House GOP veterans recall chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal: ‘Worst thing’

It has been four years since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year foreign entanglement and leaving the fates of hundreds of thousands of people in the hands of the Taliban.

For House Republican lawmakers who served in the Armed Forces, in the Middle East in particular, the frustration and angst is still raw.

“I thought the withdrawal was the worst thing I’ve ever seen from any president in my lifetime. It was the most bungled operation I’ve seen,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Fox News Digital.

Bacon, a retired brigadier general with nearly 30 years’ experience in the Air Force, said the withdrawal left him and fellow veterans he spoke with feeling depressed.

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“Why did our friends have to die there? Because all that [President Joe Biden] did, he pulled us out and it collapsed. We had 3,500 troops there when Biden came in. None of them were in combat. They were in support roles,” he said. “We could have sustained it at a low cost for a long time… And moms and dads wonder, why do we lose our son? I happen to know this to be true. I’ve talked to moms and dads. Why did I lose my son for something that Joe Biden just pulled the plug on and let it collapse?”

The Nebraska Republican said he himself knew five people who died serving in Afghanistan.

Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., a former Army Special Forces officer who served two tours in Afghanistan, said he cried when the chaos of the withdrawal dawned on him.

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“I wept,” Harrigan told Fox News Digital. “I knew it was not about losing Afghanistan, right? It wasn’t about the 20 years’ worth of work that we put into that country. It wasn’t about the promises that we made that we didn’t keep. It wasn’t about even the 13 Americans that got killed. The reason I wept is because I believed that that display of strategic weakness on the world stage condemned the next generation of Americans to conflict.”

This past Tuesday also marked four years since the deadly suicide attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, which took the lives of dozens of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.

“I would say it was a very, very, you know, cutting morale situation for everyone,” said Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who served in the military for over 20 years.

Afghan burqa-clad women walk past Taliban flags on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover, in Kabul on August 14, 2025. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)

“I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, I felt like it was complete and total failure of our leadership…We could watch this happen in slow motion. I mean, such terrible decisions that set up the vulnerability that ultimately resulted in that loss of life. And to know that we had troops there who were infants at the time of the attack of 9/11. They couldn’t even, they weren’t even old enough to remember when 9/11 happened.”

Bacon pointed out that the ISIS-K terrorist who committed the attack was released from prison at Bagram Air Base following the Taliban’s lightening-fast takeover of Afghanistan.

“I cannot think of a more botched operation than that,” he said.

Harrigan said, “We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that conflict, and to see it just effectively given away with no plan and absolutely no thought behind the withdrawal process, ultimately culminating in the deaths of 13 young Americans; none of that needed to happen. And I think that’s the most frustrating part of it.”

All three veterans said the chaotic withdrawal operation left damaging consequences in its wake.

“I think both the previous president and the current president could do better at helping the Afghan interpreters get out of Afghanistan and get into America,” Bacon said. 

“We have an obligation, in my view, to support these guys. I mean, they literally put their lives on the line to save Americans, and they’ve been hunted down in Afghanistan. They’ve been persecuted. And in some cases you hear stories of the current administration trying to return some of these folks. It’s just not right.”

Harrigan said the federal government handled Afghanistan “terribly” after the U.S. exit.

Gold Medals sit on display ahead of a ceremony honoring the 13 American service members who died in the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Sept. 10, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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“I mean, President Joe Biden was sending $40 million a week to the Taliban, for God knows what reason. And now we have no relationship with them at all, which I also think is a problem,” he said. “I think that Afghanistan has, historically, and will always be a safe haven for terrorism…if we are not constantly keeping a pulse on what’s going on there.”

Barrett pointed out that Afghanistan has since fallen under extremist control with Taliban rule and opened a “vacuum” for China and other adversaries to gain influence.

“I think we have to have a far more discerning, very realistic and clear-eyed mindset of the challenges that we’re going to face, and what is the second and third order effects of the decisions we make?” he posed. “You go into a country to liberate them. Well, what’s gonna happen the next day and the day after that, the day following?”