Rep. Adam Smith said what had to be said. Those generals and politicians oversaw a failed 20-year war, and now they are criticizing a president mitigating a failure.
Rep. Adam Smith tells inconvenient Afghanistan truth
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“Joe Biden made the right decision to get us out of Afghanistan number one,” said Adam Smith. “Number two, he is getting a ton of unfair criticism by the armchair quarterbacks who want to believe that there was some easy solution. The alternative is being presented, ‘Gosh, if we had just stayed, we could have stayed in a peaceful situation, you know, and had a minimal presence.’ None of that is true. If we had stayed, we would have been continuing the war. Everyone forgets that there was this peace deal that President Trump negotiated that ended on May 1st. And if we announced that we were staying, we would have been back in a war.”
Smith then points out what the reality would have been.
“It would have been irresponsible to put 2500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan,” Smith said. “They wouldn’t have the protection: it would have had to have been more. So, I think a lot of the analysis. I’m with Ruben Gallego, by the way. If you’ve read his comments, the congressman from Arizona about all these generals who couldn’t figure out how to get the government to work in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years now coming on shows like this and saying Biden made the wrong call. ‘He should have stayed.’ Well, either those people are incredibly incompetent and couldn’t accomplish what they’re now saying Biden should try to accomplish, or it wasn’t accomplishable. So, I feel very strongly that there’s a lot of unfair criticism coming down on President Biden.”
Adam Smith could not have said it any clearer.