SEN TOM COTTON: Alleged Afghan attack on Guardsmen was preventable. We must do better next time

Former President Joe Biden s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan four years ago was a grave national humiliation that betrayed the men and women of our armed forces particularly those who courageously served in the war-torn country for nearly two decades Unfortunately the costs of this self-inflicted tragedy have continued long after our troops left Afghanistan In recent weeks an Afghan national in Texas who came to America during the Biden administration was charged with issuing threats to build a bomb launch a suicide attack and murder Americans and infidels AFGHAN EVACUEE ARRESTED BEFORE DC SHOOTING FEDERALLY CHARGED WITH THREATENING TERROR ATTACK In addition to this affair the heinous attack against two members of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington D C revealed that sadly the consequences of this rushed reckless and ill-planned departure continue to put the protection of our homeland and the safety of Americans at peril First let me offer my prayers and aid to the families loved ones and fellow troops of U S Army Spc Sarah Beckstrom and U S Air Force Staff Sgt Andrew Wolfe and prayers for Staff Sgt Wolfe s continued recovery The honor they brought upon our country and their home state of West Virginia will not be forgotten Yet this tragedy which allegedly occurred at the hands of an improperly vetted Afghan national who came to America in the chaos of the withdrawal was entirely preventable NATIONAL GUARD KILLING REIGNITES IMMIGRATION WAR IN CONGRESS AS REPUBLICANS DEMAND SWEEPING REFORMS President Donald Trump foresaw this during his first term in office The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable Trump declared during remarks presenting his strategy for Afghanistan on August He continued As we know in America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq As a upshot our hard-won gains slipped back into the hands of terrorist enemies Our soldiers watched as cities they had fought for and bled to liberate and won were occupied by a terrorist group called ISIS The vacuum we created by leaving too soon gave safe haven for ISIS to spread to grow recruit and launch attacks We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq THIRD AFGHAN NATIONAL FROM BIDEN-ERA ACTIVITY ARRESTED IN A WEEK BY ICE AGENTS IN VIRGINIA DHS Unfortunately because of Biden we repeated the mistakes of Iraq Yet this time around the Biden administration added another self-imposed challenge by failing to vet the more than Afghan nationals who have resettled in America since the withdrawal Let s get something clear the standard used to vet Afghan nationals to work with the CIA and our military in Afghanistan is entirely different from the standard of vetting that necessities to be used when allowing Afghan nationals to come to America to live in our communities This is why I have called for stricter vetting standards and fought against blanket citizenship for unvetted Afghan nationals since the beginning of the withdrawal catastrophe TRUMP FREEZES AFGHAN VISAS AFTER DC SHOOTING AS HE QUIETLY EYES LAND STRIKES IN VENEZUELA As I wrote at the time There is no doubt that we can t trust various of the people who made it on evacuation flights in the chaos Proper vetting takes months Vetting during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan took place over hours days or weeks in selected cases it didn t happen at all This is an entirely inadequate and reckless way to screen people from a country with poor recordkeeping and a long history of extremism and terrorism Thoroughly vetting someone from a country such as Afghanistan is an involved and challenging process It s not the same as calling up one of our allies to request records on a particular individual or even reaching out to a local police department for a background check on a probable job candidate Complicating matters further at the time in question the Afghan leadership had collapsed and turned over control to the Taliban a sworn enemy of the United States CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION In the months directly following the withdrawal more than Afghans entered the United States without the necessary background checks causing an ongoing national prevention threat within our borders that remains to this day Underscoring this point a overview by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General in February uncovered that the Biden administration failed to use an essential biometric database to vet Afghan evacuees properly In a retroactive review conducted by the U S Army which maintains the database a multitude of of the evacuees were determined to have potentially vital safety concerns including individuals whose latent fingerprints have been detected on improvised explosive devices as well as individuals who are known or suspected terrorists Without question these evacuations were reckless rush jobs intended to paper over Biden s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan ultimately creating a dangerous ticking time bomb within our borders The newest tragedy inflicted on innocent American servicemembers as well as the arrest in Texas should serve as an urgent wake-up call to get our house in order This starts by making sure that everyone in our country is a law-abiding individual who wants to help keep America safe strong prosperous and free for themselves their families and their fellow Americans CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN TOM COTTON