Blinken Says US Will 'Have Means' to Monitor Terrorist Threats After Troops Leave Afghanistan

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week”, host Martha Raddatz asked Blinken about the US having a diminished ability to collect intelligence without troops on the ground.

“We will have the means to see if there is a resurgence, a reemergence of a terrorist threat from Afghanistan,” Blinken stated, adding, “We'll be able to see that in real time with time to take action. And we're going to be repositioning our forces and our assets to make sure that we guard against the potential reemergence.” 

When Raddatz asked about doubts on trusting the Taliban, Blinken explained that the US had "different capabilities, different assets" than in 2001, the year of the 9/11 terrorists attacks.

"Well, that's exactly why we're going to make sure that we have assets appropriately in place to see this coming, if it comes again, to see it and to be able to deal with it," Blinken noted.

"This is, again, a very different world than the one we had in 2001. We have different capabilities, different assets, and I think a greater ability to see something coming with time to do something about it," he continued.

President Joe Biden announced last week that he planned to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year to end America's longest war.

Blinken also pushed back on criticism of Biden's plan to remove US combat troops from Afghanistan, arguing that Washington had fulfilled its mission to end Al-Qaeda's ability to strike at the US.

Blinken told Raddatz that while he respected retired generals including David Petraeus and Joseph Dunford, the Biden administration was following a "deliberate and informed" process leading to the troop withdrawal.

"I have great respect for General Petraeus, General Dunford and others, but we had a very deliberate and fully informed process leading up to the decision by the president," Blinken said.

"[But we] went to Afghanistan 20 years ago, and we went because we were attacked on 9/11, and we went to take on those who had attacked us on 9/11, and to make sure that Afghanistan would not again become a haven for terrorism directed at the United States or any of our allies and partners," Blinken continued, adding, "We achieved the objectives that we set out to achieve."

His remarks come as some American military and intelligence officials have warned publicly that Washington risks seeing Afghanistan's fledgling government be overtaken in a military conflict with the Taliban should the US withdraw from the region, an outcome that would essentially reverse the gains of the past two decades following the Taliban's ouster from power shortly after the US invasion.