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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) has criticized what he called President Joe Biden’s “botched exit” from Afghanistan after the Taliban entered the capital city of Kabul.
The Taliban took control of the presidential palace in Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani fled the war-torn country on Sunday. It took the militants just over a week to seize control of Afghanistan after a lightning sweep that ended in the capital.
“The Biden Administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan including the frantic evacuation of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul is a shameful failure of American leadership,” McConnell wrote in a statement.
In April, Biden announced he would withdraw all troops from the war-torn country. The Taliban has ever since been swiftly taking over the country.
McConnell’s latest criticism comes after his previous statement urging the Biden administration to do more amid the advances by the Taliban.
He previously called on Biden to commit to sending more troops back into Afghanistan after Aug. 31, his target date for withdrawing all soldiers from the region, and urged the president to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban in support of the Afghan forces.
In his statement, he said while the US still has “the capacity to dampen its effects,” a presence on the ground is necessary to do so.
“It did not have to happen this way. The United States had the capacity to avoid this disaster. We still have the capacity to dampen its effects, but without a presence on the ground or local partners, defending the homeland from a resurgent al Qaeda will be far more difficult,” he wrote.
He also said the “likelihood” of al-Qaeda returning “to plot attacks from Afghanistan is growing,” noting that “everyone saw this coming except the President, who publicly and confidently dismissed these threats just a few weeks ago.”
McConnell went on to say that the president is responsible for the “monumental collapse” of Kabul.
