would fall to others, saying it wouldn’t happen for a long time, and they’d be able to sustain themselves through the end of the year,” Biden said during a press conference Friday. “I made the decision. The buck stops with me. I took the consensus opinion. The consensus opinion was that, in fact, it would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year. It was my decision.”
The U.S. Embassy had to be abandoned over the weekend, and Hamid Karzai International Airport erupted into chaos as crowds of Afghans attempted to flee when the Taliban marched into Kabul on Sunday. Thousands of U.S. troops had to be sent back into the country to assist with the airlift evacuation and to protect the airport, with the Taliban just outside the perimeter and with thousands of Americans and Afghan allies stuck in the Taliban-controlled country.
BIDEN DENIES INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM OF AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL
A dissent cable was sent on July 13 from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by 23 American staffers urging top State Department officials to take quick action with evacuations as the Aug. 31 military withdrawal deadline approached, warning of the possible fall of Kabul soon after the troop pullout, a Wall Street Journal report revealed Thursday.
The dissent cable was reportedly sent through the agency’s confidential dissent channel, pressing the Biden administration to begin collecting information from Afghans who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas and to start evacuation flights no later than Aug. 1, according to sources cited by the outlet. The cable reportedly warned about an imminent Taliban advance and warned that the Afghan military might not be able to halt it, also warning that Afghan forces might collapse as the Taliban made big territorial gains.
The cable was reportedly sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed.
“The Secretary reads every dissent and reviews and clears on every reply. He’s made clear that he welcomes and encourages use of the Dissent Channel and is committed to its revitalization,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told the Washington Examiner in a statement Thursday. “Just as importantly, we incorporate the channel’s constructive and thoughtful ideas into our policy and planning.”
The cable was followed a day later by the White House’s announcement of Operation Allies Refugee, an effort to evacuate the thousands of Afghans who aided the United States throughout the war and who face Taliban retribution because of it.
Biden was also asked Friday why, after misjudging the Taliban takeover so badly, how he could be confident in its assessment of the possibility of terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan or confident in America’s ability to conduct “over the horizon” counterterrorism operations from bases outside Afghanistan.
“I think you’re comparing apples and oranges. One question was whether or not the Afghan forces that we trained up would stay and fight in their own civil war they had going on. No one — I shouldn’t say no one — the consensus was that it was highly unlikely that in 11 days they would collapse and fall and the leader of Afghanistan would flee the country,” Biden said.
“That’s a very different question than whether or not there is the ability to observe whether or not large groups of terrorists begin to accumulate in a particular area in Afghanistan to plot against the United States of America. That’s why we retain an over-the-horizon capability to go in and do something about that if that occurs,” he said.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended neither he nor anyone else had seen evidence the Afghan government would collapse as swiftly as it did, claiming intelligence said a quick Taliban victory was a possibility, but no one saw such a swift takeover coming.
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Biden admitted Monday that the capture of Kabul “did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.” He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview released Wednesday “there was no consensus” in the government’s intelligence when he downplayed in July the chance the Taliban would seize power, saying such an occurrence was not “inevitable.”
