Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a lengthy report about the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago, concluding that the Biden administration was overly concerned with optics and failed to plan for all contingencies.
President Joe Biden unveiled a “go-to-zero” order after which American military assets departed from Afghanistan, even as the Taliban seized power and overthrew the national government. The report asserted that the Biden administration was “determined to withdraw from Afghanistan” and thus “prioritized the optics of the withdrawal” over the security of personnel.
The report draws on eighteen interviews from key officials, such as retired General Austin Miller and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, as well as subpoenaed documents. The interviews and documents revealed that “a significant amount of classified information was left to the Taliban” amid the withdrawal and that State Department officials failed to properly coordinate departure for American citizens and Afghan nationals eligible for evacuation.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, said in a statement that the Biden administration “conducted an emergency evacuation without the necessary personnel, supplies, and equipment,” resulting in damage to American credibility.
McCaul added that the withdrawal also “emboldened our adversaries” and “made the United States more at risk of an attack emanating from Afghanistan,” as well as produced “moral injury to our veterans and servicemembers.” The report indeed contended that Afghanistan has once more become a “haven for terrorists” such as al-Qaeda and ISIS-K under the Taliban.
The new report comes after the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the main oversight body for American funds used to rebuild the South Asian nation, warned that two State Department agencies recently failed to properly manage their nonprofit grant programs in Afghanistan even as the Taliban seeks American funds by means of defrauding such programs.
