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About a year after the US completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, retired Army General Jack Keane complained that the situation there was no different than when the US first began its 20-year war there in 2001.
In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Keane pointed to not only the resurgence of the Taliban but also the presence of al-Qaeda, even though the U.S. recently killed Osama bin Laden’s deputy in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri. Indeed, Keane said Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan at the time of the US strike was evidence of the problem.
“We went to Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from providing sanctuary to al-Qaeda, from where the attack on the United States was carried out. We all know that. And what did this decision bring us? It put us back in the hands of the Taliban … giving sanctuary to al Qaeda,” said Keane, the former deputy chief of staff of the Army. times where senior Taliban leaders live. And apparently they protect the al Qaeda leader as well as his organization.”
Keane added that “to date we haven’t done anything against the organization or anything against ISIS.”
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Far from the Taliban rooting out terrorists, Kinnes said Afghanistan was now a “sanctuary for terrorism” under their control.
“The very reason we went there, the very reason we stayed there for 20 years, to make sure the terrorists don’t rise up again, attack the American people, and we’re right back where we started,” he said.
Keane then lashed out at President Biden, saying the commander-in-chief had violated the recommendations of both advisers and allies, calling him “defiant” in his insistence that the US withdraw by the end of August 2021.
“He was advised by the military, by the intelligence services and by many of his foreign policy advisers and by all the NATO nations to maintain the stalemate that we had, the status quo,” Kinnes said. The general, who is now a Fox News strategic analyst, acknowledged that it was not a “perfect situation” but that it had prevented the Taliban from regaining control of the country and prevented al Qaeda and ISIS from building a presence there.
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“The president thought he knew better and was very defiant and rejected all their advice,” Keane said. “And then he presented a false narrative to the American people that I find very disturbing. He said it’s my choice to leave now or I have to bring thousands of American troops back here to fight the Taliban and take casualties doing it.”
Keane insisted that was not the choice because the US “has not been in direct combat with the Taliban since 2014.”
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Keane also criticized the US decision not to accept the Taliban’s offer to control Kabul, which would have meant having a secure airport.
“Obviously it was going to be a little bit more than we were going to bite off doing that,” Keane admitted, “but it would have given us an opportunity to do a very methodical withdrawal as opposed to the chaos that we saw.”
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The retired general then weighed in on the reported after-action review, which the State Department and Defense Department are expected to release in the near future. He said he hoped it would cover not just the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the entire two decades the US was there.
“Let’s learn some lessons here about these decisions moving forward and let’s be honest with what happened and the mistakes that were made,” he said.
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