Flashing on the Taliban’s advance: “This is not Saigon”

In July, US President Biden said that he did not expect the Taliban to take power quickly. Now Foreign Minister Blinken had to explain the situation in Afghanistan. He rejected comparisons with Vietnam.

US President Joe Biden is at Camp David this weekend. So he left it to his Foreign Minister, Antony Blinken, to explain the situation in Afghanistan to the Americans.

“This is not Saigon,” said Blinken on CNN. The early, hasty evacuation of the embassy staff in Kabul and also the replenishment of the troops. According to the Foreign Minister’s interpretation, this is evidence of how well President Biden was prepared for all possible contingencies.

“It went faster than we expected”

Blinken didn’t want to explain that things could get this far so quickly. Especially since his boss Biden had declared in July that it was unlikely that the Taliban would overrun the entire country. Blinken held the Afghans responsible for the fact that this was the case: “The fact is that the Afghan armed forces were not able to defend the country. And that happened faster than we expected.”

Mission accomplished?

He rejects Vietnam comparisons, however, because the US had achieved its war goal: “We went to Afghanistan on a mission 20 years ago. And the mission was to do something against the people who attacked us on September 11th . And we succeeded in this mission. ”

But now it is no longer in the national interest to stay in Afghanistan any longer and to be drawn into a civil war. After all, the US has been there for twice as long as the Russians once did.

Warning to the Taliban

Blinken did not comment on the fact that after 20 years, more than 2000 dead US soldiers and countless civilian victims on the ground, the same radical Islamists are coming to power as before September 11th.

Rather, he delivered a warning to the Taliban: International support and an end to sanctions are only possible if the basic rights of Afghans – especially women – are respected. And if the country does not become a safe haven for terrorists again.

Opposition: “breeding ground for terrorists”

However, the opposition Republicans have long considered this scenario to have been agreed. After all, the Taliban had never given up their contacts with Al Qaeda, said Michael McCaull, a representative from Texas and foreign policy expert of his party, also on CNN. “We will return to the state it was in before 9/11. It will be a breeding ground for terrorists. And I don’t want to hope that we have to go again. But it will be a threat to the US again.”

The situation is even worse than it was in Saigon, said McCaull. “When they hoist the black Taliban flag over our American embassy: imagine this picture.”