WASHINGTON — For more than two months, Mitch McConnell has excoriated President Joe Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan as a “hasty abandonment” that will “threaten the U.S. homeland” and lead to a “likely catastrophe.”
An accelerated exit that will now pull a significant number of U.S. troops out by this weekend’s July Fourth holiday could determine the prescience of the Senate Minority Leader’s dire warnings sooner than expected.
Whereas military officials have said that al-Qaida could regroup to target the U.S. in two years, McConnell conveyed just last week that he suspects “this threat will come much more quickly.”
“The threats we face from terrorism and tyranny have not been defeated,” the Kentuckian said after meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the Capitol.
This week, the U.S.’s top general in the country, Gen. Austin Miller, relayed that the Taliban has already overtaken portions of Afghanistan, potentially converting America’s longest foreign war into a bloody internecine civil war.
But even analysts who oppose an immediate U.S. pullout doubt that al-Qaida and its Taliban allies could reassemble dominance under a watchful U.S. eye.
“I think we will devote lots of intelligence to the problem to be sure sanctuaries don’t develop — in the short term or the longer term of a few years,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in defense and foreign policy. “But it is unlikely that we will be unable to see a huge ISIS or al-Qaida sanctuary develop. Thus the odds against a major staging base are modest, I hope.”
But, O’Hanlon added, “McConnell is right that we are entering uncharted territory — with some echoes, alas, of the situation in the 1990s, if Afghanistan collapses and/or comes under Taliban rule.”
Retired Gen. David Patreaus said on a Washington Post livestream he didn’t see a threat to the homeland “in the near future, but needless to say we’ll see what they’re capable of doing and we’re going to have to pay very close attention.”
Ever since Biden announced his decision in mid-April to remove most of American troops and U.S. contractors from Afghanistan, McConnell has responded with some of his most blistering critiques of the president.
“The likely catastrophe in Afghanistan may well consume this administration,” he predicted at the end of April. McConnell foresees a refugee crisis, followed by a “security and economic crisis across the region,” due to what he calls a “retreat” rooted in “dangerous wishful thinking.”
The Biden administration counters that it was former President Donald Trump who set in motion the timeline last year and “that if we did not withdraw our troops, U.S. men and women would be facing fire on the ground,” according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
McConnell opposed Trump’s move toward an Afghanistan pullout as well, introducing a 2019 amendment warning against precipitous withdrawal that netted 70 Senate votes.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of 26 to oppose that McConnell amendment, took to the Senate floor to challenge McConnell to introduce a fresh authorization of military force to continue a war that’s two decades old.
“If he believes we should stay or send more troops there, that is his right. He can offer that on the floor of the Senate,” said Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Why doesn’t he offer that? An authorization of use of military force? I think we know the answer. There’s little or no support on his side of the aisle, nor on this side of the aisle, to make the longest war in American history, even longer.”
A McConnell spokesperson notes there’s already an existing authorization of military force in place for Afghanistan. The real question is if Democrats want to repeal it, like the House voted to strike down the one used for the invasion of Iraq earlier this month.
Last week, the Senate considered a bill by Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana to direct the U.S. government to relocate Afghan allies, like English-speaking translators, to the U.S. before the Taliban can exact revenge.
“If we don’t do something they’re going to be butchered, they’re going to be gutted like a deer,” Kennedy pleaded.
But Kentucky’s junior senator, Rand Paul, objected, arguing that removing allies from the country would only precipitate the Taliban’s return to power.
“The quest for liberty requires fighting,” Paul said. “The future of Afghanistan could be a bright future but they’re going to have to fight for it. And ultimately it is their fight.”
Paul, arguably the Senate’s leading anti-interventionist abroad, has also said he could be further convinced on spending money on infrastructure if the U.S. stopped pouring resources into Afghanistan.
A 2020 Defense Department report calculated war-fighting costs to total $815 billion.
More than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed and 20,000 wounded in the war since 2001. Additionally, 3,800 private security contractors and 66,000 Afghan troops have lost their lives.
The Biden administration has assured that it will continue to provide “sustained” security assistance, but has been vague about what that exactly entails.
Still, for the moment, American public opinion is siding with Biden over McConnell on the exit.
Sixty-two percent of those polled by Quinnipiac University in late May said they approve of the Biden withdrawal, including 41% of Republicans and 63% of independents.
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