Army Veteran on MSNBC Pans Biden’s ‘Catastrophic’ Withdrawal, Slams Speech: ‘War Is Not Over for the Afghan People’
U.S. Army veteran Paul Rieckhoff appeared on Deadline: White House on Tuesday and ripped President Joe Biden for his withdrawal from Afghanistan and his subsequent address from the White House.
Rieckhoff had been critically tweeting throughout Biden’s speech.
“We were ready.” –@POTUS.
No, you weren’t.
— Paul Rieckhoff (@PaulRieckhoff) August 31, 2021
“This is not a good news story,” he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace soon after. “This is a very optimistic way of portraying what has been a devastatingly catastrophic couple of weeks after a terrible 20-year experience for all of us. So there’s a deliberate reframing here that really, frankly, rubs me the wrong way.”
Rieckhoff also took Biden to task leaving some people behind who wanted to leave.
“You can’t just talk about how many you got out,” he said. “We have to talk about how many you left behind. And yes, it was fantastic that they got over 100,000 out. That is notable. But the situation was also so bad that we had to get out that many that quickly, we and still don’t know how many may have been left behind.”
Later during the panel, he said the war is not over as far as the Afghan people are concerned.
“This is not over because we left,” Rieckhoff said. “For the people inside Afghanistan right now, especially for people who had [Special Immigrant Visas] who worked with us – especially for women and girls – the next six months could be catastrophic. War is not over for the Afghan people.”
He concluded:
There are plenty of people right now who are willing to spike the ball. And they’re the same people a week ago who said, “Look, there are no American casualties.” This is a very dynamic situation and it’s still combat. The president said this is not a mission of combat, it’s a mission of mercy. It’s still a mission of combat whether we’re in the combat, or not or over the horizon or not, this is still very much combat for everyone who lives there.
Watch above via MSNBC.
