โThis is manifestly not Saigon,โ Secretary of State Antony Blinken bellowed on theย Sunday talk showsย last weekend, attempting to spin his bossโs inexplicably ill-executedย Afghanistan withdrawal. As Americans watched the most embarrassing foreign policy debacle in national history unfold, Blinkenโs cavalier assertion proved to be a lie.
The fact that Blinken promoted such a patently false outlook as an administration-approved TV talking point only underscored that there was simply nothing else to say. The American people saw for themselves theย hurried helicopter evacuationsย from the U.S. embassy and the Taliban jihadists march intoย Kabulโs presidential palace.
To borrow from human-rights attorney Kimberley Motley, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal, the situation is actually more akin to โSaigon on steroids.โ
Blinken was not just wrong on the Saigon comparison โ he was horribly, incontrovertibly wrong on everything related to the Afghanistan pullout. Given the fraught geopolitical stakes involved here, and given the secretary of stateโs indispensable role as the presidentโs effective top foreign policy advisor, Blinken should resign his post.
The secretary of state is, of course, not merely the United Statesโ top foreign policy sage. He also heads up our global embassy network, which means Blinkenย is ultimately accountableย for having no plan to safely evacuate on Uncle Joeโs artificial, ideologically driven withdrawal timeframe.
Blinken and his boss similarly bear the blame for the fact that more thanย 10,000 U.S. citizensย remain stranded at a time when the โAfghanistan Evacuationโ special section of Stateโs Bureau of Consular Affairsย site pathetically asserts: โThe United States Government cannot ensure safe passage to the airport.
The buck stops with ourย commander-in-chief,ย but Blinkenโs State Department also independently botched this ill-fated withdrawal.
Blinken, following his bossโs lead, has been generally missing in action after last weekendโs pitiful tour across the Sunday talk shows. Blinken did admit that the Taliban retook Afghanistan more swiftly and easily than was expected after the U.S. drawdown. Well, whose fault is that, exactly?
Finally, it was recently revealed that an internal State Department memo that circulated last month warned top officials at Foggy Bottom about the potentialย imminent collapseย of Kabul after a U.S. withdrawal.
Blinken appears to have reviewed that missive โ and opted to ignore it.
Resign, Tony.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek opinion editor and a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation. Twitter: @josh_hammer.
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