One gets a nauseating feeling reading about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that began in April 2021 with Joe Biden's announcement that the U.S. was leaving the country by Sept. 11 and ended in wrenching tragedy when U.S. service members were blown up at Abbey Gate at the Kabul Airport on Aug. 26.
The report was three years in the making, and Republicans completed it without any help from the Democrats. That didn't stop them from criticizing the way the committee gathered evidence and wrote the report.
Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) accused Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. of creating a “predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal,” while the White House released a statement saying that the report was based on “based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start.”
Twenty years passed and four presidents sat in the Oval Office while the United States flailed about trying to find a way out of Afghanistan. But when Biden decided against the advice of his military and foreign policy advisors to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, he set in motion the most botched, most incompetently managed retreat in American history.
It wasn't just the incomprehensible chaos at Abbey Gate that led to the suicide attack killing 13 Americans. It was everything before and after, including the leaving behind of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians who worked for the American military and U.S. contractors despite knowing the danger.
It wasn't only Democrats who criticized the report. Jerry Dunleavy, who served as a senior investigator on the committee, resigned (in protest) last month because of the way the committee was writing the report.
“While the Committee’s investigation has indeed unearthed further evidence detailing the Biden-Harris Admin’s responsibility for the horrific events of August 2021 & for the dangerous global fallout which followed, McCaul & his team have also been derelict in their duty to pursue answers for the Abbey Gate Gold Star families, to seek the proper documents, to bring in the proper witnesses, to ask the tough questions, to fully pursue the truth without fear or favor, & to do everything in the Committee’s power to ensure that a deadly humiliation like this never happens again,” he said.
Perhaps most demanding was the conclusion.
“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 advisors or our allies,” the report says, referring to the agreement former President Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban. “Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan.”
“The president decided we’re gonna leave, and he’s not listening to anybody," said Col. Seth Krummich, former chief of staff for Special Operations Command,
Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor then and now, tried to blame the Afghan soldiers. He argued "that “when push came to shove, they decided not to step up and fight for their country.” In fact, the Taliban overwhelmed the Afghan forces after the U.S. decided to stop air sorties to support them. And, of course, the mindless closing of Bagram Air Force Base sealed the Afghan army's fate.
According to the report, Biden also waited until after Kabul International Airport had been overrun and the city taken to order a surge of troops that secured the airfield. The president also ordered an evacuation of Bagram Air Base, a major airfield, in early July, opting not to keep enough U.S. troops stationed there to secure and utilize the facility and carry out an evacuation.In a report issued in September 2023, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General said officials in the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Kabul wished to avoid creating panic in the country by planning for the worst-case scenarios. But pretending problems did not exist did nothing to solve them—and ultimately exacerbated them.
In a report issued in September 2023, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General said officials in the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Kabul wished to avoid creating panic in the country by planning for the worst-case scenarios. But pretending problems did not exist did nothing to solve them—and ultimately exacerbated them.
At each and every turn when Biden had a choice to slow the withdrawal and maintain the Afghan army, he faltered and made the wrong choice. Would two months really have altered the outcome of the withdrawal? We'll never know. All we can be sure of is that Biden's hurried, incompetent withdrawal killed Americans and sentenced thousands of Afghan collaborators to death.
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