McConnell: Americans in Afghanistan ‘Have to Beg the Taliban’ to Get to Airport, We’ll End Up Spending More Evacuating Than War Cost

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Americans stranded in Afghanistan will “presumably have to beg the Taliban to let them get to the airport,” and predicted that “we’re going to end up spending way more trying to evacuate people with this slipshod operation” than we were fighting the war.

McConnell said, “We were spending about 1% of the Pentagon budget every year to keep the lid on in Afghanistan. We hadn’t lost a single American soldier in combat in the last year. It was working. It was working because we went there to prevent al Qaeda from being back in full operational mode under the Taliban and to sort of keep the lid on. My guess is, we’re going to end up spending way more trying to evacuate people with this slipshod operation. It’s an embarrassment. It’s a stain on our national reputation. There are up to 15,000 Americans stranded out in the country who presumably have to beg the Taliban to let them get to the airport, not to mention the interpreters who worked with us and other Afghans who are in danger because they cooperated with us. All of this is the aftermath of the decision, first to withdraw, and then to withdraw in a precipitous and incompetent way.”

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