President Joe Biden and his top military and intelligence brass could soon face the scrutiny of Congress led by members of Biden’s own party after a chaotic exit from Afghanistan that left Americans stranded and Afghan allies swarming military planes taking off from Kabul.
As of Tuesday, the heads of three Democratic-led congressional committees said they want to probe the problems that led to the United States being blindsided by the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country’s capital city and the collapse of the Afghan government.
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will continue fulfilling its oversight role with a hearing on U.S. policy towards Afghanistan, including the Trump administration’s flawed negotiations with Taliban, and the Biden administration’s flawed execution of the U.S. withdrawal,” chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey said in a statement on Tuesday.
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“The Committee will seek a full accounting for these shortcomings as well as assess why the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces collapsed so quickly. Congress was told repeatedly that the Afghan Defense and Security Forces were up to the task, that it had the troops, equipment and willingness to fight. To see this army dissolve so quickly after billions of dollars in U.S. support is astounding,” Menendez said.
Members of Congress in both parties, especially veterans, have expressed rage at the U.S. execution in the withdrawal, particularly the lack of an evacuation plan for translators and other allies.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Intelligence Committee, indicated his committee would probe the issue.
“We must do everything we can to secure the airport in Kabul, restore evacuation flights, and allow our trusted Afghan partners to find safe haven in the United States or elsewhere before it is too late,” Warner said in a statement Monday. “I hope to work with the other committees of jurisdiction to ask tough but necessary questions about why we weren’t better prepared for a worst-case scenario involving such a swift and total collapse of the Afghan government and security forces.”
The Democratic leaders avoided placing the full blame on Biden or his appointees, mentioning the Trump administration and other previous administrations.
“These factors include a disastrous pivot to a war of choice in Iraq, a failure to have an effective policy to deal with a duplicitous Pakistan, a failure of mission creep from counter-terrorism; and a lack of ability to build an effective Afghan government and security forces,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Jack Reed of Rhode Island said in a statement on Tuesday. “This is not a Democratic or a Republican problem. These failures have been manifesting over four presidential administrations of both political parties.”
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Reed also previewed a coming probe into the crisis: “At the appropriate time, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on what went wrong in Afghanistan and lessons learned to avoid repeating those mistakes.”
