According to Sen. Joni Ernst, the Biden administration calling the Taliban “businesslike and cooperative” is an “outrage,” because after they took control of Afghanistan, they started to use the “same antics that we have seen before,” noting that they must be designated a foreign terrorist organization.
“This Taliban 2.0 is not at all a new Taliban,” the Iowa Republican went on to say during her chat with the hosts of Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “We see the same antics that we have seen before, the brutal beatings of women and girls in the street. They are pursuing American citizens and others that helped American forces while we were engaged in the global war on terror … this is not the new, friendlier Taliban. This is the same old terrorist organization that we have fought in the past and that has supported other terrorist networks in Afghanistan.”
via Newsmax:
Ernst, along with GOP Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, have sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for the Taliban to be designated as a terrorist organization.
Former President George W. Bush designated the Taliban as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” in 2002, but the current list of foreign terrorist organizations does not include them.
“That is important because then we have greater flexibility,” Ernst went on to state in her appearance on Newsmax. “We can really flex our muscle and the law and push to the extent of the law with this terrorist organization. That means we really do have leverage and cutting back the amount of aid that goes to Afghanistan to the Taliban, and it is absolutely something that should be done.”
Meanwhile, there is also a concern about whether Afghan refugees are being fully vetted before they arrive in the United States, and Ernst said the administration should have started that process months before Afghanistan fell.
“Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat of New Hampshire, and I worked on this very early on this past spring, really pressing the State Department on the special immigrant visa holder issue, and the point was, we should have started back in the spring because we knew that vetting would be necessary,” said the senator. “The deal is, these immigrants are to be vetted before their feet hit American soil. The State Department has really failed in working with a number of these third-country nations. The idea would be to evacuate those immigrants into third countries and that them before they ever came to the United States.”
But the State Department has “fallen down in so many different areas in so many ways, and especially when we were given a heads up, months and months and months ago,” the senator added. “They have failed. The president has failed, obviously, with the withdrawal of Afghanistan, and I don’t know how we overcome this debacle easily. “
The Taliban is a terrorist organization. They were always a terrorist organization. They will always be a terrorist organization. It’s utterly disgusting for President Biden’s administration to refer to this group on positive terms.
It also makes u look weak, which doesn’t do much for our reputation on the global stage.
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