The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has once again defended the decision about the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, saying “we want to make sure, and as a result of what the President did we can make sure, that we’re not going to have another generation going to Afghanistan to fight and die there as we had for 20 years.” 

Blinken made the remarks with Jake Tapper of CNN’s State of the Union program “So we did the right thing,” he said. “But of course, we will look very hard at everything, every aspect of the decisions that we made to make sure that we get it right every time going forward, and that everyone who was involved feels that appropriate justice has been done to the sacrifice of their loved ones.”

Meanwhile, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, also said in an interview with CNN they have invited officials from the State Department and White House for testimony.

“We want to talk to Jen Psaki, the messages she was sending out from the White House were so different from what was happening on the ground. You know John Kirby made the comments that there were no weapons left behind, which is insane,” he said.  “…There (are) 7 billion dollars of weapons. And I can show the types of the weapons and the cash. They were left behind. Ned Price, you know the State Department, making rosy comments… we sent letters to have them testified.” 

The Islamic Emirate meanwhile said that the US presence in Afghanistan was affecting both countries.  

“Both sides suffered heavy damages. Boh the US and its partners have sustained both human and economic losses. There was a major disaster in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of our citizens were martyred,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.