Netizens have scoffed at US National Security Council coordinator John Kirby over his reaction to a question about whether American troops’ exit from Afghanistan in 2021 left the South Asian country vulnerable to terrorists.
This came after the White House announced that Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri had been killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital Kabul late last week.
During the press conference on Tuesday, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Kirby whether the US’ decision to pull out of Afghanistan last year led to the nation once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists like al-Zawahri.
"So we know that the Taliban was harboring the world's most wanted terrorists. You guys gave a whole country to a bunch of people who are on the FBI’s most wanted list. What did you think was going to happen?” Doocy said.
"I take issue with the premise we gave a whole country to a terrorist group," Kirby responded.
Twitter users were quick to lash out at the remarks, with one netizen noting that he takes issue “with pretty much everything that this [US] administration is doing."
“Dems always ‘take issue’ with the truth,” another user asserted, a view that was shared by an array of Republicans.
Congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden tweeted, “John Kirby can ‘take issue’ with the fact that Biden gave Afghanistan to terrorists, but that does not change the fact that they did. Don’t forget, they also gave them $80+B worth of the most sophisticated military equipment in the world.”
“Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal literally handed Afghanistan to terrorists,” Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde claimed, while Rep. Andy Biggs insisted that the Biden administration “quite literally gave a whole country to terrorist groups.”
They were echoed by Spencer Brown, managing editor of the news website Townhall.com, who wrote that “Kirby can spin all he wants now, but that’s not what Biden said last year when he told Americans that Al Qaeda was ‘gone’ from Afghanistan.”
The Taliban entered Kabul without a single shot in mid-August 2021, and the last province to resist the group, Panjshir, surrendered on September 6 of that year. After international troops withdrew from the country and foreign evacuations came to a close, the militant group announced the composition of the all-male interim cabinet, headed by Mohammad Hasan Akhund, a former foreign minister during the previous Taliban rule, who has been under UN sanctions since 2001.
* Organization under UN sanctions for terrorist activities