During Thursday’s State Dept. Press Briefing, Ned Price stated that the “greater tempo” of the Taliban’s movement is “of grave concern” but tried to lower assertions that a lowering of U.S. diplomatic personnel in the country was an evacuation as the Taliban gets closer to Afghanistan’s capital city and the Pentagon prepares an airlift.
Framing the reduction in embassy staff members as a continuation of April’s departure order that is causing fewer civilians while leaving only a small diplomatic group on the ground, Price struggled to give a good argument that the Afghan people should be confident in its alliance with the U.S.
Price insisted things “had not changed” at the Kabul embassy which “stays open” — except with a smaller amount of people — as more civilian staff try to leave the country through what seems to be a hastily done evacuation.
Pentagon Media Secretary John Kirby said on Thursday that it is “attempting to get” 3,000 more personnel to the country “as soon as possible” to help with the movement of civilian personnel as it believes the military will be “needed” to do an airlift as a part of what he said was a “safe and orderly lowering.” In addition, the Pentagon will ready a few thousand more troops close by “if they are needed… to give safety and security” of Americans out of the country, setting up a situation that is comparable to the 1975 fall of Saigon.
REPORTER: "How are you going to avoid a parallel with the Fall of Saigon?"
PENTAGON: "Nobody is abandoning Afghanistan. It's not walking away from it." pic.twitter.com/EW7bUlbrcn
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 12, 2021
“No one is abandoning Afghanistan — we are not walking away,” said Kirby.
Back at the State Dept., Price explained the U.S. “will keep pressing forward in every way we can using the diplomacy.”
“The message we are giving to Afghanistan is one of long-term partnership,” Price said, stated that “the U.S. will be a committed partner to the Afghan people,” though he could not give specifics other than a partnership can be “measured…in many ways.”
Reporter to State Dpt. Spokesman: "There is no way you can sit there and say that the people of Afghanistan watching the Taliban take over provinces, watching their country crumble, are now going to watch American diplomats get on military planes and leave the country…" pic.twitter.com/dNq8bZ9Fw7
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 12, 2021
“This is not an abandonment, it is not an evacuation,” Price said only hours after the U.S. Embassy in Kabul gave a security alert urging all Americans in the country to leave “immediately.”
Author: Steven Sinclaire
