Dem Rep. Malinowski: We Should Have ‘Stayed at the Bagram Air Base’ Until We Evacuated Everyone

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) said that the United States should stay in Afghanistan beyond the August 31 deadline if it has to in order to finish the evacuation and should have “stayed at the Bagram Air Base until at least all of our people were out.”

Malinowski said, “President Biden set August 31 as the end date. And the Pentagon, they follow orders. They take things literally. That is the only order they’ve gotten. Until that’s countermanded, until the White House says that that August 31 deadline doesn’t apply to the evacuation, then I do worry that that’s the schedule that the Pentagon is operating on and there’s no way humanly possible that you can keep our promise, the promise that the president has made, by August 31.”

He later added, “I wish we had stayed in the airport, basically, and stayed at the Bagram Air Base until at least all of our people were out. I think that would have been a better way to handle this.”

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