‘This debacle should never have happened—and, indeed, we were assured it would not happen’
Senator Ted Cruz
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today issued the following statement as reports confirm the Taliban swept into the capital of Afghanistan:
“It is now clear there has been a disastrous breakdown across the political, military, and intelligence leadership of the Biden-Harris administration, culminating in the catastrophe for American national security we are now witnessing. This debacle should never have happened—and, indeed, we were assured it would not happen. In just the last few weeks, top officials from the administration, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley and President Biden himself, stood in front of cameras and told Americans their plan for withdrawing from Afghanistan was sound, the country’s military was capable of defending the country, and a Taliban onslaught could not succeed.
“We now know those assurances were disastrously wrong, if not outright false.
“I have long called for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan. Wars must have ends. The Trump administration had negotiated the basis for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. But this White House tore up that deal and instead pursued an incoherent and precipitous abandonment that subordinated realistic planning and military necessity to wishful thinking and political ideology.
“Our men and women in uniform have fought heroically for decades, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it is impossible to adequately express the gratitude Americans feel and the immense debt we owe them. Their leaders have too often let them down and did here again. They and other brave Americans in Afghanistan are in precisely the acute danger President Biden assured the American public would not happen.
“Our first priority must be to secure the safety of Americans still in Afghanistan. Then Congress must demand a thorough accounting both of what is happening in Afghanistan and why Biden-Harris officials have been consistently issuing assessments that were at best, misleading, and at worst, false. Either there was a complete collapse of American intelligence collecting in the region, President Biden was deliberately misled by his hand-picked national security team, or he knowingly issued statements he knew to be false. The American people deserve to know the truth and hold our leaders accountable.”
