On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Evening Edit,” Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reacted to testimony from Commander of United States Central Command Gen. Frank McKenzie that the Taliban offered to let the U.S. take control of security for Kabul by stating that if the U.S. had done so, “we absolutely would have had more people out,” and there’s a good chance that the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport would have been prevented, but doing so would have required more troops, which President Joe Biden didn’t want to do.
Host Elizabeth MacDonald asked, “Gen. McKenzie testified that the Taliban even offered to let the U.S. take control of the security for Kabul airport. Would that have stopped 13 U.S. troops from getting killed? Would it have stopped thousands of Americans getting stranded? What do you say?”
Green responded, “I think absolutely. The problem with the Taliban at their checkpoints, they couldn’t command and control their own checkpoints. So, maybe the leadership wanted to let Americans through, but at the checkpoints, they were blocking people with American passports and wouldn’t let them get into the airfield. So, sure if we had had Americans manning that, and securing the city, we absolutely would have had more people out, and there’s a strong chance that that ISIS bomber — ISIS-K bomber would not have gotten in there and those Americans died. So, that was a bad decision. Now, it would have taken more troops, and the president would have had to have authorized those. And Joe Biden didn’t seem to want to do that.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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