Josh Hawley Was in Favor of Withdrawing From Afghanistan Until Joe Biden Did It

For these reasons, majorities of Americans, including veterans of the war itself, have long called for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Yet most of our nation’s policymakers have ignored them. They are certainly entitled to keep advocating nation-building, but they have no right to force working Americans to pay the price for their agenda. The American people deserve an end to this war. They deserve to know their sons and daughters will not be put in harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary. And they deserve to see their tax dollars actually being used to defend them—from Chinese domination, above all—or reinvested at home, in their families and communities.

Hawley is demanding that Biden resign for enacting a policy that Hawley himself has advanced, repeatedly. All of this is especially absurd given that Hawley has advocated for much hastier timetables that likely would have spawned more significant chaos than what is now unfolding—and offered significantly less regard for Afghan civilians, particularly those who have aided American troops over the last 20 years.

Trump has, similarly, praised the withdrawal and criticized Biden for not bringing troops home fast enough. “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think?” he said in late June.

Hawley’s past support for the withdrawal is especially absurd given that Trump has failed to adequately explain how he would have done things differently. Trump has opined that the withdrawal should have been “conditions based,” but this was not part of the agreement his administration struck with the Taliban. The plan Trump has insisted he would have enacted—“First you bring out all of the American citizens. Then you bring out ALL equipment. Then you bomb the bases into smithereens—AND THEN YOU BRING OUT THE MILITARY”—makes no sense whatsoever in the context of a rapid timeline.