HR McMaster blasts Joe Biden over Afghanistan withdrawal as Taliban sweeps into Kabul

Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has slammed President Joe Biden over the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan

Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has slammed President Joe Biden over the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban.

‘We heard, again and again, that there was no military solution to the war in Afghanistan. But the Taliban clearly had one in mind,’ McMaster wrote in a guest essay for Bari Weiss on Monday.

‘There is much more suffering and violence ahead. It will be years before the stain of 2021 can be effaced,’ continued McMaster, a retired Army general and former top official in the Trump administration. 

‘We hear that the consequences of this lost war can be managed. But self-defeat based in incompetence and lack of will should be cause for grave concern,’ he wrote.

McMaster’s scathing assessment came as the Taliban took complete control of Kabul, with all U.S. diplomatic staff and NATO allies sheltering at Hamid Karzai International Airport and awaiting airlift to safety. 

McMaster’s scathing assessment came as the Taliban took complete control of Kabul. Above, Taliban fighters stand beside the belongings of Afghan security soldiers in Kabul on Monday

The complete collapse of Kabul has drawn comparisons to the Fall of Saigon and Biden has been furiously criticized over how the withdrawal was conducted

The shocking scenes from Kabul are reminiscent of the Fall of Saigon in 1975, a disastrous few days where US Air Force helicopters flew thousands of Americans and Vietnamese civilians out of the city as the war there ended in a humiliating defeat for America.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, joined in the criticism in an essay for the newsletter of Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor. 

‘There are many barbaric regimes in the world. It is not America’s duty to police them. Afghanistan, however, is different,’ Haley argued.

‘Twenty years ago, the terrorists bred in that country came for us. Now they are getting what they wanted,’ she wrote.

‘Just a month ago, President Biden assured us it was ‘highly unlikely’ this would happen. America is now begging the Taliban to let us remove our embassy personnel. It’s a humiliating sight,’ wrote Haley.

Meanwhile, shocking scenes emerged from the airport in Kabul, where thousands of desperate Afghans seeking a flight to safety poured onto the runway, disrupting flight operations. 

Bari Weiss, the former New York Times opinion editor, hosted a number of essays criticizing Biden’s troop withdrawal on her newsletter

Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on Monday

Afghan Taliban fighters are seen on a US-made military vehicle in Kabul on Monday

Several Afghans clung to the side of a U.S. military plane at Kabul’s airport on Monday as it taxied through crowds of people desperate to flee the Taliban-controlled capital, a video widely shared on social media showed.

At least eight people died as the chaos mounted at the airport.

Three stowaways fell hundreds of feet to their deaths after climbing onto the fuselage of a departing US Air Force C-17 plane as it took off from at Hamid Karzai International Airport, while hundreds of other desperate people tried to cling onto planes as they taxied down the runway. 

Senior US military officials said troops shot and killed two armed Afghans among those trying to get onto the jet while US citizens were evacuated in two separate incidents. A further three people were caught under plane wheels amid scenes of anarchy as the country slips into Taliban control. 

A Pentagon official said that US troops had come under fire at the airfield and grounded all flights while soldiers cleared the airfield with Apache helicopters and fired ‘warning shots’ to disperse the crowds. Flights resumed after 90 minutes but were suspended again after a security breach on the civilian side of the airport, a Pentagon spokesperson said.

Taliban fighters stand guard along a roadside near the Zanbaq Square in Kabul on Monday, as the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country

Afghan passengers sit as they wait to leave the Kabul airport in Kabul on Monday, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war

U.S. troops fired warning shots to stop people getting on flights taking out diplomats and embassy employees, and two gunmen were also shot at the airport, U.S. officials said.

The evacuation flights were later halted because of the chaos. Germany said it had to divert its first of three planned evacuation flights to the Uzbek capital Tashkent because it could not land due to the throngs of people on the tarmac.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said U.S. forces were working with Turkish and other international troops to clear Kabul airport to allow evacuation flights to resume. He said several hundred people had been flown out so far.

Videos and photos posted on social media showed hundreds of civilians invading the airport’s single runway, jostling to climb stairs onto overhead gangways and sitting on the top of passenger jets in the hope of getting a flight out.

‘This is our airport but we are seeing diplomats being evacuated while we wait in complete uncertainty,’ Rakhshanda Jilali, an Afghan human rights activist who was trying to get to Pakistan, told Reuters in a message from the airport.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said all embassy personnel, including Ambassador Ross Wilson, had been transferred to the airport to await evacuation.

One video showed a military helicopter flying low to pave a path for a plane trying to take off through crowds of people.

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