While Secretary of State Blinken was busy digging a hole on CBS by admitting the Biden administration was asking the Taliban for “permission” to evacuate our people on Sunday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pulled up in a rhetorical excavator on NBC’s Meet the Press and blamed those trapped Americans for the existence of the evacuation crisis because they didn’t leave sooner.
Shortly before shifting blame to the victims of President Biden’s inept and failing leadership, NBC political director Chuck Todd pressed Sullivan on why the administration had the military pullout BEFORE evacuating all American civilians and our allies. Sullivan responded by playing dumb:
TODD: Look, there's a lot of after-action reports that are going to come out. There's going to be a lot of this fallout. But it seems that the core mistake here, it appears, in your withdrawal plan was pulling the military out before the civilians and before our allies. Why did the military get withdrawn before the civilians? Does that -- In hindsight, that looks like just a catastrophic mistake.
SULLIVAN: Which civilians are you referring to, Chuck?
TODD: Our American diplomats, the Americans to get out, our Afghan allies, all the people we wanted to get out.
After explaining that they originally wanted to keep the U.S. Embassy operational, thus why they weren’t evacuated to the airport until the fall of Kabul, Sullivan lashed out the other American civilians still trapped in the country.
“With respect to American citizens in Kabul, we began messaging them months ago, telling them that the situation was deteriorating and that they should leave the country,” he said. “We explained to them that if they didn't have the financial resources to be able to leave the country, those resources would be provided to them. Many chose to stay right till the end. And that, of course, was their choice.”
What he failed to mention, was the fact that President Biden had been claiming there was no way the country would fall and that the Afghan military would hold the Taliban back. Then there’s the case where the State Department was charging people at least $2,000 to be evacuated from the country, which they only stopped doing after the media learned about it and started asking questions.
Prior to chastising American citizens for the crisis Biden created, Sullivan whined that some of those same people were responsible for the State Department’s inability to know how many Americans were still trapped:
TODD: How many Americans are trying to get out of Afghanistan? This has been a question that you've been asked numerous times. And we haven't known the answer. And this Sunday morning, do we know the answer?
SULLIVAN: Well, we know that it's roughly a few thousand, Chuck. But let me explain to the American people why we don't exactly know. Because when people come to Afghanistan who are American citizens, we ask them to register with the U.S. Embassy. Many leave and never de-register. Or others come and choose not to register in the first place. Of course, as Americans, that's their right.
In his final question to his guest, Todd took a shot at the administration for their utter lack of planning when it came to the evacuation. “The president said on Monday, ‘You plan for every contingency.’ If this is a plan, it doesn't look like it's been, it’s been well-thought-out. Did you really plan for this contingency, or is this the one contingency you didn't plan for?” Sullivan responded with a word salad, soup, and breadsticks.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
NBC’s Meet the Press
August 22, 2021
10:39:19 a.m. Eastern(…)
CHUCK TODD: How many Americans are trying to get out of Afghanistan? This has been a question that you've been asked numerous times. And we haven't known the answer. And this Sunday morning, do we know the answer?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, we know that it's roughly a few thousand, Chuck. But let me explain to the American people why we don't exactly know. Because when people come to Afghanistan who are American citizens, we ask them to register with the U.S. Embassy. Many leave and never de-register. Or others come and choose not to register in the first place. Of course, as Americans, that's their right.
So, we have been working for the past few days to get fidelity on as precise a count as possible. We have reached out to thousands of Americans by phone, email, text. And we are working on plans to, as we get in touch with people, give them direction for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport.
(…)
TODD: It seems, though, that Americans are getting harassed by the Taliban, and our allies are getting harassed by them. What is, what’s the fallout for the Taliban if they're reneging on this agreement?
SULLIVAN: If in the end Americans are blocked from getting to the airport, blocked from leaving the country, or our operations are disrupted, or our evacuations are in some way interfered with, we have explained to them that there will be a swift and forceful response.
TODD: What does the Taliban get in return if they -- if you believe they've upheld this agreement that you guys have negotiated with them?
SULLIVAN: This isn't some kind of quid pro quo. We haven't made any commitments. We have laid out our expectations. We have explained to them that the United States of America intends to evacuate any American who wants to leave, as well as Afghans at risk. We intend to follow through on that. And we intend to ensure that they follow through on that.
TODD: Look, there's a lot of after-action reports that are going to come out. There's going to be a lot of this fallout. But it seems that the core mistake here, it appears, in your withdrawal plan was pulling the military out before the civilians and before our allies. Why did the military get withdrawn before the civilians? Does that -- In hindsight, that looks like just a catastrophic mistake.
SULLIVAN: Which civilians are you referring to, Chuck?
TODD: Our American diplomats, the Americans to get out, our Afghan allies, all the people we wanted to get out. Why did we withdraw the military and our military support before we could get that out? Why did we hand over Bagram before we got these people out?
SULLIVAN: Let me start with our diplomats because the plan from the beginning was to sustain a U.S. diplomatic presence in Kabul after our military departed. That was the plan from the beginning. And because we believe that if necessary, we could draw down our embassy presence in a crisis and get all of our diplomats out. We had a plan in place to do that. We did that.
With respect to American citizens in Kabul, we began messaging them months ago, telling them that the situation was deteriorating and that they should leave the country. We explained to them that if they didn't have the financial resources to be able to leave the country, those resources would be provided to them. Many chose to stay right till the end. And that, of course, was their choice.
And then what we did was made sure that we had a plan in place with the president ordering three military battalions pre-positioned in the Gulf to be able to fly in and secure that air field so that those American citizens could be evacuated. We are doing that now.
And finally, when it comes to Bagram, the best military advice that we received was that number one: Bagram is an immense facility that would be difficult to secure over time and put our troops at risk. And second, it didn't logistically make sense from an evacuation perspective because it is located outside of Kabul. And both American diplomats, American citizens, and most of the Afghans at risk lived inside of Kabul. That is the reason for Bagram, which was the recommendation offered to the president by his national security experts at the Pentagon and elsewhere.
(…)
TODD: The president said on Monday, "You plan for every contingency." If this is a plan, it doesn't look like it's been, it’s been well-thought-out. Did you really plan for this contingency, or is this the one contingency you didn't plan for?
SULLIVAN: You know, Chuck, I know that the scenes around the airport are heartbreaking -- large crowds of people wanting to leave. I know that there is complexity and there is turbulence on the ground in Kabul. And it's very risky and dangerous because there's a genuine threat from ISIS-K. That is the reality of what we are up against. And I'm not going to sugarcoat that reality.
But, Chuck, let's just review what has happened. A week after Kabul fell, we have 30,000 people evacuated from the country. We have control of an airport in a city controlled by the other side after the collapse of the government. We are moving people through and out, thousands of people at a time. We have agreements with 26 nations around the world to logistically move Afghans and Americans and third-country nationals out of the country into airbases throughout neighboring countries and further afield. All of that within seven days.
No plan survives first contact with reality. No plan can account for every contingency that occurs at a tactical level on a day-to-day basis. What you do is you adjust. And we've adjusted. And while we are continuing to face genuine challenges, we believe we are making progress.
(…)
