Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton criticized the Biden administration’s Afghanistan strategy, saying, “We don’t have a plan,” with respect to current or future evacuations of U.S. citizens and others from the Taliban-controlled nation.
The Marine Corps veteran, who just returned from an unauthorized trip to Kabul, praised the initiative of forces for making up for the lack of planning, arguing successful extractions were carried out without any real help from Washington.
“We don’t have a plan,” Moulton said Friday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Everything that’s happening right now, these extraordinary numbers of people that we’re bringing out, it’s because of these heroic efforts by our troops and our State Department diplomats, young consulate officers trying to sort through immigration paperwork. It’s because of their heroism on the ground we’re saving so many people, not because anyone in Washington gave them a plan.”
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Moulton, along with Army veteran and Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, made a secret trip to Afghanistan on Tuesday during which they observed current evacuation efforts before leaving in less than 24 hours. Both have been highly critical of the administration since.
“The thing that everybody needs to understand, even if you completely agree with the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw, the way they have handled this has been a total f***ing disaster,” Moulton said in a separate interview with New York magazine. “It will be measured in bodies because a lot of people are dying because they can’t get out.”
Still, Moulton agreed with President Joe Biden’s decision to stick with the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal, despite pressure from some to change tactics in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
“One of the most important things I learned from being there, though, was that we can’t extend this deadline because we have to bring people home after we leave, and without getting into the details of the negotiations, that’s not a tenable position if we stay beyond Aug. 31. We’ve tried to negotiate that with the Taliban, and it’s not going to work,” he said. “People in Washington have put these troops in the place where they need the Taliban’s help.”
Biden administration officials have said the evacuation effort relies on a level of cooperation with the Taliban to let U.S. citizens and others through checkpoints and into the airport, even though Biden acknowledged in an address to the nation Thursday that the Taliban are “not good guys.”
A terror attack outside the Kabul airport gates on Thursday for which the Islamic State Khorasan claimed responsibility significantly raised the stakes and concern over the security of evacuations. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed, and another 18 were injured in the blast. At least 95 Afghans were also killed.
Both Biden and U.S. Central Command head Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said on Thursday that U.S. forces would target the perpetrators of Thursday’s attack.
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Some 12,500 people were evacuated from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul between Aug. 26 at 3 a.m. and the same time the next day, even amid the fatal blast, a White House official said. Since Aug. 14, the United States has overseen the evacuation of approximately 105,000 people.
