In a scathing report issued on Sunday, US House Republicans blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for the nation’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The State Department had previously attributed the failed evacuation from Kabul to former President Donald Trump and President Biden’s insistence on rapidly ending the war.
The partisan investigation, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul over three years, found that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government so we could safely evacuate US personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.
According to a peace deal reached by Trump with the Taliban, the US was due to leave Afghanistan by May 2021. However, Biden unilaterally delayed the departure by several months. Despite assurances from the president and his aides that the Afghan government’s forces could hold off the Taliban for several months, the US-armed and funded Afghan army surrendered to the Taliban without much resistance. Kabul fell on August 15, before the US finished evacuating its personnel.
This withdrawal led to 13 US service members being killed in a bomb attack in Kabul orchestrated by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS. McCaul argued that Biden had ignored warning signs of how quickly the Taliban would overrun Afghanistan and delayed planning for safe evacuation. He stated, “At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security.
According to the report, President Biden’s decision was based on his firm belief that the US should no longer be in Afghanistan. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, McCaul denied that the report had a political agenda and that its release was timed specifically for the Trump-Harris presidential election debate scheduled to take place on Tuesday. He claimed that it took “two years to get to this point because of the obstruction” and that subpoenas were necessary to gain all required documentation and testimonies from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The investigation would continue after the November election.
The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of cherry-picking witness testimony and downplaying Trump’s role in the withdrawal. White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang said that Biden had inherited an “untenable position” because of the “bad deal” the former president had agreed with the Taliban.
Last year, the State Department released an after-action report citing lack of crisis preparation under both administrations, miscommunication with the US-supported government in Kabul and other factors explaining why the pullout was botched. The report largely absolved the department, praising its staff for “great agility, determination, and dedication” under extreme circumstances.