Keri Thornton | Daily PressOfficials and members of the Tahelquah Area Chamber of Commerce met with Congressman Markwayne Mullin, OK-2, to discuss national and local matters. From left are: marketing manager of Tour Tahlequah Alex McBride, and Mullin.

TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma – A Northeast Oklahoma congressman says President Biden has “blood on his hands” for pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

Markwayne Mullin, Republican of District 2, stopped by the Tahlequah Area Chamber of Commerce office on Tuesday, Aug. 17, to discuss international and local matters. Mullin was asked about a Facebook post wherein he said the recent fall of Kabul was a “complete and utter failure” by the president and those who are advising him.

“My opinion is, I think the advisers to [Biden] from the Intel Committee to the Joint Chief of Staff, they need to expose what their plan was, because I sat on the Intel Committee and I can tell you we’ve been discussing this for a while about how to prevent another Saigon,” Mullin said.

Mullin added he was told that those who helped the U.S., whom he called interpreters, were going to be able to get out of Kabul before the city fell under the control of Taliban militants. However, the Taliban took total control of country less than nine days after Biden announced the U.S. would be withdrawing troops following two decades of war.

“We’ve been trying to get the interpreters out and we were told to get [the interpreters] to Kabul and we’ll keep them safe. The U.S. put out a wire, put out leaflets, put out a radio telling people to get to Kabul,” Mullin said. “[The advisers] were ensuring us that wouldn’t happen in Kabul, so now Kabul fell and all of those people there that are running around with their life’s goods in their hands.

On Aug. 17, Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, issued a statement saying there would be no discrimination against women and children, and there were plans to provide safe passage for those trying to flee Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghan civilians fled to Hamid Karzai International Airport and swarmed the tarmac, and military cargo planes are being used to evacuate them. Mullin said the militants claimed they’d give civilians amnesty.

“Understand what amnesty means with the Taliban, with Sharia law: It means a quick death. It doesn’t mean amnesty to what we assume it to be. Theirs means instead of torturing you and raping your wife in front of you and putting your kids underneath the same situation and then torturing you at the same time, we’re going to simply walk up and put a bullet in your head,” he said.

Mullin insisted there must be accountability for the “blood on their hands” – meaning the hands of Biden and his advisers.

“People who were advising Joe Biden, they had to know this was happening because we did. We were asking the questions in the Intel Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Someone had to know this was going to happen and they had no plan for it so those people who were advising the president on it should be removed,” Mullin said.

On Monday, Aug. 16, Biden addressed the nation and said he stood by his decision to remove U.S. forces. The withdrawal was something both President Obama and President Trump had been aiming for.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” said Biden. “We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong, incredibly well-equipped — a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.”

Biden added that the U.S. will push for diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. He said he 6,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Afghanistan to assist with civilians and allies who are fleeing as armed forces have taken over air traffic control.

“We have safely shut down our embassy and transferred our diplomats. Our diplomatic presence is now consolidated at the airport as well. Over the coming days, we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan,” he said.

Mullins said he doesn’t anticipate U.S. troops going into Afghanistan to take back the country.

“If we were going to do that, we would have done that before Bagram [Airfield] fell. We have to have that and now how are we going to get back in? We go back in and we’d have to go back in as an invading force and we’d have to take back over the airport,” said Mullin.