Hawley, long in favor of Afghan withdrawal, calls on President Biden to resign
Over the past two years, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has called on the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to resign. He has called on Dr. Anthony Fauci to resign. He has called on the White House’s entire defense and national security team to resign.
On Thursday, shortly after a terrorist attack on the Kabul airport killed 13 American service members and dozens of Afghans, Hawley added another name to the list: President Joe Biden.
“We must reject the falsehood peddled by a feckless president that this was the only option for withdrawal,” Hawley said. “This is the product of Joe Biden’s catastrophic failure of leadership. It is now painfully clear he has neither the will nor the capacity to lead. He must resign.”
Hawley was among several congressional Republicans — including Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall and Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler — who attempted to politically capitalize on the crisis in Afghanistan by putting out statements suggesting the president should resign.
Hawley, Marshall and Hartzler all attempted to block Biden from taking office in January.
The chances that Biden will resign are remote at best. If he did, his exit would only elevate another Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, to the presidency. Hawley’s office did not respond to a question asking if he supported Harris becoming president.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from heaping criticism on the administration as it’s overseen a chaotic withdrawal of Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul after the Taliban quickly took over the country.
Hartzler, who on Friday called for Biden to resign in order to improve America’s standing in the world, used the withdrawal to criticize his immigration policies.
“Biden must do what he has refused to do for months – take immediate action and close the U.S.-Mexico border from illegal immigration to protect American lives,” Hartzler said, citing concerns over terrorism.
Hawley’s own indictment of Biden has drawn criticism from Democrats, as the junior senator has long pushed for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan.
“The American people deserve an end to this war,” Hawley wrote in a letter to then acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in November 2020. “They deserve to know their daughters and sons will not be put in harms way unless it is absolutely necessary.”
He was an enthusiastic supporter of a deal between former President Donald Trump and the Taliban that would have extracted U.S. troops by May 1. Hawley tweeted in April that while he felt Biden should follow Trump’s plan, withdrawing troops by September 11 was “better late than never.”
Despite his support for withdrawal, Hawley has said there were “other options” for how the U.S. troop withdrawal could have gone. His office did not respond to a question asking what, specifically, those other options would have looked like.
Instead, his office sent a statement again calling on Biden to resign.
“Joe Biden had plenty of time to evacuate every single American citizen and secure every piece of military weaponry before withdrawing our troops,” Hawley said. “The fact that he didn’t proves he does not have the competence or capacity to lead our nation. He should do the right thing and resign.”
Marshall took a milder approach to calling for the president’s resignation, tempering it with a call for Biden to take questions about the withdrawal, which he did in a press conference Thursday afternoon.
“America must respond to these attacks with strength not weakness, but doing so requires a Commander in Chief fit to lead,” Marshall said. “President Biden must face the American people and address questions on how we will respond to this massacre or he should resign immediately.”
Marshall has said Biden should have used former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “conditions-based” model, which he said would have led to a withdrawal from a place of strength instead of a place of weakness.
Kansas and Missouri’s congressional Republicans have steadily criticized the Biden administration’s withdrawal over the past two weeks, chastising the administration for leaving billions in military supplies behind to be seized by the Taliban and pushing for Americans to be prioritized in the evacuation efforts.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Hawley, long in favor of Afghan withdrawal, calls on President Biden to resign."