The Biden administration needs to retake Afghanistan airbases to give Americans and their Afghan allies more contact points to escape the war-torn country, and the administration needs to be clear with the Taliban that any attempts to deter efforts to extract Americans will be met with deadly force, Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Tuesday.
In an interview with Politico, Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who was deployed to Afghanistan, said he is angry and frustrated by President Joe Biden’s decision to pull the remaining U.S. troops out of the country, and by the chaos that’s predictably ensued.
Pulling out troops didn’t end a war, he said. “We just gave up a strategic position that allowed us to fight the people who will always be at war with us,” he said. No one, he said, should be surprised that the Taliban has since gone on the offense in the country.
The U.S. abandoned Bagram Airbase, its largest strategic outpost in the country, in late July, surprising Afghan allies who were reportedly left in the dark regarding the exact timing of the withdrawal. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the Pentagon had no plans to retake the air base.
The biggest short-term goal now is to get the roughly 10,000 to 15,000 Americans left in Afghanistan out, along with about 80,000 Afghan allies – interpreters and contractors who served in critical roles on the front lines and who are “true patriots,” Crenshaw said.
“I’m strongly advising the administration, you need to retake airbases. Not just Bagram, but possibly other air bases as well that we abandoned. You need points of contact for people to go to,” Crenshaw said. “And we need to send a very clear message to the Taliban, we’re not negotiating about our deadline. That should be the message. We should laugh at them when they say, ‘Oh, well, that’s a red line for us. You need to be out by Aug. 31.’ No, no. And if you get in our way while we are extracting Americans, we will kill you. That is the only message Biden should be delivering to the Taliban right now.”
“The Taliban are not our friends,” he added. “They are terrorists after all.”
Crenshaw criticized Biden for pulling American troops out of Afghanistan when the small residual force that was there was successfully maintaining stability in the country and denying a safe haven for terrorists at a low cost to the U.S. He questioned whether U.S. involvement in Afghanistan since 2014, when the country transitioned from combat operations to a security and assistance mission, really even qualified as war.
“I’ve been to war. That’s not what war looks like,” he said. “That looks like the kind of presence we have all around the world.”
Although many of Biden’s advisors may have advised against pulling the troops out, knowing about the president’s “obstinance,” they should have had a plan in place to get Americans and Afghan allies out. Crenshaw said his office and other congressional offices are helping to coordinate extraction efforts for Americans and American allies who remain in the country; connecting dots for people, helping them get their paperwork in order and get on the right lists, and making sure they know where to go – which gates to go to – to get out.
“We shouldn’t have to. It’s not our job,” he said. “We’re happy to do it, but it’s very frustrating this process wasn’t well thought out beforehand.”
Anyone saying that any American who wants to get to the airport to leave the country can do so is telling “a flat out lie,” Crenshaw said. “If anything, it’s getting harder.”
“The crowds are enormous. People are getting trampled to death. Our solidiers are collecting dead bodies from people getting trampled,” he continued. “The Taliban are shooting at people. We’ve heard reports that they’re out there confiscating U.S. passports.”
The comments come one day after White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied that Americans are “stranded” in Afghanistan, unable to reach the airport.
“First of all, I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are stranded. They are not,” Psaki said in response to a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy. “We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home,” adding that the U.S. is in touch with Americans in Afghanistan by phone, email, and other communications.
During the interview, Crenshaw addressed “silly” allegations from some on the right that the Biden administration intentionally bungled the troop pull-out as an excuse to bring more refugees into the country. He called the suggestion paranoid and conspiratorial, and he said it’s not an argument that’s actually getting a lot of traction in conservative social media.
“In the end, the argument is simple: this administration screwed this up so badly, it is folly to think that they were actually playing 4-D chess the whole time just to get refugees in,” he said. “I don’t think a single Afghan coming to the United States would ever vote for the Democrat party after seeing what Joe Biden did to them.”
Crenshaw said it’s not realistic to expect that the U.S. could bring home its troops and for Afghanistan to remain secure. He said the U.S. should have maintained a small force there for “as long as the cost-benefit analysis works in favor of staying there.” With no eyes and ears on the ground, and with no bases, “we’re at a much bigger risk than we were before.”
Still, he said, he doesn’t feel like his sacrifice in Afghanistan was in vain. Crenshaw lost his right eye when he was hit by an IED explosion while serving in Helman Province in 2012.
But what, exactly, did the U.S. get out of its 20 years in Afghanistan?
“We got no more 9/11s. That’s what we got,” he said. “That’s not nothing. That’s pretty significant.”