White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was put in the hot seat Monday morning after trying to downplay the United States' poorly organized escape from Kaul after the Taliban took over the country in a blitzkrieg fashion.
In addition to having to evacuate the U.S. embassy in Kaul a lot sooner than planned, after the Biden administration said they weren't leaving, the U.S. military has been forced to use the Hamid Karzai International Airport instead of Bagram Air Base because U.S. forces had abandoned it earlier this year.
Now the U.S. military has sent 6,000 troops to secure the airport so flights can resume, with another 1,000 being deployed on Monday.
US Marines run to secure aircraft as desperate Afghans rush the perimeter and reach the tarmac where c-17s are parked. Late Sunday night. pic.twitter.com/djERJQBDk7
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 16, 2021
NBC's Savannah Guthrie pointed to President Joe Biden's comments saying the U.S. will not be using the embassy's rooftop to evacuate people, "And yet that is precisely what we have seen over these last few days. How do you explain getting this so wrong?"
"Well, first, Savannah, to be fair, the helicopter has been the mode of transport from our embassy to the airport for the last two years. That is how we move people back and forth, so —" Sullivan started to reply.
"But you know the larger point. It’s not a helicopter. It’s not the mechanism...It’s the last-minute scramble. You know that. It’s the last-minute scramble when the assurances from the President himself were this was not what we were going to see," Guthrie replied.
"It is certainly the case that the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated, including the Afghans, including many of the analysts who looked hard at this problem," Sullivan admitted.