WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who served in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, watched in recent days as enemy forces seized areas he had once help safeguard.
"The province, in which I served, Laghman Province, fell to the Taliban several days ago. And one of the last cities that fell before Kabul, Jalalabad, was our regional headquarters, and we spent several days there as well," the lawmaker from Little Rock told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
"The images," the Army veteran said Monday, "are sad, tragic, totally avoidable and humiliating and dangerous for America."
"What we see on television right now is the incompetence of [President] Joe Biden's execution of his decision to withdraw," he said.
After completing a tour of combat duty in Iraq and serving for a time in the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, Cotton volunteered for a second tour of combat duty, this time to eastern Afghanistan.
He was there from October 2008 to July 2009, serving as an operations officer for a provincial reconstruction team.
Nearly 2,500 American troops died in Afghanistan; more than 20,000 were wounded. The losses among Afghans were far greater, he noted.
Now, the hard-won gains of Operation Enduring Freedom have been erased.
"I tend to think about my days in those areas and the Afghans I met, especially the Afghans who worked with us as translators or other support roles or just Afghans we met on the streets and the terrible future they will now face, thanks to Joe Biden's incompetence," Cotton said. "I also think about the dangerous safe haven that that area will once again become for terrorists like Al-Qaida and ISIS to roam freely and have freedom of action to plan and potentially launch attacks against Americans."
Asked what he would have done differently, Cotton said the decision to withdraw is "a question on which reasonable people disagree."
"Even if you take that decision as granted, putting aside the wisdom or lack of wisdom of the decision to withdraw," Cotton said, "Joe Biden made mistake after mistake after mistake in executing that decision."
"He announced it in April at the very start of the annual fighting season in Afghanistan," Cotton said. "He chose Sept. 11 as the deadline to withdraw all of our troops, not for any tactical reason, but for the political symbolism, in his mind, of getting all the troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11."
"In reality, it is a tactically dangerous date because it is the height of the fighting season," Cotton said.
Vital civilian contractors were also withdrawn, he said.
While the Afghans flew their own aircraft, "they are still dependent on American contractors -- not American troops but American contractors -- for maintenance and logistics. Without those contractors present, their air force was grounded," he said.
"The rug was totally pulled out from underneath them," he said.
Kabul's international airport is the departure point for Americans and their allies because the U.S. military gave up control of Bagram Air Base more than a month ago.
U.S. troops were withdrawn before American civilians were, Cotton noted.
"You would think the last place to close is the air base over which we have total control and the last people to leave the country would be the commander and his service members," he said. "The first people to get out would be the civilians who are not capable of fending for themselves, yet here we are with hundreds of Americans, [including] Arkansans, stuck behind Taliban lines."
"I think everyone who is not Joe Biden or Joe Biden's closest aide recognize it is a total and unmitigated fiasco how that decision has been implemented and executed," he said.
"It will be a strategic catastrophe for us for years to come as the Taliban and their terrorist allies beat their chests about how they drove America out of Afghanistan," Cotton said. "Adversaries like Russia and China [will] tell all of our partners around the world that you cannot trust the Americans; just look at what they did in Afghanistan."
In a written statement, U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said Biden's actions "will forever rank him as one of the weakest Presidents America has ever known and raise serious questions about his fitness to adequately and fully execute his duties as Commander-in-Chief."
On Monday evening, U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., condemned Biden's leadership during the crisis.
"Right now, America is projecting weakness to our adversaries and failure to our allies," he said in a written statement. "Our immediate priority must be getting American citizens and our Afghan partners -- who worked alongside our troops -- to safety."
In a written statement over the weekend, U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., said, "President Biden's decision to withdraw without an adequate plan demonstrates strategic and tactical incompetence."
Bill Topich, chairman of the Department of Social Science at Pulaski Academy, said the sudden collapse of the pro-American government was a surprise.
"I think everyone expected a Taliban victory. Where I think you have a surprise ... was the speed of the victory," said Topich, author of "Pakistan: The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Rise of Terrorism."
"This just didn't happen spontaneously. I think there had to be some pre-planning and agreements centered around a quick surrender and, of course, amnesty and such, given to former members of the military," he said.
Rather than remaining isolated, the new Taliban regime may look to build relationships with other powers, he said.
"All of this does not play out well for the United States," he said. "The benefactors of this will be, probably, China, possibly Iran and Russia, but most notably China."