The Republican leadership of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sunday released a sprawling report on the U.S. exit from Afghanistan three years ago, blasting President Joe Biden and his administration as the callous and \u201cdogmatic\u201d orchestrator of a foreign policy failure so extreme that it ranked \u201cfar worse\u201d than even America\u2019s catastrophic withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.<\/p>\n
Democrats swiftly dismissed the 240-page report, the product of a two-year GOP investigation, as \u201cnakedly partisan\u201d and as the cynical manipulation of tragedy for use as a \u201cpolitical football.\u201d<\/p>\n
The document arrives just two months ahead of a tightly contested presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, and on the eve of their highly anticipated debate Tuesday in Philadelphia. Both parties said the timing of its release was intended to underscore Republicans\u2019 recent efforts to revive public scrutiny of the withdrawal, which the committee\u2019s chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), suggested could \u201cdisqualify\u201d Harris in the minds of voters.<\/p>\n
The committee has said as well that even with the report\u2019s publication, its work will continue with the pursuit of additional witness testimony.<\/p>\n
It was Trump, as president in February 2020, who negotiated the oft-criticized deal, known as the Doha agreement, with Afghanistan\u2019s Taliban militant group to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners and withdraw all U.S. forces the following year.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, though, he has aggressively defended his decision to cut a deal while seeking to draw voters\u2019 attention instead to the chaos that ensued in Kabul during August 2021, as Biden executed the agreement and brought America\u2019s longest war to a messy and violent end. Trump last week accused Biden and Harris of bearing responsibility for the suicide bomb attack during the withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. service members \u201cjust like they pulled the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while the GOP report contains some minor new details, there are no major revelations that go beyond prior reporting already in the public domain via separate investigations conducted by the Defense Department, the State Department, news outlets and analysts, as well as the foreign affairs committee itself. And it contains no evidence that Harris played a major role in the withdrawal\u2019s execution.<\/p>\n
The report focuses intently on the chaotic and desperate noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO), a three-week crisis marred by images of horror as Afghans trying to escape the Taliban\u2019s return to power died amid the crush of desperate crowds, while clinging to departing U.S. planes and in the suicide bombing just outside Kabul\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n
Among its findings that the committee emphasized were revelations first publicized months ago, such as the evacuation request coming on the day the Taliban entered Afghanistan\u2019s capital, and one diplomat\u2019s assertion that the U.S. Embassy\u2019s top official had violated covid-19 protocols.<\/p>\n
But the report stops short of presenting significant new evidence about the airport attack, an event Republicans have portrayed as the most egregious of Biden\u2019s failures in overseeing the withdrawal. \u201cDebate over whether the Abbey Gate attack was a lone suicide bomber or a complex attack, including gunfire after the bomb, has yet to be resolved,\u201d the report says, citing a lack of aerial surveillance at the time of the attack, and the destruction of evidence by the Defense Department in the aftermath. A person familiar with the Defense Department\u2019s investigation of the bombing said previously that it is true some photographs snapped by a sniper team overseeing the bombing site went missing.<\/p>\n
And the report does not fulfill the GOP\u2019s larger promise of accountability to the aggrieved families of the 13 slain Americans, some of whom appeared onstage at the Republican National Convention to show their support for Trump, who has shown them compassion and vowed transparency in ways that they say Biden has not.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll they want \u2014 they want a phone call or a meeting from Harris or from Biden to say, \u2018We know we did things wrong. It didn\u2019t go well. And we are taking those lessons into account so that it never happens again,\u2019\u201d said Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), an Afghanistan war veteran who serves on the foreign affairs committee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how deeply voters will consider the Afghanistan withdrawal when they cast their votes in November, and whether they are willing to link the catastrophic exit to Harris, whom Trump and McCaul have endeavored to cast as a critical decision-maker.<\/p>\n
Within the pages of the report, \u201cBiden-Harris administration\u201d appears repeatedly \u2014 an adjustment that the committee\u2019s Republican staff said it made in the final weeks of drafting the document. Yet there is scant mention of her as an individual, with the committee appearing to conclude that her most damaging behavior during the withdrawal was her absence of dissent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, the GOP performance has reached a crescendo \u2014 Republicans now claim she was the architect of the U.S. withdrawal though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee\u2019s interview transcripts,\u201d the panel\u2019s Democrats said in a memorandum released simultaneously with the Republican report.<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign said in a statement ahead of the report\u2019s release that \u201cTrump gave the Taliban everything they wanted,\u201d referring to the Doha agreement. \u201cDespite the deal\u2019s drastic implications for U.S. military strategy and the safety of U.S. troops and allies, Trump left the Biden-Harris Administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal \u2014 only a dangerous, costly mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report\u2019s larger conclusions are unsurprising. It pins the failures of the war\u2019s endgame squarely on the Biden administration, which it says \u201cprioritized the optics of the withdrawal over the security of U.S. personnel on the ground.