Source: United States Senator for North Carolina Thom Tillis
Today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) issued the following statement on President Biden’s speech on the fall of Afghanistan and the humanitarian crisis:
“President Biden created a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and he is now deflecting responsibility and not being honest with the nation. He is banking on the hope that the American people won’t care and that the media will move on.
“The American people will care that President Biden was repeatedly warned by military leaders that his arbitrary and inflexible withdrawal would be an unmitigated disaster and he ignored them.
“The American people will care that President Biden’s reckless abandonment paves the path for the reconstitution of al-Qaeda and other terrorists in Afghanistan, who will once again try to target and murder Americans. As noted by our top generals, it’s a matter of when, not if.
“The American people will care that the Biden administration had seven months to formulate a plan to safely evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees, and failed to do so.
“President Biden isn’t being honest when he deflects all responsibility and claims his hands were tied by President Trump. Biden certainly wasn’t complaining about tied hands earlier this year when he was boasting about withdrawing all U.S. forces. I had serious concerns with the previous administration’s repeated intentions to withdraw, but I also understood we could not stay in Afghanistan forever. There is also a right way and a wrong way to withdraw. Biden chose the wrong way, setting his own arbitrary deadline and having no plan in place to ensure our withdrawal would be safe, orderly, and based on conditions on the ground.
“American citizens and our Afghan allies are now stranded and feel abandoned by the American government. Some of our Afghan friends have already been executed by the Taliban. The Biden administration needs to be moving heaven and earth to ensure that we leave no American behind and keep our promise to provide refuge to the brave Afghans who assisted our troops.
“Every President makes mistakes, and this is a grave one. But the testament of a good leader is to acknowledge their mistake and work to correct it. President Biden instead chose to hide when things got tough, and then deflected all responsibility after he was shamed into finally addressing the nation after a week of silence.
“The American people, especially the brave Americans who fought in Afghanistan, deserve real answers and better leadership from the President.”
###