Two Congress members who took an unannounced trip to the Kabul airport were harangued by their colleagues and Pentagon officials on Wednesday for intruding upon and distracting from the U.S. evacuation effort.
While the trip was roundly criticized, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans said they sympathized with lawmakers’ frustration with the Biden administration’s failure to provide information about what’s going on in Afghanistan.
“They’re both veterans. They’re both frustrated. They have an administration that won’t tell them the answers,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol.
Still, the consensus in Washington was that Reps. Peter Meijer, Michigan Republican, and Seth Moulton, Massachusetts Democrat, were out of line in flying to Kabul on Tuesday, disregarding official warnings not to travel there.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said the two men had some explaining to do.
“They have to make their own case as to why they went and this or that, but it was not, in my view, a good idea,” she said.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said the trip caused a “distraction” from the conversation about getting people to safety.
“Here we are talking about thousands of Americans and thousands of Afghan interpreters left behind and now we have to talk about two members who went on their own,” Mr. McCaul, Texas Republican, said at a press conference.
He stopped short of suggesting the lawmakers should be reprimanded.
In an interview, he too spoke of frustration with President Biden.
“I think they’re frustrated,” Mr. McCaul said. “Congress is frustrated because the administration has dropped the ball on this. I think they wanted to do something to help, but it’s distracting to the mission.”
At the Pentagon, officials chided the pair for getting in the way as troops scramble to evacuate Americans and allies before an Aug. 31 deadline.
“We were not aware of this visit and we are obviously not encouraging VIP visits to a very tense, dangerous, and dynamic situation at the airport and inside Kabul generally,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
He said the visit “took time away” from the mission but couldn’t say whether the lawmakers took aircraft seats away from those trying to flee the country now that it’s under Taliban control.
The White House said it was not advised of the lawmakers’ travel plans.
“Our guidance continues to be to all American citizens, including elected officials, this is not time to travel to Afghanistan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “Our focus or resources need to be laser-focused on evacuating American citizens.”
Mr. Meijer and Mr. Moulton are members of the Armed Services Committee. They took commercial flights to the United Arab Emirates and military flights to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
They said they wanted to provide oversight on the evacuation process and that they took safety precautions.
“As members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch,” they said in a joint statement. “We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.”
Mr. Moulton posted several tweets about the visit and promised to share more. Both men have called on Mr. Biden to extend the Aug. 31 deadline.
The State Department said about 1,500 Americans are still in Afghanistan.
The Taliban warned of potential violence if the U.S. troop presence remains beyond Aug. 31. Mr. Biden this week refused to extend the deadline.
• Mica Soellner can be reached at msoellner@washingtontimes.com.
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