President Joe Biden’s team can expect to face bipartisan backlash over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as prominent Senate Democrats join Republicans in faulting the administration for mismanaging the chaotic exit.
“Intelligence officials have anticipated for years that in the absence of the U.S. military, the Taliban would continue to make gains in Afghanistan,” Senate Intelligence Chairman Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said Monday. “That is exactly what has happened as the Afghan National Security Forces proved unable or unwilling to defend against Taliban advances in Kabul and across the country.”
Taliban forces swept across the country in the months following Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces, culminating in an assault on city centers that saw Kabul fall just eight days after the Taliban seized its first provincial capital. Biden and other U.S. officials have characterized the deployment of thousands of American troops to secure Kabul airport as a case of the administration activating a contingency plan. Still, Warner and other Democrats have signaled their displeasure with the administration.
“When we are sure Americans and our Afghan partners are safe, Congress and the Administration must work together to assess why we did not anticipate that the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces would prove so ineffective in holding off the Taliban and why our plans to safely evacuate embassy personnel, Afghan translators, and others did not account for the rapid Taliban takeover of Kabul,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said Monday. “For now, though, we must focus on the mission at hand and limit further loss of life.”
BIDEN: ‘I STAND SQUARELY BEHIND MY DECISION’ ON AFGHANISTAN
Lawmakers have been alarmed for months about the fate of the Afghan nationals who face retaliation from the resurgent Taliban for their work on behalf of the U.S. government.
“I really worry about those left behind,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell earlier Monday. “I don’t know, for the life of me, why they waited until the very last week or days to do this when we were calling upon them for months to get them out of that country.”
Biden acknowledged the collapse “did unfold more quickly than we anticipated” in a speech Monday afternoon, but he blamed the Afghan government for not evacuating those people soon enough.
“The Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence,” Biden said.
As it is, that wave of fear broke over the weekend upon the departing Americans at the airport, as the U.S. military attempted to evacuate diplomats from the U.S. Embassy and other allied governments as the Taliban entered the capital. Crowds of Afghan nationals tried to force their way on the planes, with some clambering onto the outside of C-17s that were already rolling for takeoff. Video surfaced on social media, reportedly showing three individuals falling to their deaths after managing to hold onto the plane wheels after it lifted off the ground.
“I’m not going to mince my words on this,” Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who fought in Afghanistan, said Monday. “We didn’t need to be in this position. We didn’t need to be seeing the scenes that we’re seeing at Kabul airport with our Afghan friends climbing aboard C-17s.”
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Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was asked earlier Monday during a media briefing if Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “offered his resignation to the president over this, or if not does he intend to.” Kirby dismissed that question with a laconic, “No.”
