Source: Kyle Becker

NBC’s Chief Foreign News Correspondent Richard Engels delivered a strong assessment of President Biden’s Afghanistan surrender in a historical context. Engels appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in the striking clip, which was captured by MRC.

“The U.S. is withdrawing after 20 years of Afghanistan and it is leaving behind a government of the Taliban….there are many people who are being left behind,” Engels said.

“But what is the legacy? What is the legacy? There are people that are saying, ‘was it worth it’? ‘It wasn’t worth anything, we’re in the same place where we started from’,” he continued. “Many people I’m speaking to say we are worse off than we were in the beginning because within a few weeks of launching this war, the Taliban were overthrown, Al Qaeda was scattered. Now, the U.S. is leaving after 20 years with the Taliban in power and the United States having been driven out. It is a tremendous legacy.”

“Go back to Osama bin Laden,” he added.W”hy did Osama bin Laden launch 9/11? What inspired him to do that? He was in Afghanistan, he saw a small group of Islamist fighters were able to push out the Soviet Union, and he thought, why not take on the United States? And right now, a larger group of Islamist fighters pushed out the United States. So are we going to see the next Osama bin Laden learning the lesson of what is happening right now?” Advertisements

“We are coming to the conclusion, with the United States leaving, we’ll wait for an announcement, and leaving a legacy behind that I think some have described it as the worst capitulation of western values in our lifetimes,” Engels concluded.

President Biden earlier pledged to bring all Americans home by the August 31 deadline or to leave military troops in the country until that promise is fulfilled. Despite ‘several hundreds’ of Americans left behind in Afghanistan, the Biden administration announced the “last plane” out of Kabul airport left on Monday.

The deadline is on Tuesday and thousands of “hardcore” fighters are reported to be in Afghanistan seeking out the Americans.