Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, France’s right-wing populist party, has harshly criticized the Biden administration for ceding Kabul and Afghanistan to Taliban fighters, stating that it shows the United States is no longer able to defend the interests of the free world.
Le Pen, who is widely regarded as President Emmanuel Macron’s top challenger for the French presidential elections in 2022, issued her statement on Monday in a press release, the day after Taliban forces took control of Afghanistan.
In the press release, which was published on the party’s website, Le Pen likened the scenes coming out of Afghanistan to those seen during the fall of Saigon in 1975. In addition to harshly criticizing the Biden administration, the European Union, and Macron, the National Rally leader outlined what the Taliban’s victory means for the Afghan and Europeans.
“The first victim of the Talibanization of Afghanistan will be the Afghan people, and in particular Afghan women, who are once again condemned to live in an era of regressive terror,” Le Pen said, adding “There is no doubt that this situation will lead to an increased risk of attacks for our countries and the prospects of new waves of immigration.”
As Remix News recently reported, the Green Party’s candidate for German chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, has already urged Germany and other Western countries to take in hundreds of thousands of Afghan asylum seekers, despite the severe problems precipitated by the migrant crisis in 2015.
Sybille Schnehage, a German humanitarian aid worker who has been working in Afghanistan since the 1980s, recently predicted that up to three million Afghans could begin making their way to Europe in the foreseeable future.
Later on, in the press release, Le Pen slammed the Biden administration, the European Union, and NATO for their incompetence and ineffectiveness.
“The United States under Biden administration demonstrate their inability to defend and therefore represent the interests of the free world,” she said. “NATO, which timidly calls for a ‘political solution’ in Afghanistan, is content to pitifully note its military powerlessness and therefore its uselessness, which is now fully proven.”
“The European Union, which leaves France alone to contain the Islamist push in Africa, has demonstrated in this affair its disastrous inability to weigh favorably in a conflict which nevertheless jeopardized the security of Europe and the world,” Le Pen added.
Le Pen didn’t stop there, however. She then set her sights on French President Emmanuel Macron, saying that he is “just a simple observer of international life” who has been “reduced to communicating on his diplomatic non-existence.”
The same day, Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini also commented on the Fall of Kabul, saying: “The cowardice of Western governments helps Islamic terrorists and the enemies of civilization and freedom. Fight them and annihilate them, everywhere and without respite.”
Populists like Le Pen and Salvini are not the only European politicians to have harsh words for Biden’s decision. Politicians from the so-called mainstream have criticized the American leader as well.
During comments on the Biden administration’s hasty withdrawal, Norbert Röttgen, CDU politician and chairman of the German parliament’s foreign relations committee, said: “I say this with a heavy heart and with horror over what is happening, but the early withdrawal was a serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration.”
“This does fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West,” Röttgen added.
Amid the widespread disapproval over his handling of the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden has claimed responsibility for the decision and blamed the Taliban’s takeover on political leaders in Afghanistan and its military.
