Durbin: Biden ‘Did the Right Thing’ with Afghan Withdrawal

Monday on CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight, Senate Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he “was not one of the critics of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.” And “the President did the right thing. He might have done it a little differently, we can always second-guess him.”

Host Don Lemon asked, “It was a year ago this month, in fact, that President Joe Biden withdrew the U.S. from Afghanistan. There was chaos, a lot of criticism, and he paid for it in the polls. Do you think this will reassure people that President Biden is keeping the fight against terror a top priority?”

Durbin responded, “Well, I certainly believe it does, because he has achieved something which others have tried, for years, to achieve. I was not one of the critics of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I felt that after the longest war in the history of the United States, we had to be very honest about the prospects of finally resolving it in any way comfortable to the United States. I think the President did the right thing. He might have done it a little differently, we can always second-guess him. But, at this point, taking al-Zawahiri out…is an indication that the pursuit of terrorists has not stopped.”

It’s not a matter of “second-guessing” Biden or Monday morning quarterbacking. He was warned by military advisors that the administration’s sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan would be catastrophic, and it was even worse than feared. For Durbin to assert that he was not a critic of the withdrawal simply confirms that he doesn’t have the geopolitical foresight to be in any kind of a leadership position in America.

As for Biden’s “achievement” of taking out al-Zawahiri: you may recall that Biden slammed former President Trump for taking out terrorist leaders during his term. Now Biden wants to run a victory lap about al-Zawahiri, as if he is tough on terror. In fact his withdrawal from Afghanistan, where he abandoned about $80 billion worth of weaponry for terrorist and Taliban use, has laid the groundwork for decades more of intensified Islamic terrorism.