House Republicans have released a report on President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which suggests he had become so committed to the idea of leaving quickly that he made errors in preparation.
Released by the House Foreign Affairs Committee roughly three years after the botched withdrawal in which 13 U.S. service members died, the report claimed that Biden forced a “rushed effort undertaken regardless of counsel from allies and advisers that led to unnecessary deaths,” per the Hill.
“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha Agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies. Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan,” the report states.
The report went on to say that the Biden administration failed to heed the warnings about how quickly Kabul would fall into the hands of the Taliban and reserved its sharpest criticism for the administration’s delay in initiating an evacuation — a noncombatant evacuation operation, or NEO.
“The report concluded that the administration had a ‘concern that a NEO equated to failure’ and was also ‘more concerned about the optics of NEO than the dangers associated with failing to call’ for one,” noted the Hill.
“Those interviewed by the committee described a split between the military and the State Department, with the military stressing the likelihood that Kabul would fall as the diplomatic arm delayed plans to launch an evacuation, in part because of fears such plans could spark further chaos in the country,” the report added.
The evacuation was not ordered until Afghanistan Ambassador Ross Wilson requested one on August 15, which came “too little, too late.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken was also on vacation at the time, which forced people on the ground to make momentary decisions.
“This inexcusable delay was exacerbated by the department’s failure to formulate an emergency evacuation plan. The magnitude of the evacuation necessary became untenable, and departmental inaction condemned thousands of Afghan allies and Americans to a life under Taliban rule,” the report concluded.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) has subpoenaed Blinken for a September 19 hearing.
“As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies,” McCaul wrote.
The White House referred to the report as being full of “cherry-picked facts.”
“Everything we have seen and heard of Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report shows that it is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start. As we have said many times, ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result,” White House spokesperson Sharon Yang said in a statement.
“Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position. He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent. The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago,” the statement added.
The report also curiously made little mention of Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in the withdrawal.
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