Getting the remaining Americans out of Afghanistan and away from the Taliban is more of a military mission than a matter of diplomacy because the matter is a "hostage situation," former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell said on Newsmax Saturday.
"It's not a diplomatic mission as much as it is a military mission when you're in a war-torn country, dealing with the Taliban," Grenell said on Newsmax's "The Count." "I don't think it's fair to say to the State Department sit at a table and try to talk this out. We've been trying to talk it out."
If it was a real diplomatic process, the United States wouldn't be negotiating to get its own citizens out.
"When a country has diplomats they seemingly believe in diplomacy, and you wouldn't have to convince another country to release your citizens like this," said Grenell. "But what we have here is a hostage situation. The individuals who are Americans in Afghanistan who want to get out can't get out because they're being blocked by the Taliban."
Grenell said that as someone who has worked at the State Department for 10 years, he would agree that the diplomatic and the military sides of the government have "blurred" into "one thing," and it's not fair to the nation's diplomats.
"We should send in the military only when our national security is threatened, but over the course of the last 15 years, what we've done is we've sent the military in when we should have been sending the diplomats in," said Grenell. "Trying to win hearts and minds is not the job of the U.S. military so I think we have to dial back and be able to use all of the arms of the U. S government."
That means the United States must have diplomats who are willing to go into dangerous posts, Grenell said.
"I'm a big believer of creating a cone at the State Department of danger posts where people are trained to go in when it's not totally secure, and it's dangerous, but to go in and do the hard work of diplomacy," said Grenell.
He also called for the government to "retrain" the State Department.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken "literally sat at a cabinet meeting where they decided to close Bagram Air Base and he didn't speak up and his deputy Wendy Sherman didn't speak up," said Grenell. "You should be screaming as the secretary of state to say you cannot leave until we leave."
That, said Grenell, is "unforgivable."
"Where's Congress?" he said. "This is not the way that we would allow a cabinet secretary to function. They failed and they failed miserably and dangerously. We're lucky that we didn't have mass slaughter at the embassy."
He also noted that former President Donald Trump had an "America first" philosophy, but said now, "there's only one place in the world where America first is controversial, and that's in America."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
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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