The report from Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released in the shadow of the three-year anniversary of the U.S. exit, criticizes Biden for what it pans as a rushed withdrawal regardless of counsel from allies and advisers that led to unnecessary deaths.
“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, referencing the Trump administration agreement to leave the country.
The report accuses the Biden administration of failing to see warning signs of how quickly Kabul would fall to the Taliban and delaying the planning for and calling of an evacuation — fearing both the optics of such an exit and further destabilization in the country.
In response, the White House accused Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) of cherry-picking details and failing to account for the role of the Trump administration.
“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 spokeswoman 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 report is being released ahead of the first presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, who has sought to use Afghanistan as a political issue against her.
Republicans in general have sought to buttress Trump’s arguments against Harris and Biden over Afghanistan, as the 17-day evacuation from the country marked one of the lower points of the Biden administration.
During the chaos, a suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate entrance near the airport on Aug. 26, 2021 killed 13 U.S. service members as well as 170 Afghans.
However, while the report condemns the actions of the “Biden-Harris administration,” it offers little discussion of any specific role played by Harris in the planning or execution of the exit.
Ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) likewise accused Republicans of politicizing the withdrawal and ignoring Trump missteps in brokering the deal, saying efforts to pin the exit on Democrats have “reached a crescendo” with the new focus on Harris.
“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’s interview transcripts,” he wrote in a simultaneously released minority report.
The GOP report also fails to address Trump's role as president in prompting the U.S. withdrawal. It was the Trump administration that brokered the deal to leave Afghanistan, initially agreeing to have the U.S. withdraw all its forces by May 2021.
Still, the report offers an inside look at the alarms raised by those working across government ahead of the August 2021 withdrawal.
One of the sharpest lines of criticism in the report is the Biden administration’s delay in planning for and formally igniting an evacuation — also known as 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.
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.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
