WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, on Sunday released the following statement after the Taliban took control of the presidential palace in Kabul:

“My heart is heavy today thinking about the innocent Afghan people who have been caught in the crosshairs of this conflict for decades and now face a devastatingly precarious future. My thoughts are also with all the U.S. military families whose lives have been turned upside down by this war. Our priority now needs to be evacuating American personnel and as many of our Afghan partners as humanly possible,” said Murphy. “But I firmly believe that President Biden made the right decision by standing by the Trump administration’s decision to bring our troops home and end the longest war in our nation’s history.”

Murphy continued: “Our central mission in Afghanistan—to decimate al Qaeda—was completed long ago. We must maintain counter-terrorism capabilities to make sure al Qaeda in Afghanistan never again presents a threat to the United States, but our twenty year, trillion plus dollar nation-building campaign, crippled by design flaws, cannot continue. I know this is hard for the foreign policy establishment in Washington to accept, but staying another year or five years or ten years wouldn’t have changed that. At the very least, I hope this tragedy allows U.S. policymakers and military leaders to finally learn a lesson about the hubris of sending our military to far off places to try and build modern armies and democratic governments in our mold.”

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