A moderate Republican senator unloaded on President Joe Biden after the latter suggested on Tuesday that the US would not extend its deadline to remove all combat forces from Afghanistan, and accused the president of being too trusting of Taliban officials.
Ben Sasse, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement urging Mr Biden to keep US forces in Kabul as long as was necessary to safely remove every last American citizen from the country.
“Damn the deadline,” Mr Sasse said. “The American people are not going to surrender our fellow citizens to the Taliban.”
“The Biden administration needs to cut the Stockholm Syndrome,” he added. “If President Biden accepts the Taliban’s terms he’ll be the one holding the shovel in Afghanistan’s ‘Graveyard of Empires.’”
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that the Biden administration believes it can remove all Americans who wish to exit Afghanistan by the 31 August pullout deadline, while he and other officials have admitted some difficulty in reaching some American citizens in the country just as news reports have indicated that many are being harassed or even blocked from entering Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
Mr Sasse urged the White House in his statement to “tell the Taliban we’re getting our people out however long it takes, and that we’re perfectly willing to spill Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS blood to do it”.
As recently as Monday, administration officials including Mr Sullivan had left open the possibility of extending the US mission at the Kabul airport beyond August 31. On Tuesday, however, an administration official confirmed to news outlets that the president had accepted a recommendation from the Pentagon to stick to the deadline, which top generals apparently believe is sufficient time to remove Americans, Afghan nationals and others from the country.
A spokesman for the Taliban hinted on Tuesday that there would be “consequences” should the US fail to abide by its previously-agreed-upon withdrawal timeline.
Should that deal be violated, it would mean that the president “has violated the commitment he has made,” the Taliban official, Suhail Shaheen, told CBS News. “So in light of that violation, it [would be] up to our leadership to decide what to do."
