Britain’s ex-PM John Major blasts UK’s Afghanistan withdrawal as ‘very stupid’
Britain’s former Prime Minister John Major has blasted the UK withdrawal from Afghanistan as “strategically very stupid” and depicted it as a “shameful” failure.
“I think we were wrong morally but we were also wrong practically… It's also I think strategically very stupid,” Major said at the FT Weekend Festival on Saturday.
After the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan, the UK managed to evacuate about 15,000 people, leaving many thousands behind, who aided the British forces in the war-torn country.
Speaking to the London event, Major told that it was “shameful we weren’t able to take out those who had worked for us in one capacity or another, or who had worked carrying out the changes to Afghanistan that the Taliban won’t approve of.”
Turning his excoriating criticism towards US President Joe Biden, Major blamed the White House dweller for his administration’s hasty troop pullout ahead of an August 31 deadline.
“The fact that it was left in that fashion will leave a stain on the reputation of the West that will last for a very long time and certainly through the whole of the lifetime of those people in Afghanistan whom we have returned to Taliban rule,” said the former Tory PM.
Major’s fierce attack on the current cabinet comes in the wake of scathing comments from Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who asserted that the “West's resolve” is perceived as “weak” by adversaries following the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The West's military engagement in Afghanistan lasted nearly 20 years and cost trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives.
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