Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tore into President Joe Biden for a reported plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11.
“The Biden administration plans to turn tail and abandon the fight in Afghanistan,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “Precipitously withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan is a grave mistake. It is a retreat in the face of an enemy that has not yet been vanquished — an abdication of American leadership.”
Senior administration officials told news outlets on Tuesday that they would keep troops in Afghanistan past the May 1 deadline that was part of a peace agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban. The new deadline, Sept. 11, is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Around 2,500 U.S. troops and 1,000 special forces remain in Afghanistan.
BIDEN TO WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM AFGHANISTAN BY SEPT. 11
“Leaders in both parties, including me, offered criticism when the prior administration floated the concept of a reckless withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “Those same voices should be equally concerned about the Biden administration announcement today.”
Biden’s planned pullback, McConnell warned, would mean the U.S. abandoning regional and NATO partners in the region.
“It will also specifically abandon the women of Afghanistan whose freedoms and human rights will be in peril,” McConnell said.
He noted that a bipartisan super-majority of senators in 2019 voted in favor of a McConnell amendment that warned against retreating from Afghanistan.
That amendment called on the Trump administration to “certify that conditions have been met for the enduring defeat of al Qaeda and ISIS before initiating any significant withdrawal of United States forces from Syria or Afghanistan,” and passed with the support of 70 senators.
“Can President Biden certify that right now?” McConnell asked.
Vice President Kamala Harris, notably, voted against McConnell’s amendment in 2019.
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“Conflicts do not simply end. They are won, or they are lost,” McConnell said. “America and American administrations must be in the business of winning.”
