Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee released their own memorandum on President Biden's chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan after Republicans on the committee released a report criticizing the president for what happened at the time.
The committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, released a Republican-led report that disputed claims that President Biden is bound by an agreement between former President Trump and the Taliban that set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in the region in the summer of 2021. The report also said State Department officials have no plan to help them, citing troops still in the region and no plan to protect American citizens and allies.
McCaul's report also noted the failure to adequately respond to terrorist threats before the ISIS-K bombing at Kabul's Abbey Gate airport, which killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that after the withdrawal, the Taliban likely had access to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons and up to $57 million in military funds initially provided to the Afghan government.
But the committee's top Democratic director, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, released a counter report to the Republican-led report, accusing Republicans of criticizing the Biden administration's withdrawal for political purposes and of failing to offer a viable alternative.
House Republicans release scathing report on Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal
A U.S. Marine holds up an infant through a barbed wire fence during an evacuation at then-Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Aug. 19, 2021. (Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images)
Meeks also said Republicans had not engaged Democrats in the report and stressed that planning for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan began under the Trump administration.
In a summary of the memo, he said Republicans had sought to avoid facts relating to Trump, such as “the agreement he negotiated with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government and committed to a time-bound full withdrawal, as well as any reference to the rights of Afghan women and girls.”
The official also criticized Trump's “unilateral troop withdrawal announcement, which in many cases came as a surprise to the president's own officials, weakened U.S. leverage because it was unrelated to the Taliban's compliance with the agreement. He also criticized Trump for forcing the Afghan government to allow 5,000 Taliban fighters to return to the battlefield before the Taliban's final offensive ultimately took Kabul.”
“When former President Trump took office, there were approximately 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan,” Meeks writes. “Days before leaving office, he ordered a further reduction to 2,500. President Trump began an irreversible withdrawal without sending a significant increase in U.S. troops to prepare for renewed combat with the Taliban.”
Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the U.S.-led withdrawal from Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Sidiqullah Alizai)
“All witnesses who testified on this issue agreed that without a continued withdrawal, the United States would have faced renewed fighting with the Taliban,” he added. “Rather than send more Americans to the war in Afghanistan, President Biden has decided to end the war.”
Referring to the Abbey Gate bombing, Meeks said Republicans “have known for months that this attack could not have been prevented, and despite witnesses telling the committee they thought they were targeting an ISIS-K bomber, that was not the case.”
Meeks said Republicans tried to gain attention in a partisan way rather than acknowledging the full facts and substance of the investigation in the heat of the election campaign. He also said Republicans tried to link Vice President Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, to the retraction, even though her name only appeared three times in the committee's 3,288 pages of interview records.
House committee subpoenas Blinken over Afghanistan withdrawal
U.S. Marines and Central Command's Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response help secure the Evacuation Control Checkpoint (ECC) during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 26. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)
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“This committee's oversight work has been funded by American taxpayers, and the American people have a right to know the truth,” Meeks said. “We have an obligation to present the facts uncovered by this investigation without undue distortion, and with respect for the seriousness of the issues and the witnesses who have volunteered to testify.”
“I believe now, as I did at that hearing, that many of those critical of the withdrawal effort simply have a fundamental opposition to President Biden fulfilling his campaign promise to be the final commander in chief of the Afghanistan war,” he added. “They use criticism to hide their frustration, but they fail to offer a viable alternative. We must continue to engage with these issues, not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to find lessons that can help us fight better and end this war in the future.”
