Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) told Breitbart News Saturday President Joe Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis is “jaw-droppingly outrageous and incompetent” and noted the officials making horrendous foreign policy decisions are the same people who surrounded former President Barack Obama. This is a situation of “liberal academics who have not a speck of Middle East dirt under their fingernails making all the same mistakes,” he said.
Waltz, the first Green Beret to serve in Congress, offered his thoughts on the horrendous terrorist attack in Kabul on Thursday, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers — the largest single-day loss for U.S. servicemembers since 2011:
In this Friday, Oct. 16, 2020 file photo, Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., speaks before President Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the Ocala International Airport in Ocala, Fla. A Florida newspaper apologized Friday, Dec. 11, 2020 for endorsing the re-election of a Republican congressman who now supports a lawsuit seeking to have the Supreme Court overthrow the will of the voters in the presidential election (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File).
“The reality is this was a series of bad decisions. We pulled, really, the rug out from under the Afghan army very suddenly. We took their air support, their intelligence support, logistic support, and their contract and maintenance support in the middle of the fighting season,” he said, also placing blame on the Afghans and noting the narrative they have faced: that America has abandoned them.
Waltz said they have been hearing that narrative, as well as the narrative that the Biden administration was working with the Taliban, which “caused a lot of these guys to surrender,” resulting in billions of U.S. military equipment falling into the Taliban’s hands. All of this ultimately led to the U.S. pulling out of Bagram, a major air base north of Kabul, “way too soon,” he said.
“And then Biden having to send 5,000 forces back in,” he said, critiquing the president for failing to take Bagram back, noting the military confirmed to him they briefed Biden on that course of action, but they, instead, opted to put all their resources into the airport in Kabul, “which is sitting in a city of four million people, and no matter how far out you push that perimeter, the Taliban will still surround it,” the congressman noted.
Ultimately, Waltz said, the U.S. ended up relying on terrorists to screen for terrorists, “and now, we have 13 dead Marines and soldiers.”
“It is jaw-droppingly outrageous and incompetent,” he said before noting the connections between the figures working under the Biden administration and their associations with the former Obama administration.
“Here’s the bottom line. The same team that is around Biden is the same team that was around Obama,” he said, referencing that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in charge, who was the military commander of Central Command in charge of the Middle East, and National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, who served as chief of staff and was a “longtime protégé of Hillary”:
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 22: In this handout photo provided by the White House, President Joe Biden meets with his national security team for an operational update on the situation in Afghanistan on August 22, 2021 at the White House in Washington, DC. They discussed the security situation in Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations, including ISIS-K. Over 7,800 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan over the previous day via U.S. military aircraft, charter flights, and coalition flights, including American citizens and their families, SIV applicants and their families, and other vulnerable Afghans. The national security team discussed the ongoing diplomatic and military efforts to facilitate transit at third-country transit hubs. The President was joined by Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R), Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (3rd L), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley (4th L), National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (2nd L), DNI Avril Haines, CIA Director William J. Burns, and other senior officials (Photo by The White House via Getty Images).
“All of them, with the exception of Austin, were deputies of Susan Rice, who I’m convinced is working in the background. I see her fingerprints on all of this stuff,” Waltz said:
FILE – In this Dec. 15, 2010, file photo Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, whispers in the ear of Vice President Joe Biden in the United Nations Security Council, at U.N. headquarters. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is in the final stages of selecting his running mate. Among the contenders is Susan Rice, who worked closely with Biden in the Obama administration and regularly briefed him on pressing foreign policy matters when she served as national security adviser (AP Photo, File).
“So it is all the same band of liberal academics who have not a speck of Middle East dirt under their fingernails making all the same mistakes,” he said, noting they were not just responsible for Benghazi, but other major foreign policy failures as well.
“They were responsible for the Iran deal. They were responsible for yanking us out of Iraq way too soon that led to the rise of ISIS and the caliphate that launched attacks all over the world. We could just keep going down the list of horrific mistakes. And also for the Bergdahl trade, by the way. I had to lead my special forces unit in the search for Bergdahl. Never in a million years did I think I would see the Taliban top draft pick out of Guantanamo getting traded by that same group for a traitor,” he said. “And guess what: two of those five are now in charge in Afghanistan. So this is just a disaster Cabinet leading the charge again.”
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The Florida Republican compared Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal to the terms set up by former President Trump, which included three key conditions: the Taliban had to enter real negotiations with the Afghan government, it had to agree to a ceasefire, and it had to publicly divorce al-Qaeda — none of which happened.
Waltz again blasted Biden for giving away Bagram “for nothing”–the only base that he had strategically positioned between China, Russia, Iran, and half the world’s terrorist groups, as well as a prison holding 5,000 of the world’s most hardened terrorists.
China, he noted, is benefiting from the disaster, primarily by way of the erosion of American credibility. He added that China is sending this message of American abandonment to Taiwan, and Russia is doing the same to Ukraine:
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with US Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on December 4, 2013. Biden arrived in Beijing to raise concerns over a Chinese air zone ramping up regional tensions, looking to bolster ties while also underscoring alliances with Tokyo and Seoul. His trip follows weeks of furore after Beijing declared an “air defence identification zone” (ADIZ) covering East China Sea islands disputed with Japan (Photo credit should read LINTAO ZHANG/AFP via Getty Images).
“This guy is just a disaster on wheels. And he’s surrounded by people that’s feeding him bad policy options after bad policy options. It’s just outrageous, and we’re stuck because if we get rid of him, we’re left with Kamala Harris, and I don’t know which will be worse,” he added.
Concerning the Americans the Biden administration is abandoning, Waltz warned, “Here’s the thing with these Americans we’re leaving behind. We’re on the verge of leaving Americans behind Taliban lines. Every one of them is a future hostage when the Taliban doesn’t get their way.”