‘Making Neville Chamberlain look competent.’ Barr assails Biden on Afghanistan.
Kentucky’s Republican congressmen are asking President Joe Biden to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan until all Americans and Afghan allies have been evacuated.
Rep. Andy Barr, a member of the House Foreign Services committee, renewed his call on Wednesday as Biden has shown no indication he plans to extend his self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal.
“Biden’s weakness & capitulation to Taliban demands for Aug 31 deadline is making Neville Chamberlain (sic) look like a competent wartime leader,” Barr tweeted.
Rep. James Comer, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said he hoped Biden was overseeing a head fake.
“I hope the president is not being 100% truthful in that he’s not showing his hand on that Aug. 31 deadline, because there’s no humanly way possible we’re going to be able to remove all the Americans and all of the Afghanis who we promised refuge to by Aug. 31,” Comer said. “I’m hopeful he’s not being accurate with that because we should never leave any American behind.”
Comer said he would continue to support a troop presence even if it takes weeks or months to complete the rescue mission.
Rep. Hal Rogers joined a bicameral letter to Biden requesting more answers from the White House about the plan moving forward.
“Instead of caving to an arbitrary deadline with the Taliban, President Biden should first guarantee that every American is accounted for and safely evacuated from Afghanistan,” said Rogers.
After an initially chaotic and dangerous scene at the Kabul airport last week, the Biden administration has made progress in getting Americans out of the Taliban-controlled country. On Tuesday, Biden announced the U.S. had helped evacuate 70,700 people since Aug. 14th, including nearly 22,000 in a recent 24-hour period.
There have been no reported U.S. lives lost during the missions.
“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st. The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops,” Biden said. On Wednesday, Biden largely ignored a question from a reporter about what he would do if Americans remain in Afghanistan after Aug. 31.
“You’ll be the first person I call,” he joked before walking out of the room.
But Republicans say they are still unclear how many Americans remain and have lambasted the Biden administration for its unpreparedness at the outset.
“For months, we have consistently urged President Biden and his administration to develop and implement a plan to evacuate our Afghan partners, to secure the U.S. embassy and keep Americans in the country safe, and to manage the impending humanitarian crisis. He ignored us. We are facing this shameful moment in our history because of President Biden’s failed leadership. Full stop,” Barr said.
For some Republicans, the abrupt and haphazard withdrawal has again flipped the politics of intervention.
“I never wanted to go to Afghanistan in the first place,” said Comer, noting he ran for Congress in 2016 supporting a withdrawal of troops.
But as a leading member of House Oversight, he said he’s been left with few answers about how many total Americans are in Afghanistan, including those outside of the capital city.
“We’re getting people out of Kabul, but what about the other cities in Afghanistan? There were Americans in every city in Afghanistan,” Comer said.
When the House returns in September, he said he plans to investigate how much military weaponry and ammunition the U.S. left behind and find out how much money was taken by Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president who fled his country as the Taliban took over.
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 4:03 PM with the headline "‘Making Neville Chamberlain look competent.’ Barr assails Biden on Afghanistan.."
