“As the United States withdraws personnel from its embassy in Kabul amid the Taliban’s rapid advance on the Afghan capital, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has rejected comparisons to the US exit from Vietnam decades ago.”
“In a series of US media interviews on Sunday, Blinken again defended President Joe Biden’s decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan by the end of August, despite mounting criticism that the swift US withdrawal contributed to the country’s deteriorating security situation.”
““Remember, this is not Saigon,” Blinken told CNN, referring to the fall of Saigon in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War. “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission, and that mission was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11 – and we have succeeded in that mission.””
“A photo that immortalised the US’s defeat in Vietnam, showing evacuees boarding a helicopter on the roof of a building, spread fast on social networks after Washington said recently it would send some 3,000 US soldiers to help embassy staff leave Afghanistan.”
“That deployment has since increased, with Biden announcing on Saturday that he had authorised a total of about 5,000 soldiers to help with the personnel drawdown.”
“The Pentagon authorised another 1,000 US troops to help with the evacuations, a US official said on Sunday, adding that the total number of troops now sat at 6,000. The soldiers will be from the 82nd Airborne Division, which had been on standby.”
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Washington, DC, “said the comparisons to Saigon has been humiliating for the Biden administration, “particularly because the US seems to [have been] caught so flat-footed with President Biden saying just a week ago that there would not be helicopter evacuations off the rooftop of the embassy”.”
““President Biden’s decisions have us hurtling toward an even worse sequel to the humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975,” [Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell] said in a statement.”
Read more: ‘This is not Saigon’: Blinken defends US evacuations from Kabul
Related: Taliban enter Afghan capital as US diplomats evacuate by chopper and At Least 10 People Killed in Chaos at Kabul Airport
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