Former Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland weighed in Monday after more than 350 people, including an unknown number of Americans, were evacuated from Kabul to Qatar over the weekend, and said “nobody knows” how many Americans remain in Afghanistan.
McFarland shared the information during an interview with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade.
“We just heard just about 100 people are going to be left — that was like six weeks ago — there’s many more than 100, and the State Department seems to be giving the Heisman to the evacuation efforts,” Kilmeade said.
“Look, the State Department said, ‘Oh it’s a handful, just 100,'” McFarland said. “The Pentagon, however, was saying it was several thousand Americans left behind. This is good news that we’re getting them out. The bad news is that we left them in the first place.”
“And the big question mark is how many are left behind — nobody knows,” she added.
“But it’s not one or two. Chances are, it could even be as much as 1,000 if you listen to the Pentagon reports.”
McFarland also addressed President Joe Biden’s handling of the military’s departure from Afghanistan and responded to recent comments from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who said he did not agree with the president’s plans.
“Also critical of President Trump, [Gates] said, as soon as you signed that deal we should have started bringing people out then,” Kilmeade said of Gates’ comments.
“President Trump was bringing people out, even before we signed that deal. And so the continuation of bringing those people out would have meant that by the time you got to the deadline, they would have been out,” McFarland claimed.
“What happened is that the Biden administration came in and they reversed that. They stopped taking people out. In fact, they added people, because they wanted to shore up the Afghan government.”
Gates shared his concerns regarding the Afghanistan departure during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday.
“It was really tough for a few days there,” Gates said during the interview.
“I actually wasn’t feeling very well, and I realized it was because of what was happening in Kabul and I was just so low about the way it had ended.”
[firefly_embed]
[/firefly_embed]
“And I guess the other feeling that I had was that it probably did not need to have turned out that way,” Gates added.
“Once President Biden reaffirmed that there was going to be a firm deadline date, that’s the point at which I think they should have begun bringing those people out.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.