Sen. Hagerty advocates for ‘coherent plan’ amid botched Afghanistan evacuation

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Sen. Hagerty on Afghanistan evacuation: Biden admin must foster 'coherent plan'

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., comments on the White House's handling of evacuating American citizens from Afghanistan.

Among various uncertainties and failures in evacuating Americans from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., told "Your World" that step one should be a coherent plan.

Hagerty: We should do what it takes to save and preserve American lives. What we should have is a coherent plan. That's what I haven't seen. As you know, before I took on the position of senator, I served as U.S. ambassador to Japan, third-largest economy in the world. At any point in time, we had over a quarter of a million Americans in Japan. Every chief of mission under their authority’s responsible for those lives and have a plan to evacuate people. I redid mine as soon as I got to Japan because you remember North Korea was launching rockets over us at that point. But I had a plan in place, a workable plan to move and flow Americans out of the country under any type of contingency. We're not seeing that type of planning in place here. That's responsible leadership that's lacking here right now. 

Let me be clear. The Taliban are terrorists. There is an agreement in place put in place last year where the Taliban were going to accede to a cease fire. They're going to abide by the Afghan constitution. There would be a negotiated process where the Taliban would actually work with the Afghan government, not attack them. What we've seen take place here is a military coup d'etat. We can't begin to recognize a government like this.

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