McCaskill: ‘Speed with Which the Taliban Took over Validates Joe Biden’s Decision’

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), now an NBC News contributor, said Monday on MSNBC ‘s “Deadline” that the speed at which the Taliban took over Afghanistan once President Joe Biden withdrew the U.S. military validated his decision to leave the country.

McCaskill said, “I think it’s hard to draw away from the heartbreaking chaos we’ve witnessed and the tragic deaths of our men and women that were on the front lines trying to evacuate people friendly to America and others who wanted to get out. If you back up and really look at this with a cold eye, and I think that’s what President Biden did, for the last ten years, our mission has primarily been to build an army in Afghanistan and to build security forces that could respect the rule of law. As someone who sat on the Armed Services Committee for 12 years during this period of time, as someone who did oversight and saw the rampant waste of money and corruption that was so endemic in our involvement in Afghanistan, what you really need to realize is the speed with which the Taliban took over validates Joe Biden’s decision because our mission had failed.”

She added, “We did not build an army even though we trained over 300,000 Afghans, even though we spent over $2 trillion. We failed to instill in the people of Afghanistan the ability to rule, to run an army, to protect their own country. They folded immediately. Once we decided that we were actually leaving. Was the deal that Trump did ridiculous? Yes. Was he asking them to Camp David and acting as though they were valid state actors? Yes. All of that was bad. The bottom line was no matter when we pulled out. It was going to be messy. No matter when we pulled out, there were going to be throngs of people gathered at the departure point, and our military would be called on to protect them, which makes them sitting ducks for the terrorists.”

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