The situation in Afghanistan continues to be in turmoil as the Taliban overtook the country’s capital within a week as U.S. military troops were pulling out of its 20 year stint.

Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District Representative Randy Feenstra calls the handling of this issue a colossal leadership failure by the Biden Administration, following President Joe Biden’s announced deadline of September 11th to have all U.S. troops out of the country.

“It didn’t give anybody time that’s over there, Americans time, to get from point A to point B. This is the biggest issue right now is that we had 2,500 troops there, over the last year, and we didn’t have any deaths or anything over the last 18 months. And now we’ve got 7,000 troops there, just protecting the airport and they can’t go 20 feet, with people on the outside (of the airport) trying to get in. This is a travesty right now is that we have Americans that are trying to get into the airport and they can’t.”

Feenstra says his priority is getting the 15,000 U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan and then take on those that qualify to be refugees in our country.

“Those that have fought alongside and that specifically helped as interpreters and stuff like that, I think that if we said to them that they had a way to get here (to the U.S.) then we owe it to them to make sure that we figure out how that’s done. And if we need them to come to Iowa and they’re vetted, absolutely.”    

Governor Kim Reynolds has recently stated that she will accept Afghan refugees into Iowa who want to resettle.