Exclusive — Rep. Mike Garcia: Thousands of Americans in Afghanistan Is ‘a Hostage Crisis’

Thousands of American citizens in Afghanistan amount to a “hostage crisis,” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) stated on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

“It is a hostage crisis at this point,” Garcia said. He added, “This needs to be treated like a hot war… The Taliban doesn’t care about words. They care about actions. They are fearful of our military might, they’re just not fearful of this president.”

Garcia described President Joe Biden’s stated commitment to August 31 as a deadline for withdrawing the U.S. from Afghanistan as predicated on political symbolism related to the upcoming 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks.

He said, “This is what happens when you have an idealist in office, whether it’s the president, the governor, or a representative in Congress. The idealists don’t think beyond the first or second moves. They don’t think of the reality of the unintended consequences of their policy decisions, and on paper [say], ‘Hey, we’re going to pull out of Afghanistan. I’m going to keep one of my campaign promises, and this is a popular thing to do.'”

The Biden administration is “not thinking about the second- or third-order moves and the effects thereof,” Garcia held.

Garcia said Biden is “hell-bent” on withdrawing the U.S. from Afghanistan, and that thousands of Americans may perish in the failed state.

He remarked, “[The Biden administration] didn’t plan. They didn’t think through this. I’m disappointed in guys like [Mark] Milley and [Antony] Blinken and Secretary [Lloyd] Austin. These guys have lost their way, and they’ve lost their warfighter spirit. That’s why they are where they are, and they have sold out to this administration, which has basically given them marching orders, and those orders entail potentially leaving behind and ultimately killing thousands of Americans in Afghanistan.”

He concluded, “The reality is we now have about five times as many troops than we did just two weeks ago in Afghanistan. This isn’t going to get better. This is going to be a stain, obviously, on [Biden’s] administration and his legacy. But literally the worst thing that he could have done, and literally the most risky posture he could have put the United States in [is] making a deal with the Taliban.”