FNC’s Carlson: We Don’t Owe Afghanistan Anything — ‘They Were the Staging Ground for 9/11’

Friday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson debunked the notion presented by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others that the U.S. government has an obligation to Afghanistan and its citizens for the nearly two-decade occupation that stemmed from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Carlson said it was likely the Democratic Party viewed Afghanistan refugees fleeing the war-torn nation in the wake of the Taliban takeover as potential new voters.

Transcript as follows:

In the middle of the night, last month, Bagram Air Base, which is about 30 miles north of Kabul plunged into darkness. Nothing like that had ever happened before.

Bagram is more than an airbase, it’s an enormous piece of property, the size of a small town. It had a hospital, shops, gyms, two runways, rows of hangars and barracks. As of last month, Bagram also had a prison. It held thousands of foreign fighters, including men from ISIS and the Taliban.

And then all of a sudden, for the first time in 20 years, the lights went out at Bagram. Locals understood immediately what was going on. Without warning or even a courtesy notification, the U.S. military just left, split in the middle of the night, and turned off the power as they did.

Ultimately, the base’s new Afghan commander fled, too, and so within minutes, looters descended. They found thousands of vehicles at Bagram, hundreds of them armored, as well as a huge cache of weapons and ammunition.

Now The Pentagon didn’t seem concerned. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had explained already that, quote: “Bagram is not necessary tactically for what we’re going to do in Afghanistan.” End quote.

That turns out to be a massive miscalculation, that’s now clear. The decision to abandon Bagram Airfield was in fact, idiotic and it led directly to the killing of 13 American servicemen yesterday.

With Bagram abandoned, the evacuation of Afghanistan is being staged from a commercial airport in the capital, and given its location, Kabul’s airport is almost impossible to defend.

Yet, despite the fact it can’t really be defended, it remains the only way for American citizens to get out of the country.

As Bill Roggio, the editor of “The Long War Journal” put it, abandoning Bagram Air Base quote, “Is the perfect example of the generals just saluting and saying ‘yes, sir’ and ‘can do’ and not standing up and saying ‘This is madness and I can’t execute this because I’m putting the lives of Americans at risk and you need to find someone else to do it.'”

Tragically, no one in authority was brave enough to say that. Instead, at every turn, they made unwise decisions that seemed designed to make the country they serve weaker, to humiliate the United States.

What’s interesting is that these very same people are now overseeing what may be the largest airlift in generations, an airlift of thousands of Afghan citizens into the West and into our country.

So, how is that airlift going?

You’re hearing a lot about it, but very few details. Who, for example, are all these Afghans? Many of whom are on their way here.

The truth is, despite what they are telling you, we have no real idea who they are. We just don’t know. We just learned for example that at least a hundred of the refugees the American military has flown out of Kabul, people we’ve been told repeatedly are heroes by definition are in fact on terror watch lists.

One man we evacuated apparently works directly for ISIS. Today, an Afghan interpreter told FOX News that this sort of thing is happening all the time. People are getting on planes in Kabul without any proof of identification whatsoever. It’s like voting in California. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know people that they’re at the same situation that I am right now. They have worked for the United States. They have provided supply for the United States, but guess what? There are people that are getting inside the airport that they have never worked. They knew somebody with a green card, they know somebody with a passport, that’s how they got inside.

I know people that they are inside, but they never worked.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, that’s not an analyst on MSNBC, that’s someone at the Kabul Airport, and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear a lot of stories just like that one.

One pilot with United Airlines, someone who is flying people out of Kabul as part of the Civilian Reserve Airlift Fleet just told FOX News, he was simply told to evacuate people from Afghanistan. No details beyond that. The pilot said he was never given a passenger manifest and when his airplane arrived at Dulles Airport outside Washington, the State Department refused to share any passenger information with Customs and Border Patrol. They just whisked right on through.

That means, as always, unnamed foreign nationals got far better treatment than you would get if you landed at Dulles Airport. Surprised? But again there’s a lot of this.

Another commercial airline employee, a flight attendant just told this show that her flight crew was told they’d be ferrying American civilians who would escape from Kabul, and she was happy to do that. But when they arrived in Qatar in the Gulf, they learned that in fact, they’d be carrying no American citizens at all — none. Instead, they’d have to transport Afghan nationals, many of whom became unruly on the flight.

And by the way, since these weren’t American citizens, they didn’t have to wear masks. Rules like that are only for you and the rest of us who are paying for it. They don’t apply to people without passports from Afghanistan.

Now, that may shock you, but trust us, it’s normal in Washington.

The Democratic Party is actively demanding it, of course. They view every refugee as a potential new voter. You’ll remember that Sandy Cortez was very worried about all those unvetted Trump voters wandering through what they thought was their Capitol on January 6. Sandy Cortez thought she might be raped, despite the fact she wasn’t even there at the time.

But strangely, Cortez, so sensitive about her own safety is not in the least concerned about sending huge and still unknown numbers of refugees into your neighborhood. She has seen — we have all seen what Afghan migration has done to Europe over the past six years, and apparently, she approves of it. She wants more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): In order to carry out and in order to make good on the role that we have played in this violence, we have a responsibility to make a home for the people whose lives have been upended by interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

And so, as a result, I’m proud to have co-wrote a letter with Representative Barbara Lee to ask and urge the Biden administration to, as they set their refugee quotas to make it no less than 200,000.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, the macro question is why does silly children like that have any power whatsoever in this country? Why should some girl from BU who knows nothing, has never done anything in her whole life be in charge of the way your country looks going forward for the next hundred years. Who knows? That’s democracy as we practice it.

But listen carefully what she is saying. No fewer than 200,000 refugees. Why? Because we’re evil and we deserve it.

