Fox News anchor Chris Wallace interviewed Secretary of State Antony Blinken Sunday about President Biden's claims regarding Afghanistan. He repeatedly called the Commander in Chiefs' statements wrong.
Al-Qaida was declared dead by the president. Wallace stated at one point that it is not gone. According to the president, he has not received any criticism from his allies. The allies have voiced a lot of criticism. The president's words matter and they matter the most.
Friday's speech by President Biden was a defense of U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan and the efforts to withdraw thousands more Americans following the fall of the Taliban government. Multiple fact-checkers pointed out that Biden made a number of misleading or inaccurate claims. They also mentioned al-Qaida being extinct from Afghanistan.
U.S. Air Force security force Raven keeps a security perimeter around a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul on Friday Aug. 20, 2021. (Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via AP
Biden spoke from the East Room of the White House on Friday. We went to Afghanistan with the sole purpose of getting rid al-Qaida from Afghanistan and also getting Osama Bin Laden.
While al-Qaida's numbers have been reduced significantly since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago, some elements of the terrorist organization still exist in certain parts of the country. Wallace mentioned a June report by the United Nations Security Council that stated that al-Qaida adherents still exist in 15 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, stated that Biden had made these comments shortly after he said them.
During the Fox News Sunday interview, Wallace said to Blinken that the president's statements were not true.
Blinken replied by referring Wallace back to the original successful mission in Afghanistan after the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.
He said that we went to Afghanistan 20-years ago with one mission and one purpose in mind. That was to confront the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and to bring bin Laden to trial, which we did a decade before, and to reduce the ability of al-Qaida, which is now able to attack us from Afghanistan.
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Fox News host Chris Wallace speaks with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. (Screenshot: Twitter/@FoxNewsSunday)
Wallace interjected: Sir. The president said al-Qaida was gone.
Blinken repeated that al-Qaida's ability in Afghanistan is greatly, vastly diminished. Wallace asked him again about this, and he replied that it wasn't completely gone. However, he argued that this was not Bidens original point.
Is there any al-Qaida member or element in Afghanistan? Yes. The president was talking about its ability to do the same thing as it did on September 11. He said that this capacity had been greatly diminished.
Wallace then went on to call Biden's false claim that he had not seen any doubt of our credibility by our allies around globe, Wallace's flat wrong claim.
President Biden is pictured at the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They discuss the evacuation of American citizens from Kabul and the vulnerable Afghans. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta).
Some officials from allied governments have criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Leading candidate for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's seat, Armin Laschet, has called this the worst foreign policy disaster since Suez. ... We have failed our friends in Kabul and ourselves.
Mr. Wallace asked Wallace: Secretary, does President not know what's going on?
Blinken countered by stating that there is a strong consensus among U.S. allies about how the U.S. handled the fall of Kabul's government.
Chris, I can only tell you what I heard the secretary of state say. This is an emotional time for many allies and partners, just as it was for me. However, I have also heard that allies and allies show deep appreciation for what we did to help allies and allies get out of harms way.
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