On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Evening Edit,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) stated that President Joe Biden’s statements about Taiwan and subsequent walk back of those statements make it sound like the president is ignoring his military advisers and freelancing on foreign policy like he did with deadly consequences in Afghanistan, and that doing so “can have serious foreign policy concerns for the United States. And once these decisions are made, they can actually set us back on the world stage for years to come.”
Donalds said, “I would prefer to be strong and be a strong ally of Taiwan despite what China might think. Because Taiwan is an ally of ours, number one. Number two, they’re so important to the world economy. But if you’re going to waffle and walk it back and then say something else, that does not breed confidence for our allies. And our adversaries like China look at that as weakness.”
Host David Asman then asked, “Now as we know, during the Afghanistan withdrawal, which was terribly orchestrated…he disagreed with the military advisers that he had, or at least they claim he did, about how to pull out and whether to leave troops in and so forth. He made his own decision, overriding the military advisers. That might have cost troops’ lives. I mean, there were Marines and soldiers who died as a result of the way the withdrawal was done, in that suicide bombing. Is there a danger that he could still be doing that, not listening intently enough to his advisers telling him to do things, and instead making it up on the fly, like he did in Asia?”
Donalds responded, “Absolutely. And I don’t want to say, may have cost soldiers’ lives. It did cost soldiers’ lives. Because we had to redeploy troops to secure a gate…in Afghanistan. We know the rest of the story. … But this is a bigger issue. Because if you’re getting intelligence, if the security apparatus, if the military apparatus is telling him, these are facts on the ground, but he just goes off with his own decisionmaking, not consulting people in military leadership, in the military apparatus, that can have serious foreign policy concerns for the United States. And once these decisions are made, they can actually set us back on the world stage for years to come. This is a very serious situation.”
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