NYT’s Helene Cooper Calls Taliban Takeover a ‘Disturbing Moment’ for America’s Image

The New York Times’ Helene Cooper on Friday called the Taliban’s impending takeover of Afghanistan a “disturbing moment” for America’s image around the globe.

“The pace of the Taliban advance has been, I think, very surprising to the Biden administration,” Cooper said in the interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “This is something that people expected, [but] very few people thought it would come quite as quickly as it has.

“The fact that Kandahar has now fallen was a big one, and if Mazar-i-Sharif goes, that basically is going to leave Kabul isolated,” she added. “Kabul is already pretty isolated, and … you’ll pretty much see the whole evacuation of the embassy and Americans there. I think this is a deeply disturbing moment for Afghanistan, but it also is … kind of a disturbing moment, I think, for America’s image all over the world.”

Pentagon officials said Friday 3,000 military personnel deployed to assist with evacuating American citizens from Kabul before the end of the weekend had already begun to arrive.  “We are certainly concerned by the speed with which the Taliban has been moving … it’s deeply concerning,” spokesman John Kirby said at a press conference just hours after the Taliban captured Kandahar, the country’s third-largest city.

Watch above via MSNBC.