(NewsNation) — Former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter criticized his father’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.
“I think the failure, one of the failures was the way in which they executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think it was an obvious f—ing failure,” Hunter Biden said on the “Shawn Ryan Show.” “I think thirteen marines are dead. I think that there was a better way to do it. And I think that I can blame it on his generals. I can blame it on the people, the way in which we did it, but my dad always knew this also, is that the buck stops with him. I think that was a failure.”
Hours ahead of President Biden’s deadline for shutting down a final airlift, and thus ending the U.S. war, Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants.
The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. American troops faced the daunting task of getting final evacuees onto planes while also getting themselves and some of their equipment out, even as they monitored repeated threats — and at least two actual attacks — by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. A suicide bombing on Aug. 26 killed 13 American service members and some 169 Afghans. More died in various incidents during the airport evacuation.
Hunter Biden also cast some of the blame on President Donald Trump.
“I think leaving Afghanistan was the right thing to do. I think that in terms of the twenty years of blood that your brothers gave to for an endless war and eight trillion dollars is that there is a never-ending lust to continue to sell material and our blood, sweat, and money to a country that has never been anything but a killing ground for empires,” he said. “So, regardless of whether you believe that or not, the execution of the withdrawal resulted, I think, in, and by the way, you can blame part of it on Trump and that he let all those people out of the prison and tell him.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
