United States Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, has stated that the country’s military will be going back to Afghanistan in the future due to the threat of terror.
This is in spite of the fact that President Joe Biden ended the 20-year war with Afghanistan in August.
Graham, in an interview with BBC, praised former President Donald Trump for maintaining the US military presence in Afghanistan.
He noted that the Taliban will “impose a lifestyle on the Afghan people that I think is going to make us all sick to our stomach”.
He then suggested the US should arm the resistance fighting in Panjshir so that Afghanistan will not have a central government.
“The Taliban will impose a lifestyle on the Afghan people that I think is going to make us all sick to our stomach.
“But most importantly, they’re going to give safe haven to Al-Qaeda who has ambitions to drive us out of the Mideast writ large and attack us because of our way of life. We will be going back into Afghanistan as we went back into Iraq and Syria,” he added.
Following this statement, BBC host Stephen Sackur asked, “You seriously think the United States will once again, in the foreseeable future, put troops back into Afghanistan?”
“We’ll have to because the threat will be so large,” Graham responded.
Citing the situations in Iraq and Syria, he predicted that Afghanistan will be a “cauldron for radical Islamic behaviour.”
“Here’s my solution, support the resistance in the Panjshir Valley to avoid the fracture of the country that would create a perfect storm for Western interests to be attacked and to hit them before they hit you.”
Graham, a US foreign policy war hawk, previously criticised President Biden’s decision to follow up on Trump’s planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“We’re leaving thousands of Afghan allies behind who fought bravely with us. We’re going to leave hundreds of American citizens behind.” he said last month in an interview.
