The rapidly approaching Aug. 31 deadline for removing Americans and allies from Afghanistan shows how the United States is "cowering" to the Taliban, and the United States won't likely be able to have everyone out before Wednesday rolls around, Rep. Greg Murphy, a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said Monday on Newsmax.
"It's an arbitrary deadline set by the Taliban, not by not by our government," the North Carolina Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It's just emblematic of the fact that we are cowering to a terrorist organization, rather than as the greatest nation on Earth dictating the terms of how we get our American citizens out."
The United States has evacuated about 114,400 people, including foreign nationals and at-risk Afghans, and on Monday, one day before time was to run out for the evacuation effort, U.S. anti-missile defenses intercepted as many as five rockets that were fired at Kabul's airport.
"There shouldn't be a deadline," Murphy said. "The deadline should be the last American citizen out of that country. An arbitrary date and time started because Joe Biden wanted to celebrate something on Sept. 11, going against his military advisers."
It also went against common sense to close the Bagram Airfield, the largest strategic airbase the United States had in Afghanistan, said Murphy.
"I've never lived in a country where we leave Americans behind," he said. "It seems like that is inevitably going to happen tomorrow."
What happens on Wednesday, one day after the deadline runs out, is "very difficult to answer," said Murphy.
"We are leaving Americans in the hands of terrorists who knows if they will actually go by their word," he said. "They are rather complicit with other Muslim terrorist groups; this is a tragic time in our nation's history."
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has been quoted saying that the United States has leverage over the Taliban, but Murphy disagreed Monday, pointing out that the group is now the most well-funded terrorist organization in the world, now that the United States has left behind billions of dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan that the Taliban can sell.
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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