The former US Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden has called Joe Biden ‘a disaster’ over his withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and branded the escalating crisis ‘the worst loss in American history’.
Retired SEAL Robert O’Neill has fired off a series of tweets in recent days slamming the Biden administration as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the wake of the US military departure.
‘So, @POTUS is a disaster,’ O’Neill tweeted Monday afternoon.
‘This is the worst loss in American history. Our most popular president has vanished. Prove me wrong.’
Afghanistan fell to the Taliban within a matter of days, rather than the 30-90 days US intelligence analysts predicted, undoing two decades worth of gains made by US troops stationed in the country in the wake of 9/11.
The extremist fighters made strong advances across the country over the weekend before seizing the capital Kabul Sunday, causing US officials to accelerate the evacuation of US embassy personnel, citizens and Afghan nationals out of the nation.
Biden took a defiant stance in an address to the nation Monday afternoon where he admitted the collapse of the Afghan government was quicker than the US anticipated but insisted he stands behind his decision to withdraw troops.
The former US Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden has called Joe Biden ‘a disaster’ over his withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and branded the escalating crisis ‘the worst loss in American history’. Retired SEAL Robert O’Neill pictured
Taliban soldiers are pictured at the entrance of Afghanistan’s international airport in Kabul Tuesday
O’Neill fired off a series of tweets over the last few days slamming the Biden administration as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the wake of the US military departure
O’Neill, whose Twitter bio now reads ‘Just a dude who fought for this county for no reason’, took aim at the president on Twitter.
The retired SEAL shared a tweet posted on Biden’s account after the president’s speech.
‘We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001—and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,’ Biden wrote.
‘We did that—a decade ago. Our mission was never supposed to be nation building.’
O’Neill commented: ‘I agree with you, sir. Why did you oppose my team going to kill bin Laden? Asking for a bunch of dead Americans.’
He doubled down on this in another tweet, writing: ‘Joe Biden opposed the raid to kill bin Laden. At least he lost Afghanistan in 7 months.’
O’Neill was the Navy SEAL who shot bin Laden three times in the head during a top-secret May 2011 raid on his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The veteran, who had served in the Navy since 1995, was reportedly forced from the team soon after the raid for allegedly openly bragging in bars about being the man who fired the fatal shots.
Biden’s role in the raid – which happened when he was vice president to Barack Obama – has repeatedly been called into question.
The retired SEAL hit out at a post on Biden’s Twitter account after the president gave a speech Monday standing by the withdrawal of US troops
O’Neill made a series of other thinly-veiled attacks on Biden on social media, accusing him of lying to the American people and branding him a ‘dips**t’
Donald Trump claimed during the 2020 race for the White House that Biden opposed the mission and Obama wrote in his memoir that Biden ‘weighed in against the raid.’
Biden said in a December interview he had told Obama to ‘wait’ for one more flyover on the compound, before telling the then-president to ‘follow your instincts.’
O’Neill made a series of other thinly-veiled attacks on Biden on social media, accusing him of lying to the American people and branding him a ‘dips**t’.
‘I’m never going to lie to you, America. I’m also never running for office,’ he wrote in one tweet.
‘Everything Democrats touch turns to s**t. Prove me wrong,’ he wrote in another.
O’Neill also questioned Biden’s silence over the weekend amid the escalating turmoil in Afghanistan as the president enjoyed a vacation in Camp David.
‘We’ve heard more from The Taliban than we have from the most popular president in our history. Anything @PressSec?’ he wrote.
O’Neill also blasted the loss of life over the last two decades during the US deployment to Afghanistan, describing how he killed ‘for morons’ while his friends ‘died for no reason’
In another, he added: ‘People are being killed trying to evacuate Kabul. But don’t worry… Jen Psaki will tell us what’s actually happening once dips**t goes to sleep.’
O’Neill also blasted the loss of life over the last two decades during the US deployment to Afghanistan, describing how he killed ‘for morons’ while his friends ‘died for no reason.’
‘The war in Afghanistan is over. You still can’t bring water on an airplane. I can’t believe I killed for morons,’ he wrote.
‘My friends who died for no reason would be disgusted with this administration.’
While Biden bore the brunt of his criticism, O’Neill also pinned the blame on Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, demanding he resign over the US troop drawdown.
‘There are Afghans falling to their deaths off of our retreating aircraft. Has @thejointstaff resigned yet?’ he tweeted.
‘Have any of our generals and admirals resigned out of disgrace yet?’ he added.
While Biden bore the brunt of his criticism, O’Neill also pinned the blame on Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley (center), demanding he resign over the US troop drawdown
Fellow Navy SEAL veteran Derrick Van Orden echoed O’Neill’s demands for Milley’s resignation
Orden also demanded Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (right) also resign
At least eight people were killed at Kabul airport on Monday, including two who were shot dead by US troops, three who were run over by taxiing jets and three stowaways who fell from the engines of a US Air Force plane as it fled an airfield of thousands of desperate Afghan nationals.
Milley briefed Senators on Sunday warning that groups like Al Qaeda could make a resurgence sooner than expected following the collapse of the Afghan government, sources told CNN.
Fellow retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden echoed O’Neill’s criticisms of the Biden administration on Fox & Friends Monday morning as he called on the Secretaries of State and Defense to step down.
Afghan security guards try and maintain order as hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday
Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the US embassy that was previously manned by American troops, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday
A C-17 jet carrying 640 Afghan refugees that left Kabul on Sunday night as the Taliban claimed the city
‘Unfortunately, the Biden administration is redefining the word incompetence,’ the military man-turned-Congressional candidate said.
‘You’ve got Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin – they need to tender their resignations right now. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Milley, he needs to go peel potatoes in the galley for about a month and then resign also.’
He added that the devolving situation in the war-torn country is ‘he most dramatic foreign policy crisis’ the US has seen since September 11 2001.
The evacuation of Americans out of Kabul continued Tuesday with US defense officials vowing to fly 5,000 a day out of the Taliban stronghold.
Around 700 people were flown out of the region overnight on seven C-17 jets while as many as 40,000 Americans remain stranded including in remote parts of the country.
President Joe Biden took a defiant stance in an address to the nation Monday afternoon where he admitted the collapse of the Afghan government was quicker than the US anticipated but insisted he stands behind his decision to withdraw troops
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told CNN that between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans remain in Kabul alone.
Other countries are also scrambling to evacuate their own citizens from the country as the Taliban continues to close in on the airport and now controls every access point from the city to the airport.
The Taliban has promised to give a ‘two week grace period’ for foreign countries to evacuate their citizens on the ground – a promise many are fearful will not be upheld.
Concerns are also ramping up for the fate of the Afghan people who worked for foreign governments – such as translators – over the last 20 years.