Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) argued the warnings signs for what has occurred in Afghanistan after the precipitous U.S. withdrawal of military forces were ignored by the Biden administration.
The Florida Republican said the vacuum left behind could also mean the return of al Qaeda to the region.
“Sean, not just did I tell them, but it was a bipartisan warning, OK?” he said. “You look at the intelligence, you look at everything before us, it was clear that not only it was the worst-case scenario out there, it was the likeliest outcome that was going to happen, and we kept insisting, what is the plan of this happens? What is the plan? And they arrogantly, and they smugly ignored it. They ignored everyone who was warning them because they’re the experts, they know everything, and now we’ve seen the consequences.”
“There are two things now to keep in mind,” Rubio continued. “Number one is Joe Biden was elected promising competence, the return on normalcy, the return of expertise to foreign policy, and we see that they can’t even execute on something like this and ignore the people who know something about it. That does encourage people like China — countries like China and other adversaries not just to go out and try to undermine confidence in America, but actually test America and think they can get away with it.”
“And the other is something that the Pentagon’s already saying, and we’ve already been saying for close to nine months, the biggest problem here is going to be now that al Qaeda is coming back to Afghanistan, let there be no doubt,” he added. “They are coming back. They will reconstitute. They will pose a threat again, and this administration has no plan whatsoever to prevent that from happening.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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