Source: United States Senator for Nebraska Ben Sasse
“Their plan has basically been happy talk. People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality.”
This morning, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, joined This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News to discuss the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan with Martha Raddatz.
“There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk. People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality. They decided to outsource security around the perimeter of the airport to the Taliban. They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closest allies, people who have fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban relying on them, thinking they could trust on them. It was stupid then. It’s insane now, and their plan still seems to be, ‘Let’s rely on the Taliban because the Taliban cares a lot about what world opinion thinks of them at French restaurants.’ It was a disgusting revelation of yet again no plan… We have American citizens who are being left behind. We have American green card holders who are being left behind. We have Afghan allies who are SIV holders, folks who fought alongside us, drivers, translators, people who actually fought with us. These people are people to whom we made commitments. We have NATO allies who are livid at us.”
Full transcript is available below.
Martha Raddatz: Let’s get a response right now from Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Intelligence Committee. Good morning, Senator. I know you called for President Biden to extend the deadline but you’ve heard Secretary Blinken. They are not moving that deadline, which means there will likely be people left behind. How do you think these Afghans and Americans citizens will get out?
Senator Sasse: First of all, Martha, that interview was disgusting and the American people have a right to be livid about it. There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk.
People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality. And so, they decided to outsource security around the perimeter of the airport to the Taliban. They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closest allies, people who have fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban relying on them, thinking they could trust on them. It was stupid then. It’s insane now, and their plan still seems to be, “Let’s rely on the Taliban because the Taliban cares a lot about what world opinion thinks of them at French restaurants.” It was a disgusting revelation of yet again no plan.
Raddatz: So, what do you think we do now? I know we have a lot of unofficial groups.
Sasse: Yeah, so Martha, let’s distinguish between a number, or among a number of different groups. We have American citizens who are being left behind. We have American green card holders who are being left behind. We have Afghan allies who are SIV holders, folks who fought alongside us, drivers, translators, people who actually fought with us. These people are people to whom we made commitments. We have NATO allies who are livid at us.
There are some groups – I’m on the Intelligence Committee as you know, and there are some small ways to try to do things around the margin, but what we need is a Commander-in-Chief that actually has a big plan and a big way to solve this problem. President Biden has been repeatedly disconnected from reality. He wants happy talk for some political talking point. He still wants to execute honor, a fight he’s been having with Obama Administration alumns since 2009.
I’m not sure what’s driving the happy talk, but I know what the consequences are going to be. The consequences are going to be a return of the Taliban that has been willing to provide safe-havens to terrorists in the past and right now they don’t even have the power to make a decision about who they are or aren’t going to provide safe-have to.
We’ve got al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliates, we’ve the Haqqani network, we’ve got ISIS-K, we’ve got Talibani folks themselves who are killers. We have so many different groups who want to turn Afghanistan into the global capital city of jihad and the Administration doesn’t have a plan. They’ve got all this over-the-horizon talk that is laughably shallow. If you actually sit in Intelligence Committee meetings and you hear what over-the-horizon looks like, it is a pittance compared to what we just had on the ground.
Raddatz: And Senator, given that the Taliban said this date was a red line, given that ISIS is now carrying out these horrendous bombings threatening more violence, wouldn’t staying have put our forces more at risk?
Sasse: Joe Biden put our forces at risk by having no plan for how to evacuate. We are absolutely at risk and we are at risk because the President has been so unbelievably weak. Abandoning Bagram base will be read about in military textbooks for decades as one of the stupidest military blunders ever, and the President has tried to claim that somehow his military advisors were for this. That isn’t true.
What is true is that the Biden politcals at the White House told the military, “We’re going to get down to only a couple hundred folks and then we’re going to get down to zero quickly.” Therefore, they couldn’t defend Bagram. And so, we’ve been relying on the Taliban to provide security around the perimeter of an urban, mostly civilian airport that has a single runway. We have been in a ridiculously untenable position for the sake of evacuating these folks and keeping our word.
Americans keep their word. Thirteen service men and women died this week and our families across this country are in prayer for those families and for the ultimate sacrifice they have made, but they were doing something to make sure that no one was left behind. The Commander-in-Chief should be doing the same, which is make sure that no one is left behind.
Raddatz: Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Senator Sasse.