Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tells martharaddatz he agrees with the U.S. troop withdrawal plan from Afghanistan, adding: 'There were no good options.' 'We were faced with a May 1 deadline to have all forces out of the country.'
"There were assessments that ranged initially from one to two years to, you know, several months, but it was a wide range of -- of assessments," Austin said."As the Taliban began to make gains, and then we saw that in a number of cases, there was less fighting and more surrendering and more forces just kind of evaporating, it was very difficult to predict with accuracy."Chaos immediately broke out across Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control just over one week ago.
Austin said when the U.S. hears about these incidents, they engage Taliban leadership and tell them that the U.S. expects the Taliban to let people with the appropriate credentials past checkpoints. According to Austin, these types of evacuations -- where thousands of people need to be flown safely out, then processed and verified, all during a global pandemic -- can create some of the most challenging missions.
"You said American citizens, what about those Afghans?" Raddatz pressed."What about those interpreters? What about the people who are desperate?" Ernst, a combat veteran, called the effort to evacuate the Kabul embassy"one of the biggest debacles that we have seen in the last several decades." "I know you've gone 1,000 yards outside the airport and brought those 169 people in there," Raddatz pressed Austin."But further out into Kabul, there are people desperate to get in. We're the most capable military in the world."
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