The collapse of Afghanistan has been a catastrophic failure — one that has left around 15,000 Americans, maybe even more, stuck in a country that has been taken over by Taliban terrorists. And as of right now, the Biden administration appears to have no plan to get them out.
We need to start seeing resignations. Now.
Let’s start with national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who basically admitted this week that the Americans who were abandoned by the Biden administration during its rushed and chaotic military withdrawal might not be evacuated by the Aug. 31 deadline.
“If the mission is not complete by Aug. 31 and there are American and Afghan allies who remain there, will U.S. troops stay until everyone is out? Or will they leave?” CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang asked Sullivan on Tuesday.
Sullivan replied: “I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals. I’m going to stay focused on the task at hand, which is getting as many people out as rapidly as possible, and we will take that day by day.”
Sullivan should be fired for that answer alone. This isn’t a hypothetical situation. It’s reality. Thousands of Americans are stuck in Afghanistan with little hope of getting past Taliban checkpoints. It is the federal government’s job to see that they get home safely, and Sullivan’s unwillingness to commit to seeing that through can only be taken as a sign that he doesn’t think a thorough evacuation is possible.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken needs to resign too. According to multiple reports, the reason the Biden administration failed to get our citizens out of Afghanistan before Biden pulled our air support is that State Department officials didn’t anticipate how quickly the Taliban would take over the region. Blinken admitted the collapse of the Afghan government and military “happened more quickly than we anticipated.”
I don’t buy this one bit. Intelligence and military officials had been warning Biden’s team for months that the Taliban were already positioning themselves to take over the region as soon as the United States left. They had been making gains for months, taking over one city at a time. Blinken knew all of this but ignored the intelligence that was right in front of him.
Of course, President Joe Biden is ultimately responsible for this disaster and any lives that are lost as a result. Should he be stepping down? I can’t even bring myself to even think about Biden handing this disaster off to Vice President Kamala Harris — that’s the one thing that could make this whole thing even worse.
But there does need to be a thorough investigation into what Biden knew, when he knew it, which officials advised him, and why they executed this exit so incompetently. Biden can be held accountable at the polls in 2022 and 2024, but everyone else who had a hand in this needs to resign now, before they bring even more death and shame upon this nation.
