Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday blasted President Biden and his national security team for what the Tennessee Republican calls an attempt to paint the Taliban in a positive light to lessen criticism of a botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mrs. Blackburn, who serves on the Senate Armed Service Committee, said the White House is engaged in efforts to portray the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, rather than a terrorist group.
“There has been a redefining of the Taliban by the State Department,” Mrs. Blackburn told The Washington Times. “They are saying our military participation has ended and the ’diplomatic’ mission has begun. Well, news to the State Department, the Taliban is a terrorist organization.”
She pointed to the administration’s decision to work with the Taliban on evacuating U.S. citizens and allies from Afghanistan as proof that Mr. Biden was helping the group garner legitimacy.
Mrs. Blackburn said the administration’s actions have drawn attention away from the violence the Taliban had undertaken against the people of Afghanistan since conquering the country.
“These are terrorists. They extract their obedience from people by brutality, beheadings, rape, public atrocities carried out on people,” she said “And there seems to be a lack of willingness from this administration to admit that fact.”
Last month, Afghanistan’s democratically elected government fell to the Taliban, an Islamist political and military group that harbored al Qaeda as it plotted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The collapse came shortly after Mr. Biden withdrew U.S. troops, despite warnings from both Republicans and the intelligence community that Afghanistan was on the brink.
Mr. Biden and senior administration officials have denied ever receiving such warnings and claim the Taliban’s ascendance was inevitable.
“We made the right decision in ending America’s longest war,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We made the right decision in not sending a third generation of Americans to fight and die in Afghanistan.”
While the White House has not officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, Mr. Blinken signaled to Congress earlier this week there were no doubts as to who was in charge of the country.
“It [the Taliban] is the de facto government of Afghanistan. Those are just the facts,” Mr. Blinken told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “This is the product, alas, of one side getting the upper hand in a civil war.”
The comments have done little to lessen criticism of either the State Department or Mr. Biden’s handling of the withdrawal. Most notably, the White House has come under fire for abandoning more than $83 billion in military equipment provided to the ousted Afghan government.
The sight of Taliban forces invading provinces with U.S.-made humvees and helicopters has frustrated elected officials, national security officials and voters, alike.
“What the administration missed in their haste to [leave Afghanistant] was that this is the war on terror. We were fighting an ideology,” said Mrs. Blackburn. “What the Biden administration has done is basically turn over the country of Afghanistan to terrorists. They now have a safe harbor, a country, a nation-state, that they can control with an airbase fully equipped courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.”
Already concerns are beginning to mount that the Taliban will allow other terrorist organizations, specifically ISIS and al Qaeda, to use Afghanistan as a base from which to launch attacks on U.S. citizens.
The head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, warned earlier this week that al Qaeda is only a year or two away from reconstituting in Afghanistan.
“The current assessment probably conservatively is one to two years for al Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” Mr. Berrier said.
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.