- Firing senior officials would also indicate an admission of failure by the US government in its policies for war-torn Afghanistan.
After the Afghanistan debacle, US President Joe Biden isn’t reportedly willing to sack senior national security officials unless there is further aggravation of chaos or if Americans are killed by the Taliban.
Firing senior officials like national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin or CIA Director William Burns would also indicate an admission of failure by the US government in its policies for war-torn Afghanistan, American news website Axios reported.
The New York Times had reported that some House Democrats have considered calling for Sullivan’s removal.
President Biden has held a reputation of being loyal to his staff over 40 years of his career in Washington.
On Sunday, the US President called the retreat and withdrawal of American troops “messy” and said, “I think that history is going to record this was the logical, rational, right decision to make. Let me be clear: The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul was going to be hard and painful no matter when it started, when we began.
“It would have been true if we had started a month ago — or a month from now. There’s no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television. It’s just a fact.”
Biden has acknowledged that the Taliban captured the country quicker than he anticipated, but he is deeply committed to his policy, the report quoted sources familiar to the development as saying, adding that at present the government is focused on the mission at hand.
The White House on Sunday said that Biden and his team had “discussed the ongoing and intensive diplomatic and military efforts to facilitate transit at third-country transit hubs, affirming the importance of the contributions that more than two dozen partner nations are making to this global effort.”
The US has evacuated over 100 Americans who make it to the airport, with “potential additional military operations planned for outside the wire”, according to internal US government documents accessed by Axios.
Meanwhile, there’ve been reports of Taliban retributive attacks against Afghan national who aided the NATO coalition during the last 20 years.
Currently, the White House wants the focus to be on air transport out of Kabul with respect to evacuation.
While lawmakers from both parties have demanded Sullivan be sacked, at senior levels of White House, officials blame ex-President Trump for a shoddy peace deal with the Taliban and “privately insist the ‘cupboard was bare’ for any plan to evacuate Americans”, the report said.
Some Republican senators have even branded the situation in Afghanistan worse than Benghazi.