Lawmakers from both parties continued to blast the Biden Administration for its handling of the Afghanistan pullout Tuesday, with lawmakers demanding a rapid acceleration of evacuations they say should have occurred months ago.
Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who already blasted the chaotic evacuation of Kabul as a 'disaster,' complained he has been warning top officials for months to speed them along.
Asked on MSNBC whether President Biden was listening to him, Moulton, a former Marine and Iraq War vet, responded: 'Well he's not listening to me, because for the last few months I have been telling the administration they need to start the evacuation immediately.'
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts spoke of the 'chaos' in Afghanistan, and said evacuations should have been underway for months
'If you simply did the math, with the number of people we need to get out and the number of days that we have before the U.S. troop withdrawal is complete, they should have been conducting this evacuation for months,' he said.
'All the scenes of total chaos that we saw play out on the TV yesterday could have been avoided if the administration planned for this in advance,' said Moulton, who briefly ran for president in 2020.
His comments, which the Republican National Committee blasted out on Twitter, came after a blistering statement on the situation.
'To say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest. Worse, it was avoidable,' said the House Armed Services Committee member. 'The time to debate whether we stay in Afghanistan has passed, but there is still time to debate how we manage our retreat.
Some hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16. 2021
Evacuees crowd the interior of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, carrying some 640 Afghans to Qatar from Kabul, Afghanistan August 15, 2021
Florida GOP Rep. Brian Mast said he fears his former Afghan interpreter will get beheaded
Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde is calling for resignation of Defense Sec. Austin and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley
'For months, I have been calling on the Administration to evacuate our allies immediately—not to wait for paperwork, for shaky agreements with third countries, or for time to make it look more "orderly,"' he said.
He also tweeted: 'We have a long time to debate whether it was the right decision to withdraw; what we must all be focused on right now is how we do it. It’s still within America’s power to save innocent lives, but the Administration has to step up.'
Florida GOP Rep. Brian Mast tore into Biden in an op-ed where the Afghan war veteran who lost his legs spoke of his fears of what might befall his former Afghan interpreter, who he calls 'Tom.'
'President Biden has abandoned the Afghan men and women who risked their lives for our war, and rather than execute any sort of plan that protects our interests and our allies, he’s spending all of his time assigning blame to everyone but himself,' he wrote in an op-ed for Fox News.
'It is completely unforgivable. Because of his failures, it is a very real possibility that the next time I turn on the news, I’ll be forced to watch Tom beheaded.'
Mast described how the interpreter accompanied him on the mission where he lost both of his legs in September 2010.
Georgia GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde is calling for resignation of Defense Sec. Austin and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley. Clyde, who served in Iraq and Kuwait, infuriated Democrats when he compared the Jan. 6th Capitol riot to a 'normal tourist visit.'
Another Georgia Republican, Rep. Austin Scott, called recent events a 'colossal failure,' the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Moulton's criticism came as the Pentagon announced plans to evacuate between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day as an August 31st troop withdrawal deadline approaches.
The State Department said all diplomatic personnel other than those assisting in evacuations have now left the country.
