House Foreign Affairs Republicans are defending their report blasting the Biden administration for the botched U.S. military withdrawal in Afghanistan, following pushback from the White House this week.
President Joe Biden’s rush for the exit last year ended with a chaotic evacuation and the Taliban back in power, and a new House GOP report argued Biden’s choices “led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe.”
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson quickly circulated a memo attacking the GOP report.
“This partisan report is riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information, and false claims,” the White House said, arguing it “ignores the impacts of the flawed deal that former President Trump struck with the Taliban.”
The GOP report did address the Taliban deal, and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s ranking member, said the White House was “disingenuous” in using that flawed deal to exonerate Biden.
“Biden specifically said … he would have pulled out all of the troops against the advice of his own senior military advisers, the intelligence community, and our allies whether the Doha agreement existed or not,” McCaul told the Washington Examiner. “The Doha agreement was not perfect, but it absolutely did not force this disastrous withdrawal.”
HOUSE GOP SAYS BIDEN KNOWINGLY MISLED ABOUT AFGHAN WITHDRAWAL
Biden said days after Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell that “I would’ve tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops,” even without the Taliban agreement.
The White House memo included a “What We Inherited” section and argued the agreement strengthened the Taliban and tied Biden’s hands. Biden contended in April 2021 that he “inherited a diplomatic agreement … duly negotiated” between the United States and the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces.
But the GOP report argued the agreement “was predicated on conditions by the Taliban that were not being met” and pointed to the provision that “the Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”
The Taliban continued their decadeslong history of hosting al Qaeda, so Republicans said the Taliban’s “failure to adhere to the agreement nullified the U.S. requirement to withdraw.”
“While the Taliban did not attack U.S. forces … it failed to fully honor any … other commitments,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in September 2021.
The White House memo also argued the withdrawal “strengthened our national security” and “put the United States in a stronger place to lead the world.”
McCaul’s office said this “has been refuted by the president’s top military advisers, the Defense Department, and our allies” and that the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and MI6 (the British foreign intelligence service) “all stated the withdrawal was helpful to America’s adversaries, specifically Iran, China, and Russia.” The Republican noted Milley and FBI Director Christopher Wray have expressed concerns about al Qaeda and ISIS-K (the Islamic State’s local affiliate) growing stronger in Afghanistan.
ISIS-K was responsible for the late August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians, while the Taliban provided security outside the airport.
Biden had promised in the days after Kabul fell that “if there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out.” Biden administration officials soon claimed there were only around 100 Americans who had been left behind.
McCaul’s office said that “we now know more than 1,000 have been evacuated since August 31, 2021.” Thousands of green card holders and tens of thousands of Afghan allies were left behind.
The GOP report noted there were only 15 consular officers at the Kabul airport at the beginning of the Afghan evacuation, and the highest that reached was 36. The report found “this significantly limited the U.S. government’s ability to quickly process people.”
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State Department spokesman Ned Price argued Monday that “we had an appropriate level of consular officials on the ground” and that it “was not a significant limiting factor.”
Brig. Gen. John Sullivan told investigators that “initially there were not enough consular officers to process everyone and that remained an issue.” U.S. Central Command’s after-action review said that “consular staff did not have sufficient manning to supervise all processing at the gates.”
McCaul told the Washington Examiner that “the State Department has either ignored or rejected every single one of our attempts to get critical information about the withdrawal.”
