Senator Sasse: 'There Was Clearly No Plan' to Evacuate Americans From Kabul

Senator Ben Sasse says that Joe Biden relied on “happy talk” instead of dealing with the reality of what was happening in Afghanistan.

“There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk,” Sasse said on ABC’s This Week.

“People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality,” he said. “And so they decided to outsource security around the perimeter of the airport to the Taliban.”

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse reacts to Sec. of State Blinken’s interview with @MarthaRaddatz on efforts to evacuate Afghan allies and American citizens: “There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk.” https://t.co/X5tcU51pVd pic.twitter.com/HTPWHDverK

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 29, 2021

Sasse also said that other administration acts have been “insane.”

The Hill:

Sasse also said on Sunday that the U.S. had given a list of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban to ensure they were granted access to the Kabul airport, describing it as “insane.”

“They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closest allies, people who fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban, relying on them, thinking they could trust on them. It was stupid then. It’s insane now,” Sasse said. “And their plan still seems to be, ‘Let’s rely on the Taliban because the Taliban cares a lot about what world opinion thinks of them at French restaurants.’ It was a disgusting revelation of yet again no plan.”

The State Department and Pentagon are pushing back against the Politico report detailing how the names of Americans in Kabul were being given to the Taliban. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vehemently denied the story.

“The idea that we’ve done anything to put at further risk those that we’re trying to help leave the country is simply wrong. And the idea that we shared lists of Americans or others with the Taliban is simply wrong,” Blinken told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet The Press” Sunday.

In the chaos of the evacuation caused by poor planning, it’s entirely possible that some State Department underling could have concluded that giving the Taliban a list of names of Americans still in Kabul was a great idea — probably get him a promotion.

When the blowback came, the guilty party could have decided to lay low until the flak died down.

The Biden administration is trying to distract attention from their bloody fiasco by pointing out the great “success” of evacuating about 115,000 people out of Afghanistan. It is categorically false to credit anyone in the White House or administration with any success related to the withdrawal as the heroic efforts of MATS — the Military Air Transport Service — should receive the lion’s share of the credit for handling the logistics nightmare of moving all those people in a matter of days.

If Biden wants to take credit for a shameful retreat from Afghanistan, he’s welcome to it.