Vice President Kamala Harris was grilled in an interview that aired on Sunday over the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan back in August, which was marked by chaos and death.
“You said you were last in the room on the decision in Afghanistan to pull out. You’ve talked about not abandoning allies,” CBS News host Margaret Brennan said. “Do you feel personal responsibility for the chaos of that withdrawal?”
“I fully supported the president’s decision to after what was taking on the fact of being an endless war, of pulling American troops out, and I think it’s really important to remember that the previous administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban, did not invite the Afghan government to be at the table, and negotiated a deal that- that required and promised as part of an agreement that we would pull out by the end of May,” Harris claimed. “So, we were saddled with that responsibility based on an agreement between the United States and the Taliban and so … we made the decision that if we were to break the agreement, it would have been a whole other situation, and right now I strongly believe that had we broken that agreement, we would be talking about the war in Afghanistan. And American troops in Afghanistan, and we’re not talking about that. I don’t regret that.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said you were last in the room on the decision in Afghanistan to pull out. You’ve talked about not abandoning allies.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: Mhmm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you feel personal responsibility for the chaos of that withdrawal?
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: I fully supported the president’s decision to after what was taking on the fact of being an endless war, of pulling American troops out, and I think it’s really important to remember that the previous administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban, did not invite the Afghan government to be at the table, and negotiated a deal that- that required and promised as part of an agreement that we would pull out by the end of May.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mhmm.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: So, we were saddled with that responsibility based on an agreement between the United States and the Taliban and so–
MARGARET BRENNAN: You agreed to extend it and not to break the agreement with the Taliban.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: –We made the decision that if we were to break the agreement, it would have been a whole other situation, and right now I strongly believe that had we broken that agreement, we would be talking about the war in Afghanistan. And American troops in Afghanistan, and we’re not talking about that. I don’t regret that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But I know as a candidate, you pledged to protect the gains that were made for Afghan women.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: Yes. Yeah. And I feel very strongly about that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Many of those Afghan women are not in school today because the Taliban is in control.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: Which is why we are working through the U.N. And doing what we need to do through our friends to provide humanitarian assistance, bypassing the Taliban to make sure that we are supporting women and girls there. One of our big issues in terms of any conversations with the Taliban is exactly this point, which is the condition, the status and the treatment of women and girls, including for girls, access to education, not to mention our concern about counterterrorism and what we need to do in terms of that threat. So, these are real issues there’s no question. The United States has been and continues to be, since the end of August, the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you know, a lot of that aid isn’t able to make it into the people who need it because of the sanctions on the Taliban being in control. So it’s just- Afghan women, do you worry that they were abandoned by the United States essentially?
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: I worry that the Taliban has not complied with what we know to be the appropriate treatment and the right treatment of girls and women, and that’s why we are taking the posture that we are with the Taliban right now, because that is one of our greatest considerations and concerns.