Former California Governor Jerry Brown has defended President Joe Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal despite the Taliban making lightning advances across the country and seizing control of the nation on Sunday night.
In an interview with CNN the same evening, Brown, who served California twice as a Democratic governor, said the president was "courageous" and that his predecessors "didn't have the guts" to do what he did.
"Biden was very courageous, and there's so much hypocrisy," Brown told CNN. "Look, the Afghan war, very soon after we went over there, it was over...We took out the Al Qaeda. We chased after bin Laden.
"We stayed there too long. Bush should have gotten us out. Obama should have gotten us out, Trump. But they were all afraid of exactly what's happening. They didn't have the guts that Joe Biden had."
Brown suggested that Biden may not have been fully briefed on how bad the situation was and that the Pentagon may have misled the president.
He compared it to when former president John F. Kennedy was "fooled by the CIA and his army" before launching the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Biden has been widely criticized for withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, especially after the weekend's events, which saw the Afghan president flee the country and the Taliban seize power. Several Republicans have since called for his impeachment.
Despite having nearly completed the full withdrawal of troops, the U.S. has had to send in 1,000 more into the country to defend the part of the airport that is evacuating the American citizens.
There were scenes of chaos at Kabul airport on Monday as hundreds of people tried and board planes led to comparisons being drawn with the U.S. Army's return from Saigon, Vietnam, in April 1975, when Americans were airlifted out of the country as the city fell to communist forces.
Social media footage shows some people hanging onto planes attempting to take off down the runway.
In the CNN interview, Brown said that the Afghanistan War was no longer a war because America's allies had let them down.
"We had firepower to kill Taliban. But our friends, our allies gave up. They didn't have a rationale. Their only rationale was America was there, and they were fighting. But when push comes to shove, they are more aligned with the Taliban, or at least they're not ready to die for them, so obviously Biden had to get out. Are we going to stay another 20 years?"
Brown said that Biden "will be attacked by the very people that got us in there and got us to stay in there."
Former president George W. Bush, who first sent American forces to the country in 2001, rebuked Biden's decision to pull out from Afghanistan in an interview with Deutsche Welle on July 14, describing "the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad" and he is "afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm."
But Brown, criticized Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all for being "afraid" to pull out U.S. troops. Trump had started withdrawing troops out of Afghanistan towards the end of his presidency, but did not fully do so.
Biden is due to address the nation on Afghanistan in the coming days.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jack Dutton is a Newsweek Reporter based in Cape Town, South Africa. His focus is reporting on global politics and ... Read more
