President Biden was so insistent on a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that he disregarded the advice of his top security team and put politics ahead of U.S. national interests in the region, according to a scathing comprehensive report by the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Committee Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas and the panel’s Republican majority on Monday released “Willful Blindness,” the result of a three-year investigation into the troubled final days and botched evacuation as Taliban fighters were toppling the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. The chaotic withdrawal in August 2021 was punctuated by a suicide bomb attack that killed 13 U.S. service personnel and scores of local civilians at the Afghan capital’s biggest airport.
“This was a catastrophic failure of epic proportions,” Mr. McCaul said during a press conference after the report was released. “The State Department by law has the authority authorized by Congress to come up with a plan for evacuation. The State Department wholly failed in that responsibility.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former commander of U.S. Central Command, were among those who urged the White House to keep about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan after the pullout to prevent a collapse of the government and the Afghan military.
Even after the Trump administration’s signing of the Doha Agreement to bring an end to the 20-year U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan, NATO allies pressed the Biden-Harris administration to leave behind a contingency force to “maintain NATO’s footprint” in Afghanistan and prevent what they said would be a strategic victory for the radical Islamist Taliban rebels.
Minority Democrats on the House panel took sharp issue with the Republican report, and the State Department issued a blistering rejection of the study.
SEE ALSO: Biden abandoned 90% of Afghan allies in Kabul evacuation, House report finds
“This investigation had the potential to truly be bipartisan and produce real legislative proposals to better prepare the United States — for future presidents and for future parties — for future challenges,” State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters. “Instead, the majority chose to seek scandal over substance, and this quote/unquote ‘investigation’ seems to not actually have uncovered anything new, and instead is a collection of cherry-picked comments from various transcribed interviews and interviews designed to paint an inaccurate picture of this administration’s efforts.”
House Republicans said Mr. Biden ignored their warnings and ordered the withdrawal of all troops while publicly and falsely claiming his senior advisers and NATO allies supported that decision. The report repeatedly places blame on the “Biden-Harris administration” — roping in Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, for a share of the blame.
“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha Agreement or the advice of his senior national security advisers or our allies,” the report said. “Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan.”
The report said administration officials were “willfully blind” to warnings about the deteriorating security situation from senior military personnel and diplomats in Kabul, along with U.S. intelligence assessments and media reports.
Mr. McCaul said the lawmakers’ investigation revealed that the White House had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government so they could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American civilians and the Afghan allies who served alongside U.S. troops for years.
“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said in a statement.
When asked to comment on the congressional report, a Pentagon spokesman said the U.S. military was in Afghanistan for 20 years with the mission of preventing another 9/11-style attack on the U.S.
“We have not seen an attack like that since. And so, in that regard, certainly our forces were able to prevent al Qaeda from conducting this kind of heinous terrorist attack,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder. Mr. Austin “is immensely proud of all the service members who served there, and of course, we honor all those that we lost there.”
Contingencies
House Republicans accused the White House of failing to plan for all contingencies and conducting an emergency evacuation from Hamid Karzai International Airport without having the necessary personnel, supplies and equipment on hand. U.S. forces had to rely on promises from the new Taliban leadership in Kabul that they could proceed with the frantic evacuation mission.
“The administration’s dereliction of duty placed U.S. service members and U.S. State Department personnel in mortal danger, where the Taliban — our sworn enemy — became the first line of defense,” Mr. McCaul said.
The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan culminated in the deadly Aug. 26, 2021, Abbey Gate bombing that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. military personnel and dozens of Afghan civilians. The attack was the result of several factors, including the failure to close Abbey Gate despite threat warnings about an imminent attack and relying on the Taliban for security at the scene.
“The Taliban long harbored violent intentions toward Americans and have expressed no regard for innocent human life. In addition, their security screening was inconsistent and haphazard,” the report states. “The Taliban also did not consistently assist the U.S. military with confronting known or suspected [Islamic State] cells operating in the city, including the cell that would eventually carry out the attack.”
Jim McCollum is the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, one of the U.S. troops killed in the blast.
“We have been thrust into a position that none of us wanted to be in,” he said at the congressional press conference. “We have a father who is never going to know his daughter, a daughter who will never know her father, and a wife who lost her husband.”
Mr. McCollum said the Republican congressional report was more candid and in-depth than others released over the years by government agencies and departments within the Biden administration.
“This report provided confirmation of things I knew, shed light on things I suspected, and detailed things that I was not aware of,” he said.
Delicate situation
According to the 350-page report, titled “Willful Blindness,” the U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan did not conduct any direct operations against Afghan Islamic State fighters for fear of upsetting the Taliban during delicate diplomatic negotiations.
“The U.S. military did not have the manpower and the Biden-Harris administration did not have the political will to conduct operations in and outside Kabul to neutralize it,” the report stated. “Instead, the Biden-Harris administration relied on terrorists to capture other terrorists.”
House Republicans blamed the White House and Pentagon for pulling troops out of Afghanistan without any workable plan for stabilizing the country. Congressional Democrats said the Trump administration was at fault for making the original deal with the Taliban that set the withdrawal into motion and left Mr. Biden with little leverage to bargain.
Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused their Republican colleagues of using a taxpayer-funded report to politicize the Afghanistan evacuation and make cheap political points during an election year. The report was released the day before Ms. Harris was scheduled to debate former President Donald Trump, her Republican rival for the White House.
“The American people deserve the truth. 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,” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the senior Democrat on the committee, said in a statement after the report was released.
“If the information we receive is hidden, twisted or used as a political cudgel, it will undermine the committee’s ability to undertake credible oversight going forward,” Mr. Meeks said.
Mr. McCaul accused congressional Democrats of focusing on providing political cover for the White House rather than seeking candid answers to questions about the evacuation from Afghanistan.
“They held only a single hearing, did not conduct one transcribed interview or publicly request a single document,” he said. “Since becoming chairman in January 2023, I have aggressively pushed to get the necessary documents and testimony from the [administration] and they have obstructed my every attempt.”
The State Department challenged what it said were Republican claims it had refused to work with congressional investigators.
“The department stands ready to work alongside any member who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions,” the department said in a statement. “However, we will not stand by silently as the department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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