U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan during separate visits this week to southcentral Kentucky.

The Democrat’s decision to pull U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan after 20 years has led to a chaotic and dangerous situation in the war-torn country that borders Iran and Pakistan.

“It’s a debacle,” said McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, during a visit Tuesday with Butler County leaders in Morgantown. “It’s a stain on the reputation of the United States and a big foreign policy mistake.”

The remarks, similar to those McConnell made Monday in Jeffersontown, were echoed by Guthrie during his visit to Bowling Green’s Southern Kentucky Rehabilitation Hospital on Monday.

“I think it’s a travesty,” Guthrie said. “You can’t stay there forever, but you can’t leave overnight. That’s what we did.”

The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan had actually been declining for years and had been down to about 2,500 in recent months.

That was enough, McConnell said Tuesday, to “keep a lid” on the Taliban Islamist movement and military organization that had been removed from power by U.S.-led military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

“I thought that was a good policy, a good way to control the terrorists,” McConnell said at the Butler County Cooperative Extension Service. “I have argued against total withdrawal.”

The senator argued that going into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was an effective strategy.

“We eliminated the Taliban and pushed al-Qaida out,” he said.

A Brown University student said the U.S. military has invested nearly $980 billion in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the past 20 years. More than 3,500 soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition have died, about two-thirds of them Americans.

Now, with Taliban forces overrunning the Afghan military and regaining control of the country, McConnell and Guthrie lamented this week that the progress made by the U.S. and its allied military forces has been undone.

“Terrorists all over the world are cheering now because we gave them a big victory,” McConnell said.

Biden’s action continued a reduction of U.S. military presence that started under then-President Barack Obama and continued under then-President Donald Trump, but McConnell said he didn’t agree with those presidents either.

“I tried to convince Obama and Trump not to do it (withdraw more troops),” said McConnell, who pointed out that the U.S. hadn’t lost a single member of the military in combat in Afghanistan in the past year.

McConnell also took time during his visit to Butler County to encourage people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which is spreading rapidly since the emergence of the highly transmissible delta strain.

Speaking in a county that is considered in the “red” zone because of an increase in infections and that has vaccinated less than half of those over age 18, McConnell said: “I’m perplexed that we’re having difficulty getting people vaccinated.

“Ninety-seven percent of the people in hospitals (with COVID-19) right now are unvaccinated. Vaccination is the key to getting this behind us.”

The senator said much of the vaccine hesitancy can be traced to incorrect information. “The only thing I can do is point out the facts,” he said. “On social media there are a lot of things that are just made up.”

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