In one of the more cynical, egregious, and disgusting examples of political maneuvering to get from under the absolute debacle that is America’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, took to CBS News to BLAME Americans for being trapped there. You honestly can’t make this stuff up! Speaking to CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell, he had this to say:
“We put out repeated warnings, every three weeks, to Americans, going back to, I think, March or April, each one in stronger terms, leave now, leave immediately. Never in my 40 years of working — since I began working at the State Department have I seen such strong language used. People chose not to leave. That’s their business. That’s their right. We regret now that many may find themselves in a position that they would rather not be in. And we are determined to try to help them.”
It is shocking and outrageous that this career diplomat would stoop as low as to blame Americans for not evacuating sooner. Still, the entire justification is based on the viewer being ignorant about a few things. First of all, the intelligence community was ignored when they shared information that indicated that the Afghanistan military would fall MUCH sooner than expected to the Taliban; the window rapidly declined from one year plus to as few as three weeks right before the withdrawal. Since this intelligence wasn’t widely disseminated, most Americans likely assumed that even when the United States withdrew, the United States-trained Afghanistan military was likely to be in power for some time to come.
Of course, that didn’t happen, and now we’re in one of the biggest foreign policy disasters this country has ever seen. And those in charge are either in hiding or pointing fingers. Unbelievable.
