Kamala Harris Signed Off On The Disastrous Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Tony Katz:

I think this report got under the skin of the Harris team, because having to answer for it has got John Kirby, who is a spokesperson for Joe Biden, very, very, very bothered. This was the report, put out by the House that Biden was hell bent on leaving Afghanistan. He ignored the military advice, he ignored NATO, he ignored the pleas of the Afghans and left Afghanistan because he was going to be the guy who ended the war. Understand that was the goal. Listen to what they’re saying constantly, consistently. He ended the war in Afghanistan, something no other president did. To be able to say that is more valuable to them than how the war was ended. And when they try to push the blame on Donald Trump, rational people could state that they don’t like the deal that Trump made with the Taliban. They didn’t think that it was a smart deal or a valuable deal, or maybe it had issues. Maybe it had problems, maybe they thought it the most despicable thing in the world. Maybe they thought it was just, well, we could have done this a little cleaner. I was more towards that ladder. We could have done this a little cleaner. I wasn’t super thrilled with the deal made. That is different than whether or not I had an issue with saying we are done here in Afghanistan. We were done in Afghanistan, we have been done in Afghanistan. And I am somebody who believes that those generals and those members of the military industrial complex who made all this money teaching the Afghans how to engage in a military that was based on air support when they couldn’t keep the lights on? That is insane. People should really go to jail for that. You took billions of dollars of our money for that purpose. Ohh, go to hell in a handbasket, you lowlife, I’d be demoting generals, I’d be ripping up contracts, I’d be looking to sue people for fraud, the whole thing. Gross, as I see it. So, no issue is saying we’re done here, an issue with how it was done, certainly an issue regarding some of the dealings with the Taliban and then of course what Joe Biden did, what Biden did was reckless.

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It is clear and it is obvious. And one of the things that we know happened to be able to prove this idea of reckless is that there was no coordination in the withdrawal between the State Department and the Defense Department. Now you say to me, why does that matter? Well, leaving a war zone involves two things. One, on a military side, it involves the removal of people in hardware. And then on a diplomacy side, you’re leaving behind the nation that now has to fend for itself. That would assume that the nation that was just there helping it prepare is an ally. So that would involve conversations regarding diplomacy. So it would be clear to me. That you would not withdraw on a military side. You you would not engage any levels of withdrawal until you knew on a diplomacy side that everything was set and everything was feeling strong, capable and ready to go. And vice versa, you would have communication to ensure a proper draw down and then an extra an extraction from the situation. You and I aren’t military people in the in the main, and you and I aren’t State Department people in the main. But you and I, thinking about it for 5 minutes, we’d come to that conclusion. We’d be like, “yeah, that that makes sense.” That makes sense if I’m packing the family to go on a vacation for a week. And you and the Mrs. or you and the husband are deciding how many toys you need to bring and what clothes do we need to bring the flip flops? Or can I just get away with the stickers? Well, there’s a pool there. I don’t know, go swimming. They just put the feet in the water. Maybe I will go swimming. I don’t know how it’s going to work. What would they have? A laundry service? Do I need to bring extra underwear? If you could do that planning. You would have planned for the extraction of military forces from another nation. How that would have worked? So to that, just on that subject alone, it is rather obvious. That no discussion took place. And when we’re told that they did not coordinate, that is a signal that there was no leadership at play, that this was haphazard, that this was reckless. And the House report certainly plays into this: that Biden desperately wanted to leave. Now this report is 100% political. The fact that it is also true is also true. When I say it’s political, you release this report two months before an election. That’s a political doing. Why is anybody surprised? Why is anybody shocked? Why is anybody amazed? This is standard operating procedure. And why is anybody shocked or amazed that people would take this report and tie it to Kamala Harris, who has made the claim repeatedly that she was in the room with Joe Biden… in the room for all the important conversations. All the important decisions… and she was the very last person in the room.

