Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Friday said President Joe Biden must authorize U.S. troops to expand the perimeter around Kabul's airport and retake another air base to help with evacuations.
The Texas Republican, who served as a Navy SEAL for a decade and was wounded in Afghanistan in 2012, tweeted his thoughts early Friday morning.
"Two things need to happen, and only Biden can authorize: 1. US military must be allowed to operate outside Kabul airport to get American citizens. 2: Retake Bagram airfield, thus giving us more options for evacuations. Biden created this mess and needs to take decisive action," Crenshaw tweeted.
Another service veteran lawmaker, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also called on Biden to act swiftly "to stop this rolling humiliation" in Kabul.
"It's time for President Biden to authorize the military to stop this rolling humiliation, expand the perimeter at Kabul airport, and rescue Americans trapped behind enemy lines," Cotton tweeted Thursday.
Cotton compared Americans stranded in Afghanistan to hostages in Iran.
"People are comparing the situation in Kabul to Saigon in 1975. What should worry the Biden Administration is a scenario like Tehran in 1979," Cotton tweeted. "What happens if instead of 52 American hostages, the Taliban holds thousands?"
Cotton said other Western countries such as Britain and France apparently deployed teams of specialized forces to extract citizens behind Taliban lines, Fox News reported.
Cotton, who served with the 101st Airborne Division and saw combat in Iraq, said Biden failing to rescue stranded Americans would amount "to an abandonment of our fellow Americans and a shameful abdication of duty in a moment of crisis," according to Fox News.
Americans and other Westerners are finding it impossible to leave Afghanistan due to the thousands of desperate locals outside Kabul's airport, the Daily Mail reported.
U.S. troops have been firing warning shots to disperse the crowd of up to 50,000 Afghans surrounding the airport, according to the Daily Mail.
The White House said Biden will speak about the evacuation operation in Afghanistan at 1 p.m. Friday.
Biden was brushing off criticism of his administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials, Reuters reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that an internal State Department cable from July warned of a swift Taliban takeover, punching a hole in Biden's claim he was not warned before last weekend's Taliban seizure of Kabul.
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