Sen. Dan Sullivan, in a Facebook Live interview with Must Read Alaska, said Sunday that veterans who fought the Taliban in Afghanistan and Gold Star families of fallen warriors should know the 20-year war was fought to protect America from attacks like the one on Sept. 11, 2001. And that it was effective in doing so.
Sullivan, who has been to Afghanistan as a Marine, in service as a senior member of the George W. Bush Administration, and as a senator, reminded viewers that the United States got involved in the war on terror after 9-11. Keeping the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Isis, and others in the loose network of terror organizations fighting in Afghanistan, made it so they didn’t have time or resources to export terrorism, as they had on 9-11.
“Very importantly and a huge problem from the United States’ perspective, it wasn’t just the Taliban but Afghanistan became a safe haven for international terrorists, particularly Al Qaeda. So that’s where Al Qaeda did its planning, all its training, and all its operations in preparation for the 9-11 attacks,” Sullivan said.
“So that, from our perspective, put Afghanistan, particularly after that horrific day 20 years ago, almost to the date now, when that happened Afghanistan became the focus of our foreign policy for really the last 20 years,” he said.
“It was the Taliban in control but it was al Qaeda that was the violent extremist organization that had the territory that the Taliban were allies with them, and after 9-11 we decided that we were not going to tolerate that any more,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, who lost a good friend who was on a mission to rescue Navy SEALS in Afghanistan, said America hasn’t been hit with a major terrorist action since 9-11.
“And if you remember, and I remember very well, right after 911, there was so much intel that we thought we were going to get hit again and again and again. And we didn’t know. In my view there is one major reason why we didn’t get hit again. It’s because we went on offense. We had brave American men and women who volunteered and went over and took the fight to them,” he said.
“The fact that we were over there made it, in my view, that they weren’t over here in our cities,” Sullivan said.
But the way the exit from Afghanistan has been conducted by the Biden Administration has clearly shocked the nation, and Sullivan is concerned for not only Americans in the country, but the thousands of allies who helped keep the Taliban controlled.
“This is a shameful, stunning, horrible day that’s going on right now, and I think President Biden owns this.
When the black flag of the Taliban is going to be raised over the American embassy — I hope that doesn’t happen, but I think its going to happen soon — that image, he’s going to own. Forever.”
Sullivan said he thought the nation needs to hear from the president, who has been holed up at Camp David and has made no statement to Americans about the dire situation in Kabul.
View the entire interview with Sen. Sullivan at this link:
President Biden has nothing on his schedule for Monday, and his Press Secretary Jen Psaki is on vacation Aug. 15-22.