That is bragging right there. So it is absolutely acceptable for us to tie her to the Afghanistan withdrawal decision and the failure that it was. She is the one who makes it possible. But go now to what the the White House is being asked and the way they are responding. To what is being asked the it’s it’s almost as a “How dare you ask such a question?” As you know, there is this new report from Congress on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In this report, the one authored by Republicans in the House, it refers repeatedly to the Biden – Harris in ministration, seeming to want to place the vice president at the center of a lot of the decisions that were made. There is one quote. From this report that says, “Vice President Harris, despite publicly championing Afghan women’s rights, appears to have been working in lockstep with President Biden behind the scenes to withdraw all U.S. troops no matter the consequences to Afghan women and girls.” The idea of Harris working in lockstep with President Biden on the Afghan withdrawal is that. Clear. She certainly was at the table for all those national security decisions. First, let’s go to the question that’s being asked. There’s nothing wrong with tying her to these things. There is nothing wrong with noticing this report and what it says. And there is zero wrong saying that Harris is working in lockstep with President Biden or did work in lockstep with President Biden on the Afghanistan withdrawal. There’s nothing wrong with this whatsoever. I started by saying it’s politics, 100% it is politics. But as we just heard in that clip from Kamala Harris talking to Dana Bash back in the day they’re the ones who played the politics with the decision. Now we are commenting on their politics with, well, more politics. No one is shocked. No one is surprised. Except of course for them who are clutching their pearls and saying “ohh my gosh, how dare you. This is so untoward and on and tawdry. My God, Despicable. I tell you… you belong in a basket full of deplorables. It’s when they do it…What’s the big deal when you do it? How dare you? But check out the answer from from, uh, John Kirby:

This idea, first of all, that they’re now throwing humor into this is clearly just shows the partisan nature of this report and the political nature of it, the timing of here. Coming the day before the debate, I mean, it’s hard to escape that. But this idea that that either the vice president or the president would just recklessly moving to this withdrawal without concern to Afghan women and girls just flies in the face of the facts that is hold on. The idea that we would discuss it now is pure politics doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter, it’s still factual, right? Now he’s about to put forth, and I’m gonna share it with you, where he disagrees. But the idea that somehow this is wrong and this is shocking, no part of this is shocking. As a matter of fact, this is what you would be expecting. This is what anybody who’s playing in the political realm would be expecting. And in a in a world where where the politics gets rough and tumble, this isn’t even close. This is a report that was timed to come out now. You knew this report was going to be rough on Joe Biden because the withdrawal was indeed that terrible. It was a report from the House, and if you want to argue it political, you can. But you made these decisions political is taking indictments against a former president who’s the presidential candidate for the Republicans and lining them up to interfere with an election, trying to keep a guy off the ballot. That’s political. Noticing the failed job that the president did and that the vice president who was gifted the nomination… was in support of and bragged about. That’s standard operating procedure. But let John Kirby try and defend this position.

You did not get home 10s of thousands of Afghans. You didn’t get Americans home. You left them there to die. And you let the country fall to the Taliban in an hour. When Joe Biden was telling us just weeks before they can’t take the country. Come on, get serious man. Or whatever it is that he said. You do not get the kudos for well, we got these, some of these people out. Your failures to engage in a in a smart policy led to the deaths of 13 US service members to which Joe Biden never takes responsibility, looked at his watch when their bodies were being returned home, and claims that no one died under his watch. With all due respect, you don’t get to make a claim that some other people got home OK. It’s a very odd argument to make, and even if that argument were to be true, it doesn’t change the focus of the situation that does it. It doesn’t change the reality on the ground. The withdrawal was a failure based on every single calculable measure. Kamala Harris, the presidential nominee for the Democrats, was in the room and signed off on it. She thought it was a good idea. She told Dana Bash that she was behind it and therefore all is fair. Is it politics? You better believe it. And you better believe that Kamala Harris wouldn’t know a good military plan if it dropped in her lap.