The Pentagon on Wednesday morning blasted visits by two U.S. lawmakers to the Kabul airport a day earlier, saying the unannounced trip hampered American evacuation efforts and pulled military resources away from the mission at hand.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that they were not aware that Reps. Peter Meijer, Michigan Republican, and Seth Moulton, Massachusetts Democrat, were planning to visit the airport, which is the site of a massive evacuation effort as President Biden’s Aug. 31 Afghanistan withdrawal deadline looms.
Mr. Kirby could not say whether the two lawmakers took aircraft seats that otherwise would’ve been used for American citizens or vulnerable Afghans to leave the country, but he made clear that the trip got in the way of the U.S.-led mission.
“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. And the Secretary [of Defense Lloyd Austin] I think would have appreciated the opportunity to have had a conversation before the visit took place,” Mr. Kirby said.
“They got a chance to talk to commanders, as I understand it, to talk to troops. But to say that there wasn’t a need to flex and to alter the day’s flow, including the need to have protection for these members of Congress, that wouldn’t be a genuine thing for me to assert,” Mr. Kirby said. “There was certainly a pull-off of the kinds of the missions we were trying to do to accommodate that visit.”
“They certainly took time away from what we had been planning to do that day,” he continued. “And I don’t know, on the aircraft. They did fly out on a military aircraft. I honestly don’t know what the seat capacity was on that” and whether those seats would have been given to evacuees.
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In a joint statement late Tuesday, the two lawmakers said they intended to “conduct oversight on the mission to evacuate Americans and our allies” during their visit.
“As veterans, we care deeply about the situation on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport,” the lawmakers wrote. “America has a moral obligation to our citizens and loyal allies, and we must make sure that obligation is being kept. Like many veterans, we have spent the last few weeks working without sleep to try to get as many people as we could through the gates and to safety.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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