The House Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee released their own memo on President Biden’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan after committee Republicans released a report criticizing the president for what went down at the time.
Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the committee, released a GOP-led report disputing Biden’s claims that his hands were tied to the agreement former President Trump had made with the Taliban establishing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal for the summer of 2021. It also said State Department officials had no plan for helping Americans and allies out while there were still troops in the region to protect them.
McCaul’s report also noted the failure to adequately respond to terror threats ahead of the ISIS-K bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that the Taliban likely had access after the withdrawal to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons and up to $57 million in U.S. funds that were initially given to the Afghan government.
But New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Democrat ranking member of the committee, released a dueling report in response to the GOP-led report, accusing Republicans of criticizing the Biden administration for the withdrawal for political purposes and failing to offer feasible alternatives.
A U.S. Marine grabs an infant over a fence of barbed wire during an evacuation at then-Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, 2021. (Courtesy of Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images)
Meeks also said Republicans did not involve Democrat members in their report and stressed that plans for withdrawing from Afghanistan began under the Trump administration.
He said in the memo’s summary that Republicans sought to avoid facts involving Trump, including “his committing the United States to a full, date-specific withdrawal in a deal he negotiated with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government or any reference to the rights of Afghan women and girls.”
The ranking member also knocked Trump’s “unilateral announcements to withdraw troops, often a surprise to many of his own senior officials, which undercut U.S. leverage because those announcements were divorced from Taliban compliance with the deal; and his forcing the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters back to the battlefield before a final Taliban offensive ultimately took Kabul.”
“When former President Trump took office, there were approximately 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan,” Meeks wrote. “Days before leaving office, the former President ordered a further reduction to 2,500. President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban.”
Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
“All witnesses who testified on this issue agreed that the United States would have faced renewed combat with the Taliban had we not continued the withdrawal,” he added. “Rather than send more Americans to fight a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it.”
Addressing the Abbey Gate bombing. Meeks said Republicans “knew for months that the attack was not preventable and that, even though a witness told our Committee he thought he had the ISIS-K bomber in his sights, he did not.”
Republicans, Meeks said, made partisan attempts to garner headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of their investigation during the height of the election cycle. He also said Republicans attempted to tie Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democrats’ presidential nominee, to the withdrawal even though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the committee’s interview transcripts.
U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, assist with security at an Evacuation Control Checkpoint (ECC) during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26. ((U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla) )
“American taxpayers have funded this Committee’s oversight, and the American people deserve the truth,” Meeks said. “We owe it to them to highlight the facts elicited in this investigation without undue spin and with respect for the seriousness of the subject and the witnesses who have voluntarily testified to us about it.”
“It strikes me now as it did during that hearing that many of those critical of the withdrawal effort simply have a fundamental objection to President Biden fulfilling his pledge to be the last Commander-in-Chief to preside over the war in Afghanistan,” he added. “They are masking their displeasure with criticisms but have failed to offer feasible alternatives. We must continue to wrestle with these matters not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to identify lessons that can help us better fight and end wars in the future.”
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