Former Biden chief of staff hails deadly Afghanistan withdrawal as ‘tremendous achievement’
Ryan King
Video Embed
Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain defended the evacuation efforts from Afghanistan as a “tremendous achievement” despite the chaos that ensued.
While conceding that the deaths of 13 service members during the tumultuous withdrawal was a dark day, Klain stressed that the Biden administration dramatically surpassed expectations about how many people the military could fly out of the war-torn nation.
WITH ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR, RON KLAIN SAYS STOP ‘UNDERESTIMATING JOE BIDEN’
“The darkest day of our, certainly my, two years here was the day we lost thirteen service members at Abbey Gate. No question about it,” Klain told the New Yorker in a lengthy exit interview.
“I remember Clarissa Ward on TV standing on the runway saying that there’s no way these people are going to get fifty thousand people out of here. We got a hundred and [twenty] thousand people out of there, and thirteen people gave their lives to get a hundred and [twenty] thousand people out of there,” he added.
In the run-up to the withdrawal, President Joe Biden voiced confidence that the civilian government would withstand the military onslaught from the Taliban, but it soon crumbled ahead of the evacuation. Biden’s domestic approval rating plummeted as a result and hasn’t reached positive numbers on the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate since.
Harrowing imagery of Afghans clinging to a Boeing C-17 departing a runway at the Hamid Karzai International Airport roiled the public. A number of critics from both the Left and Right slammed the Biden administration. Recently, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul’s (R-TX) panel began investigating the withdrawal.
Klain countered that the alternative would have been to remain locked in the war at the cost of additional American blood and treasure.
“Look, we ended the longest war in American history, and I understand why the way that ended has been criticized. I think the alternative to what we did would’ve been a lot of Americans dying in Afghanistan in a continuation of the longest war ever in this country’s history,” Klain stressed.
He also recounted how there was a push to oust national security adviser Jake Sullivan during the fallout from Afghanistan.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
During the interview, Klain highlighted Biden’s foreign policy bona fides and commended his handling of the bloody war in Ukraine.
Klain ultimately opted to step down as chief of staff earlier this month after Biden’s State of the Union address. He has served since the onset of the Biden administration and has been succeeded by former COVID-19 task lead Jeff Zients.
“These past couple months, also, my mother’s been ill, and I’ve been working here six days a week and flying home to Indiana every Sunday morning and staying there till late Sunday night. And so that also kind of weighs on me,” Klain explained. “This was always, from my perspective, the design. Could I get to two years?”