U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson takes issue with President Joe Biden calling the withdrawal from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success.”
The congressman from Centre County stated Tuesday after Biden addressed the nation, “Today is not a celebration” of the end of the two-decade war.
“The Biden administration’s haphazard withdrawal has resulted in 13 unnecessary deaths of U.S. service members, the abandonment of hundreds of Americans and Afghan allies and the arming of our enemy with billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment,” Thompson said in statement after Biden defended the withdrawal.
“This failure by the Biden administration has empowered terrorists and casts doubt in the minds of our allies,” Thompson said.
A defensive Biden called the U.S. airlift to extract more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and other allies from Afghanistan to end a 20-year war an “extraordinary success,” though more than 100 Americans and thousands of others were left behind.
Twenty-four hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane roared off from Kabul, Biden spoke to the nation and defended his decision to end America’s longest war and withdraw all U.S. troops ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.
“I was not going to extend this forever war,” Biden declared from the White House. “And I was not going to extend a forever exit.”
U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, a Snyder County Republican, tweeted Tuesday that while the president declared the war over for the United States, “Our mission in Afghanistan isn’t over until every American is safely home.”
Keller was critical of the president for giving his address but then turning away without answering questions.
“The President of the United States is abandoning Americans in a terrorist war zone, and he cannot be bothered to answer a single question from the press,” Keller tweeted.
He also called Biden placing blame for the debacle in the Afghanistan withdrawal on former President Donald Trump “cowardly.”
Biden has faced harsh criticism about the way the U.S. went about leaving Afghanistan — a chaotic evacuation that included a suicide bombing last week that killed 13 American service members and 169 Afghans.
Defiant in the face of the criticism, particularly from Republicans, Biden argued it was inevitable that the final departure from two decades of war, first negotiated with the Taliban for May 1 by Trump, would have been difficult, with likely violence, no matter when it was planned and conducted.
