MSNBC expert schools Republicans on what disastrous withdrawals actually looked like through history
Many Republican lawmakers are spinning the withdrawal from Afghanistan as the worst thing ever to happen throughout the entirety of American history.
However, one foreign policy expert schooled the GOP on this historic distortions during an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, former diplomat Richard Stengel explained that in the course of withdrawals, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan doesn't even come close to the horrors seen in withdrawals throughout history.
"At the risk of seeming like an ivory tower professor, I just want to put the withdrawal in historical context," he began. "Here's a disastrous withdrawal. When the British left Afghanistan in 1842, 4,500 troops left Kabul and one Englishman 11 days later arrived in Jalalabad. That was a disastrous evacuation."
And the British experience in Afghanistan wasn't their only disastrous withdrawal, Stengel continued.
"When the British left India in 1947, 1948, just pulled out," he said. "Over the next few years, 2 million people died as that country was divided in half. When the French left Algeria in 1962, hundreds of thousands of people died, including thousands and thousands of Frenchmen, and that country is still not healed. Those are disastrous withdrawals."
He noted that the dust still hasn't settled on Afghanistan, but over 100,000 people were evacuated.
"When we left Vietnam in 1975, you could argue that every member, every citizen of South Vietnam worked for the Americans during that war and we took a few thousand people out," Stengel continued. "We left while we were being fired upon by the enemy. You know, the country was taken over. So, those are disastrous withdrawals. I just wanted to put that in perspective. I'm not exonerating or explaining away what happened, but that's just some historical perspective."
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