GOP veterans remember the chaotic removal of Afghanistan: “Worse”

It has been four years since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year-old foreign tangle and leaving the fate of hundreds of thousands of people in the hands of the Taliban.

For the republican legislators of the chamber which served in the armed forces, in the Middle East in particular, frustration and anxiety are always raw.

“I thought that the withdrawal was the worst thing that I have ever seen from any president in my lifetime. It was the most tanned operation I saw,” said representative Don Bacon, R-N-NEB., Told Fox News Digital.

Bacon, a retired brigadier general with almost 30 years of experience in the Air Force, said that the withdrawal has left him and his veterans colleagues with whom he spoke by feeling depressed.

Far-Gauche Firebrand says that she had never had any concern ” about the mental state of Biden while the house probe warmed up

Four years after President Joe Biden presided over the chaotic withdrawal of Afghanistan, the veterans of the GOP in the Chamber said that the effects were always felt. (US Marine Corps / 1st lieutenant Mark Andries; AP Newsroom)

“Why did our friends have to die there? Because all of this (President Joe Biden) did it, he withdrew and collapsed. We had 3,500 soldiers there when Biden entered. None of them was in battle. They were in support positions,” he said. “We could have maintained it at a long time … And the mothers and the dads wondered, why do we lose our son? I knew it’s true. I talked to the moms and dads. Why did I lose my son to something Joe Biden has just pulled the plug and collapse?”

The Nebraska Republican said that he himself knew five people who died in Afghanistan himself.

Representative Pat Harrigan, RN.C., a former army special forces officer who toured two tours in Afghanistan, said he had cried when the withdrawal of withdrawal appeared to him.

Biden’s long -standing assistant said he had to win up to $ 8 million if the president had re -elected

“I cried,” Harrigan told Fox News Digital. “I knew that it was not a question of losing Afghanistan, right?

Last Tuesday last Tuesday also scored four years since the deadly suicide attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, who took the lives of dozens of Afghans and 13 American soldiers.

“I would say that it was a very, very, you know, to reduce the situation of morale for everyone,” said representative Tom Barrett, R-Mich., Who served in the army for more than 20 years.

Women dressed in Afghan Burqa The Taliban flags on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban takeover in Kabul on August 14, 2025. (Wakil Kohsar / AFP via Getty Images)

“I cannot speak for everyone, but personally, I felt like it was a complete and total failure of our leadership … We could look at it to idle. I mean, such terrible decisions that set up the vulnerability that ultimately led to this loss of life. And to know that they had not even had troops which were old enough at the time of the attack on September 11.”

Bacon stressed that terrorist Isis-K who had committed the attack had been released from prison at Bagram air base after the Taliban’s rapid control of Afghanistan.

“I can’t think of a more sloppy operation than this,” he said.

Harrigan said: “We have put a lot of blood, sweating and tears in this conflict, and to see it simply yield without plan and absolutely no thought behind the withdrawal process, ultimately leading to the death of 13 young Americans; none of this should happen. And I think it is the most frustrating part.”

The three veterans said that the chaotic withdrawal operation had left prejudicial consequences for its wake.

“I think that the previous president and the current president could do better to help Afghan interpreters get out of Afghanistan and enter America,” said Bacon.

“We have the obligation, in my opinion, to support these guys. I mean, they literally put their lives at stake to save the Americans, and they were driven out in Afghanistan. They were persecuted. And in some cases, you hear stories of the current administration try to return some of these people. It is simply not right.”

Harrigan said the federal government had managed Afghanistan “terribly” after the American exit.

The gold medals were exhibited before a ceremony in honor of the 13 members of the US service deceased in the Hamid Karzai International Airport Suicide in Afghanistan in the American Capitol Rotunda on September 10, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Click here to obtain the Fox News app

“I mean, President Joe Biden sent $ 40 million a week to the Taliban, because God knows what reason. And now we have no more relationship with them, which I think is also a problem,” he said. “I think that Afghanistan has, historically, and will always be a safe refuge for terrorism … If we do not constantly keep an impulse on what is happening there.”

Barrett stressed that Afghanistan has since fallen under extremist control with the domination of the Taliban and opened an “emptiness” so that China and other opponents have the influence.

“I think we must have a much more demanding, very realistic and clear state of mind of the challenges we are going to face, and what are the effects of the second and third order of the decisions we make?” He posed. “You go to a country to release them. Well, that the next day and the next day, the next day?”