BOISE, Idaho – U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today released the following statement after several reports of explosions in Kabul:
“Reports of military and civilian casualties at the hands of terrorists in Kabul are horrifying, and deeply sad. I pray for those who have lost their lives, and those injured.
“Today’s bombings outside of the airport and around Kabul serve as the official return to rule by terrorism in Afghanistan. As these bombings indicate, we cannot trust the Taliban to keep Americans safe. The administration should have laid more competent plans and gotten people out much sooner than this. The time deficit we are facing is a dilemma of the administration’s own making, and this emergency situation was avoidable.
“Today is August 26, five days ahead of the self-imposed deadline of August 31, and more than two weeks out from the solemn anniversary of September 11, a date that sits heavy on the hearts of all Americans, and one which the president broadcast to the world as our official withdrawal date earlier this year. The Taliban and its terrorist contemporaries clearly don’t care about our deadlines or our people left in the country. They have what they want, which is an America and a NATO in disarray and retreat.”
###