President Biden’s “surrender to the Taliban is now complete,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) declared Tuesday after the president agreed to stick to what many say is an unrealistic August 31 deadline to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan after the jihadist organization said there will be “no extensions.”
“Biden’s surrender to the Taliban is now complete. He will leave Afghanistan on the Taliban time table even if it leaves Americans and allies stranded in the country,” Gingrich said.
“His humiliation and failure is now complete,” he continued, describing the situation as the “worst moral collapse by an American President in our history”:
On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the organization will accept “no extensions” to the United States’s August 31 deadline to withdraw and complete evacuations. President Biden appeared to agree, offering no plans to extend the deadline as many warn one week is not enough time to evacuate remaining Americans stranded in the country — the exact number of which remains unknown:
Meanwhile, the Taliban said it would be a “violation” of the agreement to allow Afghans to flee the country past the deadline. However, the jihadists are already not allowing Afghan nationals to enter Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
“We ask the Americans: Don’t encourage Afghans to leave. We need their talent,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “The crowd gathered at the airport can go home. The Taliban guarantees their security”:
While Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday refused to say the number of Americans who have been evacuated from Afghanistan, Biden’s deputies continue to fly unvetted Afghans to the U.S. — a move a majority of Americans disagree with, as surveys show the desire to prioritize American citizens in the evacuations.
According to the Washington Post, CIA Director William Burns negotiated with Taliban leader and cofounder Abdul Ghani Baradar on Monday. Discussions likely revolved around the swiftly approaching August 31 deadline as thousands of Americans remain stranded in the country. However, it would seem the alleged meeting did not prove to be fruitful, as the Taliban explicitly stated there will be “no extensions” to the deadline.
This 2012 file photo shows William Burns during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the September 11th attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC (Drew Angerer/Getty Images).
The leader of the Taliban negotiating team Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar looks on during the final declaration of the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban is presented in Qatar’s capital Doha on July 18, 2021. – Representatives of the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents held talks in Doha as violence raged in their country with foreign forces almost entirely withdrawn. The two sides have been meeting on and off for months in the Qatari capital, but the talks have lost momentum as the insurgents made battlefield gains (Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images).
According to an internal government document, only 3,376 U.S. citizens were evacuated from Afghanistan as of Saturday, one week after evacuations began.
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