The parallels between President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Saigon are "chilling," and the events will serve as "Biden's 1975," Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano said on Newsmax Thursday.
"We turned our back on the South Vietnamese army there, just as we did in Afghanistan," the Republican lawmaker told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "Both armies rely on American support, airpower, and logistics, and they were ripped away and they could not fight."
Biden and members of his administration claimed that part of the reason the Taliban was able to overtake Afghanistan so fast was that the Afghan military gave up easily, but Mastriano insisted Thursday those troops needed the support of the American military.
"For anyone to think they could stand up on their own without American support, I could sell them a bridge in Brooklyn," said Mastriano. "It should never have happened. It happened twice in my lifetime. God have mercy on our souls. Please pray for the Afghan people. They need it."
Meanwhile, the state senator said the image shared of Biden sitting alone at a conference table speaking to other "interest groups" around the world as Kabul fell was "bizarre."
"I have no idea of the intention of that picture," said Mastriano. "He's on vacation for six days before we hear a peep out of them as the Afghan country collapses, and then again there is this pitiful picture of him alone at a desk, ostensibly working."
The picture, he said, "shows weakness."
"It shows that he's out of touch," said Mastriano. "Clearly, his statements between him and Gen. (Mark) Milley and other people in the administration are out of touch or contradict each other. Basically, they cut and run. They didn't realize it was going to be such a catastrophe, although any captain in the Army would know it would be a catastrophe."
The senator said the situation has left him, as a person who served three tours in Afghanistan, feeling "betrayed, as most veterans do."
"We worked our tails off over there, pouring our hearts, minds, and souls and trying to make this mission successful," he said. "Every veteran sacrificed so much to be there and be part of that mission."
He noted that on one assignment, he was with 80 people from 18 different countries, and it hurt to watch the Biden administration "willy-nilly overnight cut and run" from Afghanistan while leaving a catastrophe with thousands of people still being trapped there.
"The United States is sitting at the airport, not doing anything the British and French allies are actually sending out patrols of pickups of foreign nationals around the city to try to get them to the airport," Mastriano said. "You can try to get the airport on your own as a citizen there but It's not going to be good because people are being shot."
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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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