Maine Democrat on Taliban Overtaking U.S. Embassy in Kabul: ‘It’s a Building’

Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) offered his views on the Taliban takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, telling a local radio station “it’s a building” and he does not have “strong emotions about the embassy” itself.

WSKW’s Mike Violette asked the Democrat congressman, a former U.S. Marine who was deployed to Afghanistan, what emotions run through his mind when he considers that the jihadist organization will occupy the U.S. Embassy on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.

“It’s a building. It’s a building,” Golden responded. “Let’s point out, by the way, that we still got about 6,000 troops on the ground at Kabul International Airport, and hoping every one of them comes home safe.”

“But their mission is important; we gotta stay there ’til we get all American personnel out safely. That’s their job, and I know that they’re proud to be doing it right now, at the same time, trying to get as many of our Afghan partners out as possible,” he continued, expressing the belief that everyone must “stick together as a country and be pulling for them and making sure that they’ve got everything they need.”

“And know that we’re behind them as they carry out that important mission but I don’t feel strong emotions about the embassy,” he added. “Like I said, 9/11 for me, it’s about getting justice for the people and the families that were killed.”

“It’s about holding people accountable, and we’ve done that; we got Bin Laden. We killed most of his leadership team or put them in Gitmo,” he continued, blasting pundits for pointing to some kind of U.S. failure in Afghanistan, because “the mission was Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

He continued:

Our troops have won every battle that they were asked to fight and win over there. And the mission largely accomplished if you look at it through the lens of holding the people responsible for 9/11 accountable. Perhaps we should have asked ourselves if we should have stayed any longer than the day we killed Osama Bin Laden — we can talk about that— but there’s bipartisan blame to go around in regards to the mission creep that took place as we started talking about nation-building in Afghanistan.

“At the end of the day, no good way to do his. Whether it happens now or next year, my prediction was: we likely see the return of the Taliban or some kind of coalition which they are a part of, that it would likely happen through a military takeover,” he said, noting the Afghan National Army “threw down their arms.”

Even though Biden has been vacationing at Camp David for the bulk of the takeover, only appearing at the White House briefly on Monday, Golden said he sees “leadership in that he has continually said I’m not going to pass this decision on to a fifth president.”

“He stuck largely to an agreement that President Trump made … I see leadership there but I think he failed to plan for this in the right way; we should have started this evacuation months and months ago,” Golden added.

President Biden has taken nine Marine One flights to and from his vacation spot in the last three weeks as Afghanistan has fallen to the jihadist organization. Meanwhile, thousands of American citizens remain stranded in Afghanistan.