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Approximately 12 months after the U.S. finished its withdrawal from Afghanistan, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane lamented that the placement there is not any other than it was once when the U.S. first started its 20-year warfare there in 2001.
In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Keane pointed now not simply to the resurgence of the Taliban, however the presence of al Qaeda, in spite of the U.S. just lately killing Usama bin Laden’s deputy within the 9/11 terror assaults, Ayman al-Zawahri. In truth, Keane mentioned that Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan on the time of the American strike is evidence of the issue.
“We went to Afghanistan to stop the Taliban from providing sanctuary to the al Qaeda, from which the attack on the United States took place. We all know that. And what did this decision get us? It got us the Taliban in charge again … providing sanctuary to the al Qaeda,” mentioned Keane, former Army vice leader of group of workers. “And Zawahiri’s killing resurrected the fact that he’s living in a Taliban house in a neighborhood that I’ve been to many times, where senior Taliban leaders are in residence. And obviously, they are protecting the al Qaeda leader as well as his organization.”
Keane added that “to date, we’ve done nothing against the organization or done nothing against ISIS.”
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Far from the Taliban rooting out terrorists, Keanse mentioned that Afghanistan is now “a sanctuary for terrorism” below their keep watch over.
“The very reason we went there, the very reason we stayed there for 20 years, to ensure that terrorists did not rise again, to attack the American people, and we’re right back where we started,” he mentioned.
Keane then introduced harsh complaint of President Biden, announcing that the commander-in-chief went in opposition to the suggestions of advisers and allies alike, calling him “defiant” in his insistence that the U.S. withdraw by way of the top of August 2021.
“He was advised by the military, by the intelligence services, and by many of his foreign policy advisers, and all of the NATO nations to maintain the stalemate that we had, the status quo,” Keanse mentioned. The normal, who’s now a Fox News strategic analyst, admitted that this was once now not a “perfect situation,” however it had stored the Taliban from retaking keep watch over of the rustic, and averted al Qaeda and ISIS from development their presence there.
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“The president thought he knew better, and he was very defiant and rejected all of their advice,” Keane mentioned. “And then, he presented a false narrative to the American people, which I find very disturbing. He said, my choice is get out now, or have to put thousands of American troops back in here to fight the Taliban and take casualties doing that.”
Keane insisted that this was once now not the selection, because the U.S. had “not been in direct combat with the Taliban since 2014.”
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Keane additionally criticized the U.S. choice to not settle for an be offering from the Taliban to keep watch over Kabul, which might have supposed having a safe airport.
“Obviously that would have been a little bit more than we were intending to bite off in doing that,” Keane admitted, “but it would have given us the opportunity to conduct a very methodical withdrawal as opposed to this chaos that we saw.”
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The retired normal then weighed in at the reported after-action evaluation that the State Department and Department of Defense are anticipated to unencumber within the close to long term. He mentioned he hopes it covers now not simply the withdrawal from Afghanistan, however all the 20 years the U.S. was once there.
“Let’s learn some lessons here about these decisions in terms of going forward, and let’s be honest with what took place and the mistakes that were made,” he mentioned.
