The United States must take a position of strength against the Taliban, rather than the weakness being shown by the Biden administration, Rep. Dan Meuser insisted on Newsmax Wednesday.
"We are not dealing with this regime in Afghanistan in the proper manner," the Pennsylvania Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "They're a terrorist organization. They only respond with strength."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will testify before committees in the House and Senate next week, and Meuser said there are many "bewildering" questions that he'll be asked about Afghanistan.
"Why are we not bringing our allies together?" said Meuser. "Why are we not completely focused on getting our Americans out at all costs? Why are we not closing the southern border as well as [using] extreme levels of vetting those coming to the nation?"
Meanwhile, the congressman said he thinks the situation at the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport in northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban reportedly stopped several planes from leaving with Americans and Afghan allies, "fits the definition" of a hostage situation.
"There's no uncertainty about this, as Congressman Mike McCaul was expressing over the weekend," said Meuser. "There was a number of Americans on that plane and it was not released because they did not meet the conditions of the Taliban and the State Department did not weigh in from a position of strength whatsoever.
He also accused the administration of using an "amazing amount of excuse-making" about the remaining Americans in Afghanistan.
"We had 120,000, because of a certain date, rushing to get out, which caused the fatalities of 13 of our best and brightest soldiers, brave men and women, and now we've got all this additional protocol where clearly we could bring them into a third country. ...It doesn't make any sense," said Meuser. "We are being beholden to the Taliban, a terrorist organization."
If the Biden administration doesn't deal with the situation in a way that will bring allies together, get Americans out of Afghanistan, and have organized sanctions against the Taliban's "humanitarian atrocities that they're committing," then "we're just kidding ourselves," he added.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has announced its all-male interim government for Afghanistan, made up of many veterans from the organization's hardline rulers from the 1990s.
"This is the new leadership people who were at Gitmo and exchanged for [Bowe] Bergdahl in that Obama deal," said Meuser. "[They were] founders of the Taliban, those with a $10 million bounty on their heads ... we're being told by the by the administration, 'hey, we've done a great job here, we've evacuated and we're talking to the Taliban.'"
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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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