Lindsey Graham Blasts Biden Over Afghanistan Evacuation: 'He's Been Wrong About Everything'
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, criticized President Joe Biden's evacuation of Afghanistan on Saturday evening and said he was concerned about a terrorist attack from the Islamic State at the airport in Kabul.
"I'm worried tonight that we're running our people from Taliban into the ISIS hands. It's almost the Jurassic Park of terrorism," Graham told Fox News.
"People are together in a big wad right outside the airport. How easy would it be for an ISIS suicide bomber to blow up our troops and all the people trying to get out?" he continued.
Graham's comments came after U.S. officials began changing their strategy for evacuating people from Afghanistan on Saturday, after learning of potential threats from the Islamic State.
Graham said that the U.S. needs to "push the perimeter back at the airport" and cancel the August 31 deadline Biden has set for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, "because we can't get our people out."
"The bottom line, this is an ill-conceived, disjointed, half-assed effort to get American citizens and those who fought for us out of Afghanistan," Graham said.
He added that Biden is "putting all these people in harm's way" and has "no idea what he's doing."
"He's been wrong about everything for 40 years and this plan that we're trying to execute is going to get a lot of Americans killed and those who fought along our side because ISIS is going to take advantage of the chaos at the airport. We need to fix this and we need to fix it quick," Graham said.
Last week, Graham said Biden should be impeached if he leaves any Americans or Afghan allies in the country.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Newsweek on Sunday.
Biden has faced backlash for his evacuation of Afghanistan, after the country quickly fell to the Taliban last weekend.
The president has committed to getting all Americans who want to return home out of the country, and said the U.S. will do "everything that we can" to also evacuate Afghan allies.
On Saturday, the U.S. embassy warned American citizens of potential "security threats" outside the gates of the airport in Kabul. It advised Americans to avoid traveling to the airport unless they receive "individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so."
The State Department told Newsweek Saturday that it issued the alert "to avoid large crowds outside the airport gates—both for security purposes and as a means to make the processing as efficient as possible."
