Republican lawmakers pushed back against President Joe Biden’s administration’s report this week regarding the August 2021 evacuation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The public description of the disastrous Afghanistan retreat issued by the Biden White House today, according to House Military Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., is a spineless piece of fiction. Biden’s decision is being blamed on the Trump administration, as expected, but also the senior military advisors and the Intelligence Community.
Rogers stated that President Biden was responsible for this withdrawal, and he ought to assume accountability for the tragedy that resulted from his actions.
The report, released Thursday, stated President Biden’s choices for executing a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely restrained by conditions imposed by the Trump Administration negotiations with the Taliban. Trump ordered direct discussions with the Taliban without consulting America’s allies or inviting the Afghanistan government to negotiate.
A spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, told reporters on Thursday that the Biden Administration underestimated the rate at which the Taliban could retake the country, leading to the tumultuous and deadly evacuations in the last days of August 2021, during which a suicide bomber at one of the Kabul airport gates killed 13 American service members.
Kirby claimed they failed to account for the Taliban’s rapid expansion in Afghanistan. The Biden Administration didn’t fully anticipate the degree to which the Taliban were constructing deals in the hinterlands that crumpled like dominoes. They also didn’t anticipate how fast the Afghan National Security Forces would fold and not fight for their country — specifically after America had dedicated 20 years to training and equipping them. Kirby added it wasn’t fully appreciated the corruption in the officer ranks in the military.
Despite the chaos, the United States evacuated more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan during the tumultuous withdrawal, Kirby said.
Republican legislators did not favorably receive the assessment.
Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker told reporters that many should be held responsible for this blunder in a well-run government. The Biden administration has provided an extensive and profoundly partisan explanation of its flawed Afghanistan policy to the public rather than addressing honestly and openly the fundamental problems in its decision-making process.
Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has stated that the leaders of China and Russia noted the bungled effort in Afghanistan.
Risch told the media that the White House release of an after-action report on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is unfortunate and untimely. Attempts were made to hide the revelation over the holiday weekend nearly two years later. The Biden administration’s failure to act forcefully cost the lives of American service members and countless innocent civilians. Risch added it also doesn’t take a report to establish that Russia and China watched attentively.