When President Joe Biden announced he would stick to his predecessor’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Republican reaction was mixed and largely muted. Foreign policy had become so contentious that the party’s own leaders had no single position on the end of the nation’s longest war.
But the fall of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s swift return to power have, at least for now, reunited Republicans in criticism of Biden. Longtime opponents of a withdrawal argued Monday that the president should have seen the disaster coming. Even those who cheered his decision to pull out troops turned to slamming him for doing it badly.
