joe-biden” target=”_blank”>President Biden<, which has resulted in a swift Taliban takeover of the nation, the abandonment of the American embassy and desperate scenes at the Kabul airport, including Afghans clinging to departing aircraft then falling from the sky.
Republicans are hammering the president for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan at all, how the withdrawal was handled, or both depending on their perspective on continued American troop presence abroad.
Former President Donald Trump, who negotiated with the Taliban and was for leaving Afghanistan, said that Biden should resign over the chaos and disorder that has marred the U.S. exit. On the other side of the spectrum, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, hit Biden for not taking responsibility for the human rights disaster and for allegedly placing politics above the lives of American allies.
“The President’s failure to acknowledge his disastrous withdrawal provides no comfort to Americans or our Afghan partners whose lives hang in the balance,” Romney said. “Contrary to his claims, our choice was not between a hasty and ill-prepared retreat or staying forever.”
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Romney added: “The decision to place a higher priority on a political promise than the lives of innocent men, women and children is a stain on America’s reputation and undermines our credibility around the world.”
Biden in a Monday address only briefly acknowledged the “gut-wrenching” scenes in Afghanistan, without going into any detail. Instead, he defended the decision to leave the country without taking responsibility for the disorganized way in which it was done, and blamed Afghans for quickly submitting to the Taliban.
“I’m now the fourth American President to preside over war in Afghanistan — two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibly on — responsibility on to a fifth President,” Biden said. “I cannot and I will not ask our troops to fight on endlessly in another — in another country’s civil war, taking casualties, suffering life-shattering injuries, leaving families broken by grief and loss.”
Biden spent time in Delaware and Camp David as the Taliban routed all resistance and took control of Afghanistan in mere days. He flew from Camp David to the White House briefly for his address Monday before returning to Camp David immediately after speaking.
President Joe Biden steps off Marine One upon arrival at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware. Biden spent time in Delaware and Camp David as the Taliban routed all resistance and took over Afghanistan in mere days. He returned to the White House to deliver an address Monday but then flew back to Camp David immediately after.
(Photo by Nicholas Kamm)
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A White House official, meanwhile, said Tuesday that the international airport in Kabul is now open and successfully evacuating Americans and Afghans. The airport had been closed because of hordes of desperate civilians crowding on the runways trying to get onto departing planes.
Some Democrats defended the president, including Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The speaker said in a Monday statement that Biden “to be commended for his strong leadership and exceptional focus on bringing American military involvement in Afghanistan to an end.”
But some of the most biting criticism of the president has come from within his own party.
“These past few days have been difficult to process, and not because the Taliban’s progress was surprising. In fact, the opposite,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., said in a statement. “We sounded the alarm, and our dire warnings fell on deaf ears.”
Notably, a separate bipartisan group called on the president to establish a coherent plan to evacuate Afghanistan in June.
Houlahan is a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. And in the Senate, two committee chairmen said they plan to investigate the United States’ failures in Afghanistan, including the botched withdrawal.
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“As the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I hope to work with the other committees of jurisdiction to ask tough but necessary questions about why we weren’t better prepared for a worst-case scenario involving such a swift and total collapse of the Afghan government and security forces,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said Monday.
“At the appropriate time, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on what went wrong in Afghanistan and lessons learned to avoid repeating those mistakes,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., also said.
“There are no easy answers to how we got here,” he said, blaming former President Donald Trump and Pakistan, but also more recent “lack of imagination as we transitioned military forces from the country.”
Reed added: “This is not a Democratic or a Republican problem. These failures have been manifesting over four presidential administrations of both political parties.”
Even Biden ally Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., had some criticism, arguing that “the withdrawal of U.S. troops should have been carefully planned to prevent violence and instability.”
Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
((Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images))
“[W]ithout swift, decisive action from the administration, Afghan civilians will suffer or die at the hands of the Taliban,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said Monday. She demanded that the administration take action to more effectively evacuate women, human rights activists, journalists and more, amid “images of Afghan civilians at the airport pleading to be evacuated” that were “seared into our minds.”
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Shaheen Tuesday joined 43 other Democratic senators on a letter asking the Biden administration to step up his efforts to protect women specifically.
“We are gravely concerned about the safety of women leaders, activists, judges, parliamentarians, and human rights defenders,” the senators said.
Major General Hank Taylor at a Pentagon briefing Tuesday said that there will be 4,000 more American troops on the ground in Kabul by the end of the day and that the U.S. – which controls air traffic at the airport – plans for one aircraft to depart per hour.
A U.S. official said Monday that they expect the United States to be completely out of Afghanistan in three days.
Fox News’ Kelly Phares, Lucas Tomlinson, R.N. White and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
