CRYSTAL SPRINGS, Miss. (WJTV) – A day after the last United States Troops left Afghanistan, Tuesday President Joe Biden declared an end to Americas longest war.
12 News spoke exclusively with Crystal Springs Police Chief Tony Hemphill, who served in Afghanistan near the time this 20-year war began. Hemphill was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan in 2003 as an A-5 sergeant. He says the decision by President Biden to end this war may hurt America more than it helps it.
August 31st was President Joe Biden’s deadline for evacuating Afghanistan and Tuesday he defended that decision.
The President say he “respectfully disagree” with those who say America should’ve started mass evacuation sooner and in a more orderly manner. The President says there’s no war that you can evacuate from without the chaos we faced.
Crystal Springs Police Chief Tony Hemphill, who served in Afghanistan for 11 months says a plan should have been in place. Adding that the safe way is to have phases of an evacuation plan.
More than 120,000 people, including 6,000 Americans were evacuated from the Kabul airport. In the process, tens of millions of dollars of equipment were left behind and 13 military service members were killed.
Hemphill thinks this entire process will be something that America will have to pay for.
“We have lost some friends and lost respect in the eyes of some of our allies and our enemies who are now saying that America is not the same as it was years ago” said Chief Hemphill.
Hemphill says that he agrees that we need to be out of Afghanistan, but not out completely because “Afghanistan is strategic in our mission in the Middle East. Now we don’t have that area that we already have set up to defend against terror.”
There are still hundreds of Americans left in Afghanistan. President Biden says that there is no deadline and he’s committed to getting them out if they want to leave.