Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that it was “absolutely unrealistic” to say the Biden administration could have avoided the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Host Wolf Blitzer said, “Senator, what responsibility do you think the Biden administration bears for what happened?”
Murphy said, “So I think it is absolutely unrealistic to believe that in the face of the unplanned, unanticipated overnight collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan military that we were going to be able to withdraw American forces, American personnel and friends of America in an orderly manner. I weep at the scenes from that withdrawal. I still grieve for the Americans that we lost. But after the Afghan government abandoned post virtually overnight, there was going to be no way for us to conduct that withdrawal in a means that didn’t involve some amount of chaos. So I think the president made the right decision. I think the bulk of my constituents agree that it’s better off that the United States is now still not mired in Afghanistan.”
He added, “There are certainly things that could have gone better, but this belief that many critics of the president have is that with a few policy tweaks here and there, we could have orderly evacuated all of our assets without a cooperating Afghan government. I just think it is unrealistic.”
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