Neocon Senator Lindsey Graham Warns US Afghan Pullout Multiplies Risk of ‘Another 9/11’

Earlier this week, the South Carolina Republican demanded that President Biden be impeached over his decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan, even though Biden’s GOP predecessor, Donald Trump, planned to do the same thing.

Senior Senate Republican leader Lindsey Graham has expressed fears that a “parade of horribles is about to unfold” in Afghanistan as US forces wrap up their pullout from the war-torn country, and warned that new 9/11-style attacks may be in the offing for the United States.

“I wouldn’t have withdrawn. I would have kept the counterterrorism forces on the ground…When we have people on the ground working with indigenous forces, that’s the best insurance policy against another 9/11,” Graham said, speaking to CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.

“Let me tell you where I think we’re at: This is a cata –a catamalystic –just a failure beyond my ability to describe it. It’s been a very emotional couple days for all of us,” Graham said, apparently searching for the word 'cataclysmic'.

“We’re leaving thousands of Afghan allies behind who fought bravely with us. We’re gonna leave hundreds of American citizens behind. The chance of another 9/11 just went through the roof,” the senator warned.

Graham went on to bash Biden’s strategy of drone strikes against the Daesh-Khorasan* planners responsible for Thursday’s deadly attack on the Kabul airport, which killed over 180 people, including 13 US troops, and injured over a thousand more.

“These drone attacks will not degrade [Daesh]. The number of [Daesh] fighters has doubled. We’ve turned our back on our allies who [are] going to help us in the future, and we’ve set the conditions for another 9/11. I’ve never been more worried about an attack on our homeland than I am right now,” the senator stressed.

Graham did not specify what “allies” the US had turned its back on. The US and NATO-backed Kabul government and 300,000 troop-strong Afghan security forces disintegrated in mid-August after the Taliban* captured Kabul, just over four months after Biden announced that the US would be withdrawing from the country.

The senator predicted that the consequences of Biden’s withdrawal will force future presidents to deal with Afghanistan for another twenty years. “This war has not ended. We’ve entered into a new deadly chapter. Terrorists are now in charge of Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the Taliban.

Graham urged the Biden administration not to recognize the Taliban, and suggested that the US could assist self-proclaimed caretaker president Amrullah Saleh’s resistance forces in Panjshir province, including via humanitarian and military assistance.

Graham is one of dozens of Republicans to openly attack Biden over the Afghanistan pullout, with many of the president’s erstwhile supporters in the liberal pro-war mainstream media including CNN and MSNBC also turning on the Democratic president over the ongoing withdrawal, which is expected to wrap up by 31 August.

* Terrorist groups outlawed in Russia and many other countries.