House Armed Services Committee Republicans, led by Ranking Member Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, wrote a letter pressing President Joe Biden for a plan on Afghanistan.
In the letter the members wrote: “For months, we have been asking you for a plan on your withdrawal from Afghanistan. You failed to provide us with one and based on the horrific events currently unfolding in Afghanistan, we are confident that we never received your plan because you never had one.”
The Republicans on the committee demanded that Biden provide Congress with a plan to prevent terror groups from using Afghanistan as a “safe haven” after the Taliban takeover.
The Republicans criticized the president’s response to the worsening security and humanitarian situation unfolding.
Congressman Jerry Carl, R-Alabama, also serves on the HASC Committee and signed the letter.
Carl said: “I join countless colleagues in urging President Biden to return from vacation and immediately brief Congress on the Administration’s plan to ensure the safety and security of American citizens and American allies in Afghanistan, while also ensuring this short-sighted and poorly executed withdrawal does not create an opportunity for terrorists to capitalize on the instability in Afghanistan. The world is watching, and it’s time for President Biden to be a leader.”
“President Biden’s hasty, failed withdrawal from Afghanistan is one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Carl said. “This horrible blunder has sent a clear message to our allies, as well as our enemies, across the world that the Biden Administration cannot be trusted to uphold its promises and stand with our allies.”
The Republicans wrote in the letter that this “could have been avoided if you had done any planning.”
“Pretending this isn’t your problem will only make things worse,” the HASC members wrote.
Congresswoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, also signed the letter.
“It is, of course, just catastrophic. It didn’t have to be this way,” Cheney told CBS News’s Gayle King. “And what concerns me most going forward from a national security perspective is the extent to which al Qaeda, ISIS, other terrorist organizations now have an entire country that the Taliban controls. We know 20 years ago the Taliban was hosting al Qaeda while they planned the attacks against us. I also am very concerned about the prisoners that have been released across the country. You’ve got prisoners that were released not only that are likely — that will get back into the battle for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan but will potentially populate terrorist organizations globally. So, we’ve really entered a very dangerous new phase now in the War on Terror, created an additional security situation and danger that we simply didn’t need to create — totally unnecessary.”
“This decision to just fundamentally withdraw really — we’re watching unfold what it looks like when America adopts a policy of retreat, when America adopts a policy of surrender. It makes us less safe, and it’s going to make the war longer,” Cheney predicted.
The GOP lawmakers said they are “gravely concerned” that the “void” left in Afghanistan will be “rapidly filled by terror groups.”