Wait a second. We shouldn’t spend 20 years in Afghanistan, but why did we go there in the first place? Well, because al-Qaeda was using it as a base from which to blow up the World Trade Centers and attack The Pentagon. There was a reason we went there in the first place, even if the occupation, thanks to people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned out to be a total disaster.

So, we don’t owe the country anything. They were the staging ground for 9/11. She was a child at the time and doesn’t remember that, but her view now has bipartisan support in the City of Washington. It’s not just Democrats, we’re sad to report.

Here is Republican Adam Kinzinger, for example, a man who not only weeps for Nancy Pelosi’s super fans on the Capitol Hill Police Department, but also for foreign nationals on the no-fly list.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: They are painting Afghan refugees as invaders. You know, there are undertones even of racism here.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): What you see is in the media echo chamber, this fear-mongering, right? This, they are coming to your neighborhood, these hordes of people that haven’t been vetted.

I mean, that is not American.

Refugees to this country have always been the ones that are extremely entrepreneurial. I mean, we all know that. They come here, they work hard, they fight hard for success, and so, if anybody wants to go out and fear monger and continue that darkness in your heart and speaking it so you can win an election, A, you’re either evil at your heart yourself; or B, you’re a charlatan who is only interested in winning re-election and you truly can’t say you care about the healthy American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: OK, wait a second, son. We can debate how many Afghan refugees we admit, but making this a matter of racism, Pashtuns are whiter than you are. They have beards, but there is nothing racist about having concerns about Afghans or anybody else moving here. It has nothing to do with race. So knock it off.

But listen to what he is saying. Foreigners are more impressive than you are. They are more entrepreneurial. You learn that at a Coke seminar. And if you don’t agree with that, said Adam Kinzinger, if you thought the point of America was to serve the people who live here, the Americans, you are — and we’re quoting — “evil.” That’s his position. You’re evil.

So now you know why Adam Kinzinger isn’t bothered at all by what the Biden administration is doing now at the southern border which is opening it. He is not bothered because he agrees with the result. Fewer native-born whiners, those people can go die of obesity and fentanyl ODs, more grateful foreigners to whom — who feel indebted to us, people we can claim to have rescued.

So Adam Kinzinger is obviously a transparently pathetic and odious person, and we don’t mean to beat up on him. He literally cries when he thinks about what a good person he is. So we don’t want to single him out.

The point is that his attitudes, less childishly expressed, are very common in Washington and the numbers prove it.

Since July, the United States has evacuated more than a hundred thousand people from Afghanistan. All heroes? All Americans? No.

As of tonight, just about 5,000 of that total are American citizens. That’s five percent.

So, you’re thinking the other 95% must be heroes, right? All translators — 95,000 translators. That’s what CNN is telling you. But no.

Just today, the State Department admitted it has no idea how many of these people have what we’re calling Special Immigrant Visas. That would indicate they actually worked with the U.S. military and might be heroes, maybe even translators. So no, they’re not all heroes. We don’t know who they are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NED PRICE, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: In the context of this massive in many ways, unprecedented evacuation effort, our first goal is to — has been to bring as many people to safety as quickly as possible.

So in many cases, we are going to be in a better position to provide you fidelity on numbers in the coming days and in the coming weeks. As this process has been ongoing, our goal has been to put as many people on as many planes as we can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, to restate, they’re not all heroes. We can’t say that because we don’t know who they are.

The head of U.S. Northern Command, General Glen VanHerck just admitted this. He told our Jennifer Griffin that more than half of the Afghan refugees coming into the United States do not have Special Immigrant Visas, so they didn’t work for the U.S. military. They’re not heroes, they’re not translators, so why do we have a moral obligation to let them live here and give them free healthcare?

We have no proof that they’re loyal. We don’t even know if they’re entrepreneurial as Adam Kinzinger might say, so why are we taking them into the country? Well, our military won’t say, instead, The Pentagon is just doing it, and then building housing for them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.) PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Today, the Department of Defense can announce that it has authorized Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia; Fort Pickett, Virginia and Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico to provide additional support to the U.S. mission to evacuate Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, their families, and other at-risk individuals.

These installations join Fort Lee, Fort McCoy, Fort Bliss, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix in providing this support. The Defense Department will continue to support the State Department in providing temporary housing, sustainment, and support inside the United States for a capacity of up to 50,000 Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, their families, and other at-risk individuals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Man, they always take tragedy and they run with it to change this country outside the bounds of democracy. They don’t ask anyone to vote on it, they don’t ask your permission, they just take your sadness and bewilderment and they leverage it to change everything.

They did that with George Floyd’s death. They did it with COVID, which they helped create through gain-of-function research, and they’re doing it now in wake of the tragedy in Afghanistan that they caused.

So, we just learned that 50,000 SIV applicants plus their families — and here is the key phrase — and other at-risk individuals.

So, what you ask is an at-risk individual? We have no idea, but it’s a term our military is using a lot. Today, the head of U.S. Central Command again used that term “at-risk Afghans.”

Right now, it seems like anyone in Afghanistan is at risk and that seems to be the Biden administration’s assumption as well. CBS News is reporting that some of these at-risk individuals are now being housed in U.S. government shelters. Meanwhile, soldiers at Fort Bliss are building new temporary housing as part of what they’re calling Operation Allies Refuge.

Now Allies Refuge? That sounds like something all of us can get behind, offering refuge to our allies. Then you realize who these allies might be. The Pentagon now considers the Taliban an ally. We’re giving the Taliban lists of Americans who are still in Afghanistan, as well as other classified intelligence.

We’re also giving them free plane rides to our country.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor