Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing back against Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) Afghanistan prediction.
During an interview with the BBC, Graham predicted the United States will send troops to Afghanistan again in the future.
According to an advance transcript obtained by Mediaite of Lisa Boothe’s interview with Pompeo, the former secretary of state told her, “I pray that Lindsey’s wrong.”
Pompeo also said he and Graham “had different views” on Afghanistan while he was with the Trump administration.
“He had more confidence in the Ghani government than I ever could muster,” Pompeo explained.
The former secretary of state added, “[Ghani was] not truly interested in working the political process inside of Afghanistan in a serious way. He was more comfortable working the power corridors of Washington, D.C. than he was the political operations in Kabul and surrounding provinces.”
Graham stunned the BBC reporter with his prediction. He told host Stephen Sackur, “Whether you like Trump or not, whether you believe it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault, here’s where we’re at as a world, the Taliban are not reformed, they’re not new.”
He continued, “They have a view of the world out of sync with modern times. They’re going to impose a lifestyle on the Afghan people that I think is going to make us all sick to our stomach.”
Graham predicted, “They’re going to give safe haven to Al Qaeda who has ambitions to drive us out of the Mid East 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.”
After Sackur pushed back on Graham’s claim, he argued, “We’ll have to. We’ll have to. Because the threat will be so large.”