Tossing niceties aside, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is calling for US President Joe Biden to be impeached if he ultimately fails to live up to his side of the withdrawal deal by abandoning allies in Afghanistan.
Graham backed a potential impeachment initiative during a Friday interview on Fox News after he was asked about reports that detailed Taliban* forces were going “door-to-door” to round up any Afghan nationals who provided support to US troops.
“If we leave any Americans behind - if we leave thousands of those Afghans who fought along our side behind bravely - Joe Biden deserves to be impeached for a higher crime and misdemeanor of dereliction of duty,” the Republican senator told host Steve Doocy.
“We’re duty-bound to get every American citizen out, we’re honor-bound to get those Afghans who fought along our side out.”
“If we leave one American behind. If we don’t get all those Afghans who stepped up to the plate to help us out then Joe Biden, in my view, has committed a high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution and should be impeached,” he stressed.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks during a Senate Budget Committee hearing to discuss President Joe Biden's budget request for FY 2022 on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington
© AP Photo / Greg Nash
The congressman further pointed out that the UK and French governments had both undertaken their own efforts to evacuate their respective nationals as well as Afghan allies who had assisted soldiers. The UK deployed some 900 troops to Afghanistan whereas France deployed an unspecified number of forces to aid in evacuation operations.
Graham had similarly criticized former US President Donald Trump when it was decided in 2019 that US forces would be pulled out of northeastern Syria, as Turkey launched its own military incursion into the region. At the time, while the American lawmaker accused the administration of having “shamelessly” abandoned Kurdish forces, he stopped short of calling for actual impeachment.
In fact, Graham, who had long been one of Trump’s most loyal backers, never once threw his support behind either of the two impeachment proceedings that were taken up against the Trump White House.
The “Fox & Friends” appearance came just one day after Graham wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on Thursday alongside co-author Jack Keane, who previously served as the US Army’s vice chief of staff. The op-ed saw both Graham and Keane argue in favor of extending the US military occupation in Afghanistan, noting that “anything less would be dishonorable.”
This handout photo courtesy of US Marines Corps shows evacuees stage before boarding a C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, August 18, 2021
© AFP 2023 / NICHOLAS GUEVARA
Biden has repeatedly explained that his decision to continue with the withdrawal deal, which was signed and sealed by the Trump White House, would not be stopped as he had no intention to pass the war onto another US president or send American forces to fight the Taliban when even Afghan forces willingly let the militant group gain control of the nation.
Although Biden remains adamant that forces will be gone by the August 31 deadline, he has also indicated that US troops could possibly stay a little longer to ensure all Americans and Afghan allies are evacuated.
*The Taliban is designated as a terrorist organization in Russia.