Sun 15 August 2021:
The Taliban will face a “swift and decisive response” if it interferes with US personnel in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Blinken told CNN.
Blinken was keen to stress that the US exit from Afghanistan “is not Saigon,” citing the country’s disastrous pullout from the Vietnam War in 1975.
Images from that conflict were echoed in Sunday’s evacuation when US officials piled into helicopters at their Kabul embassy as the Taliban entered the city after two decades of war.
Afghan forces, trained by the US, have been unable to defend their country, while the US has “succeeded” in its mission “to deal with the people that attacked us on 9/11,” Blinken said.
The embassy has lists of people who need to be moved out of harm’s way and is “doubling down” its efforts on this front, Blinken added, as the government’s collapse looks increasingly likely.
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