Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday 16th of July that the Afghan people should take up arms to prevent the Taliban from gaining full control of the country.
Mike Pompeo in an interview with the Associated Press, said Afghan forces can fight back the Taliban but it is a matter of will’. He further said “I saw some 22, 23-year-old Afghan males say ‘it’s really dangerous here. I want to get out,”
“What those Afghans should have been saying is it’s really dangerous here, give me an M16,” he added.
President Donald Trump praised President Joe Biden’s move to withdraw from Afghanistan, he was raised concern that US counter-terrorism operations could be hurt in the process.
Pompeo was in Des Moines, Lowa on Friday speaking at several events. He also had a conference for conservative Christian, speaking in the conference he said “we are not a defeated nation. We are not a nation in decline. We are not a racist nation. We are a God-blessed Christian nation”.
Pompeo also pushed Biden to increase pressure on the Cuban government as antigovernment protests erupted on the island Sunday amid a resurgence of coronavirus cases and the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
Pompeo re-designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terror” during the Trump administration’s final days, even as Biden was promising a new approach to the communist governed island.
The protests have been stimulated by food shortages, rising prices, and power cuts, but Pompeo stuck to the hardline, “American first”, view of foreign policy. He further warned that any moves to send funds to Cuba would show “a fundamental misunderstanding of totalitarian regimes”.
“You can’t fund them, you can’t underwrite them”, he said.
He also suggested instead the US could make moves like opening internet access that would help protestors coordinate and increase pressure on the Cuban government.