\u201d The administration\u2019s last-minute move to organize the mass evacuation of noncombatants \u2014 largely Afghans who had worked in support of the U.S. mission \u2014 \u201ccreated an unsafe environment\u201d at Kabul\u2019s airport, it says, ultimately resulting in the deaths of 13 service members.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Biden-Harris administration knew such an attack was not only possible but likely, yet they still failed to take the appropriate measure to mitigate the risk,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, the report charges, Biden was determined to withdraw \u2014 regardless of the cost, the warnings from his generals or the apparent deterioration of security as the Taliban steadily gained ground. It also says officials \u201cmisled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal,\u201d and accuses the entire administration of a vast \u201ccover-up\u201d led in large part by the White House National Security Council.<\/p>\n
Sharon Yang, a White House spokesperson, characterized the GOP\u2019s report as a \u201crecycled, partisan\u201d attack. \u201cThe fact remains,\u201d she said in a statement, \u201cthat ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republicans argue otherwise. The aftermath of the withdrawal has degraded U.S. national security and U.S. credibility on the world stage, as Afghanistan has again become \u201ca haven for terrorists,\u201d the report alleges, while America\u2019s Afghan allies who were left behind have faced imprisonment, torture and murder at the hands of the Taliban. The chaotic exit \u201ccreated a tidal wave of problems in Afghanistan, the United States, and around the world,\u201d the report says, leaving billions of dollars\u2019 worth of U.S. weapons and currency behind to the Taliban. And it \u201ccreated a crisis within the U.S. military and among American veterans,\u201d undermining recruitment and retention, it claims.<\/p>\n
The report allots little space to the 19 years of war and policy decisions that came before the 2021 withdrawal, including under two Republican administrations. That task falls to the bipartisan congressionally mandated Afghanistan War Commission, which will deliver its own comprehensive report in 2026.<\/p>\n
Democrats on Sunday panned the new report and noted the total absence of Democratic involvement in its drafting. \u201cIt is a politicized, cherry-picked report \u2026 a nakedly partisan campaign thing,\u201d the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), said on CBS News\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d That is all it was \u201cdesigned to do,\u201d Himes said \u2014 \u201cnot shed light on a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The foreign affairs committee\u2019s Democratic staff, led by Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), produced a 56-page document that largely echoes the administration\u2019s previous defense of its handling of the evacuation. It highlights, for instance, that when the evacuation was over, \u201cthe Biden Administration had facilitated the largest humanitarian airlift in U.S. history and ended the United States\u2019 longest war\u201d \u2014 a rosy gloss on an endeavor that left thousands of Afghan allies and their families behind.<\/p>\n
Meeks, in a letter to fellow Democrats, characterized the Republicans\u2019 report as having excluded \u201canything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative\u201d and said their GOP colleagues took \u201cparticular pains to avoid facts involving former president Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked on \u201cFace the Nation\u201d whether the GOP\u2019s investigation identified any \u201cmistakes by the Trump administration,\u201d McCaul singled out Zalmay Khalilzad, the envoy Trump dispatched to negotiate the withdrawal with the Taliban. The report heaps ample blame on him while seemingly excusing Trump from Khalilzad\u2019s decision-making.<\/p>\n
Khalilzad responded to some of the report\u2019s allegations against him, including the charge that he kept military leaders in the dark during U.S.-Taliban negotiations. \u201cThat is factually incorrect,\u201d Khalilzad wrote on social media. \u201cFar from having been kept in the dark, the military \u2026 fully participated in the negotiations with the Taliban.\u201d He cited the direct involvement of Gen. Mark A. Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Austin \u201cScott\u201d Miller, who was the top commander in Afghanistan at the time of the Doha talks. \u201cNo agreement was made on any military issue without the full knowledge of our military leaders and their participation in decisions made by our leaders,\u201d Khalilzad asserted.<\/p>\n
He also pushed back on the report\u2019s claim that he personally excluded the Afghan government from the negotiations, writing that the Afghan government and the Taliban were never able to reach a \u201cmutual agreement on a new government\u201d and that \u201cthere was widespread pessimism\u201d among U.S. officials \u201cthat the Afghan leaders would put their country first and seek a realistic compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n
For his part, Trump, in 2021, celebrated Biden\u2019s decision to stick with the withdrawal agreement his administration made with the Taliban \u2014 \u201cGetting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do,\u201d he said at the time \u2014 and in the weeks before the Afghan government\u2019s collapse, he touted how he\u2019d made it difficult for Biden to do anything other than follow through with the withdrawal he put in motion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey couldn\u2019t stop the process,\u201d he said at a political rally in June of that year, referring to the Biden administration. \u201cTwenty-one years is enough, don\u2019t we think?\u201d he continued, overstating the length of the conflict by a year. \u201c \u2026 They couldn\u2019t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Republican leadership of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sunday released a sprawling report on the U.S. exit from Afghanistan three years ago, blasting President Joe Biden and his administration as the callous and \u201cdogmatic\u201d orchestrator of a foreign policy failure so extreme that it ranked \u201cfar worse\u201d than even America\u2019s catastrophic withdrawal from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}