Recently, Ohio Republican Congressman Steve Chabot, a ranking member of the subcommittee overseeing Afghanistan, sat down with NPR’s Ailsa Chang to address the current crisis in the chaotic region.
Prior to the interview, president Biden held a conference at the White House and defended the rushed withdrawal of troops, maintaining his stance that America has been overstaying in Afghanistan. Chabot slammed the president for his comments on the disastrous pull-out.
“Well, I’d like to see the president take some responsibility for the debacle of really historic proportions that we’ve seen. And he certainly didn’t do that. He was very defensive,” Chabot stated.
The GOP statesman criticized the unfair portrayal of the Afghan military for failing to defend the nation’s sovereignty, which actually requires U.S. support to ensure victory.
“And I thought particularly unfortunate was the victim-shaming of the Afghanistan troops and the people of that country. He essentially said they wouldn’t fight. In the last 18 months – fortunately, we haven’t suffered a U.S. death in 18 months. They’ve had something like 2,600 in the last year. They have been fighting, but they needed the U.S. to be there to back them up,” he elaborated.
Chabot admitted that he wasn’t in favor of the idea of bringing home our soldiers from Afghanistan, but understood the reason behind it. He also believed that this entire fiasco would’ve been avoided if Trump was still the one handling the withdrawal.
“And I was opposed to this when President Trump first talked about it. But – and I don’t think President Trump ultimately would have gone this way because his was dependent upon the conditions on the ground,” the governor said.
“One of the main things being that al-Qaida and the Taliban would basically not continue to coordinate as they have been. That hasn’t happened, so I don’t think President Trump would have gone ahead with this,” he added.
When asked by Chang whether “these last several days will impact America’s moral authority on the world stage,” Chabot was realistic in recognizing the sad truth that the Afghanistan screwup will have an immensely negative effect on our image.
“I think the United States are – the way we’re going to be viewed on the world stage at this point on is much diminished as a result of this,” Chabot said.
“And that’s very unfortunate because our interests are basically to be seen as a leader, you know, a benign, a good thing, a good force across the globe. And our enemies may not fear us the extent they did, and unfortunately, our allies may not think they can rely upon us to the extent that they have. And this puts us really at risk here at home. And that’s the tragedy of this. This did not have to happen,” Chabot concluded.