I was in high school when Saigon fell to communist forces in 1975. I still remember the news coverage at the time, and the unforgettable images of our American embassy being evacuated by rooftop helicopter landing.
It was unprecedented American humiliation. We’d never seen anything like it before, and many of our leaders vowed it would never happen again.
Yet on Sunday morning, we woke up to headlines, photos, and videos of another American embassy being evacuated, this time in Kabul and fueled by a resurgent Taliban.
This is Saigon 2.0, and it only took President Biden seven short months to get us to this point. How it happened is obvious.
This morning I sat at the breakfast table with my family. It is easy to be content. It made me think about the dad sitting with his daughters over breakfast in Taiwan or Ukraine wondering what storm is coming for them in the wake of this American weakness in Afghanistan. Their daughters’ futures hang on the thread of U.S. commitments, our country’s word. They must be terrified.
The candidate who ran a campaign out of his basement is MIA. The White House Basement situation room is empty. The weakness and wokeness of this Administration cast a pall of fear and uncertainty over the entire planet.
Biden’s only response has been to blame President Trump, which amounts to utter weakness, hypocrisy, and deflection — it was barely a month ago that Biden himself said there was no chance of the Taliban “overrunning” Afghanistan. Par for the course for someone who’s been wrong on every major foreign policy issue for the last four decades.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s two U.S. Senators are similarly absent. Not even a tweet or a statement — not to mention a plan.
President Biden, his administration, and the regressive Democrats running the U.S. House and Senate have obsessed over “fundamentally changing” American domestic policy. In their fervor to change election laws and pronouns and increase the power of the federal government over citizens, they’ve neglected to do their basic job: keeping Americans safe. Keeping our commitments. Living up to our principles abroad.
The consequences of their negligence are vast. Young Afghan women and girls who knew danger, but also knew hope, will have that hope dashed. The U.S has lost a military airbase in a strategically vital region. The Taliban will reestablish Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorists. China and Russia will almost certainly move to build a relationship with the Taliban that includes access to that country’s vast rare earth mineral deposits. Iran’s regime will almost certainly acquire the American weapons and technology that fleeing Afghan troops are bringing into their country.
While we can’t undo what’s been done, we must act decisively to keep Americans safe and hold those responsible for this embarrassment accountable. Here are four steps we should immediately take.
First, President Biden should fire General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
General Milley has been too busy promoting woke culture and critical race theory in the military to provide anything resembling sound advice. Even before the Afghanistan debacle, he was inspiring laughter — not fear — from our enemies. He got Afghanistan disastrously wrong, and he was clearly and predictably the wrong man for the job.
Second, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer should cancel the August recess and immediately call Congress back into session.
We need a full investigation into this failure of intelligence and leadership. I ask my opponent, Raphael Warnock — who has yet to say a word about the crisis — to immediately join me in calling for this.
Third, we must immediately move to evacuate all Americans, allies, translators, and people who whose aid to us and their country marks them for execution by the brutal Taliban. If it takes air strikes and troops, so be it. We owe them that.
Fourth, we must immediately return to President Trump’s policies that effectively secured our border. This was already paramount, but the Taliban’s freeing jailed prisoners makes it even more necessary. One or more of these terrorists will inevitably try to cross our border — the question is not “if,” but “when.” And I think the answer is “very, very soon.”
These steps will not undo the damage done by President Biden and his team, but they will keep Americans safe and ensure that tough questions are met with real answers. I challenge Senator Warnock to join me in this effort. But he almost certainly won’t, and his refusal to lead is indicative of why Republicans must win back the Senate majority in 2022.
Gary Black is Georgia’s first Republican-elected Agriculture Commissioner and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2022.