Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), on the Senate floor Tuesday, slammed the Democrats for blocking a bill that would have designated the Taliban a terrorist organization.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) objected to Cotton’s motion in the Senate, asking for unanimous consent for his bill to require the State Department to designate the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Before asking for unanimous consent, Cotton explained that Afghanistan “has fallen to a medieval band of degenerate savages known as the Taliban.” The senator pointed out that “You won’t hear anyone in our government call the Taliban what it is: a terrorist organization.”
The senator explained that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the Taliban “does not meet the test of inclusivity.” He explained that the Biden administration seems not to care that “at least 14 of the Taliban’s 33 so-called cabinet ministers are on United Nations sanctions lists for terrorism.”
Nevertheless, he mentioned that at least five Taliban “leaders” were held as terrorists at Guantanamo Bay detention camps.
“The Biden administration is putting image and public relations before everything else,” Cotton explained, noting that the president called his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success… and now [the administration is] refusing to call terrorists, terrorists. But the truth is obvious.”
Cotton said, “[The] Taliban is run by terrorists, it associates with terrorists, and it engages in terrorism” and for the administration to refuse to “call a spade a spade is a grave insult to the memory of the Taliban’s victims and the tens of thousands of Americans who fought against it. ”
“It’s worth remembering how many American lives the Taliban took, how many American warriors they maimed, and how many American families they shattered. That’s terrorism,” Cotton explained.
After Murphy denied Cotton his unanimous consent, Cotton added that he shares the same concerns Democrats have about the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and what will happen to the Americans and other Afghan allies left in Afghanistan.”
But, Cotton added, “The humanitarian crisis and the crisis of Americans left behind Taliban enemy lines are the responsibility of Joe Biden for his hapless, disorganized, chaotic execution of the withdrawal from that country.”
Follow Jacob Bliss on Twitter @jacobmbliss.