Former Army Ranger: Biden's Afghanistan speech was 'a bunch of diplomatic catchphrase bingo'
Matthew Griffin says Biden address 'absolutely astounding'
A former Army Ranger who served three terms in Afghanistan said President Biden’s Friday address on the evacuation in the Central Asian country sounded like "a bunch of diplomatic catchphrase bingo."
"It sounds like … they’re eating up the clock so they can cover for their mistakes" Matthew Griffin told Fox News.
"He talks about terrorism metastasizing – it metastasized when [Biden] was the vice president, when they were droning people endlessly throughout the region, creating an army of terrorists who just wanted to avenge America," he said.
During his speech Friday, Biden reiterated that the U.S. could prevent Afghanistan from becoming a hub for terrorism, even with the Taliban in power and without a permanent foothold in the country.
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But Griffin told Fox News: "We have zero control whether terrorism sprouts up in Afghanistan again."
"We have burned every bridge that we have built over the last 20 years," he continued. "We unplugged our assets and embarrassed ourselves on such a global level, I don't know how anybody could trust us."
"Illiterate Afghan farmers know not to trust America. I can't see how somebody who would be in the intelligence community would," Griffin said.
The administration has faced widespread criticism arguing that there was no plan to withdraw Americans or their allies from Afghanistan in the event the Taliban seized power. Biden denied during his speech that international leaders are questioning the U.S.'s credibility.
Griffin told Fox News that Biden's denial flies "in the face of everything that international leaders are saying on our world stage right now."
The former Army Ranger also said that anyone blaming Afghans for the country’s quick collapse amid U.S. departure "is doing a disservice to everybody who sacrificed and worked so hard to build their country up over the last 20 years."
Griffin blamed the current situation on U.S. leadership, specifically Biden, and said they had all the information they needed to predict the outcome the world is witnessing. He noted that the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction laid out every detail in its quarterly reports, which frequently laid out harsh realities of the U.S.'s efforts in the Middle Eastern nation.
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"It is absolutely astounding," Griffin told Fox News. "There has to be incompetency at some level."
The combat veteran also criticized the president for referring to Afghans as "Afghanis" in his Friday address.
"For a party that's so focused on pronouns they can't even get ‘Afghans’ right," Griffin said. "We’re talking about a culture of a people that we're trying to evacuate and save after we burned over a trillion dollars there and which he served over eight years as a [vice] president, and he can't even get that right."
