US Republicans blame Biden for chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal

The president rushed and “picked optics over security” in 2021, a partisan report has concluded

US House Republicans issued a scathing report on Sunday blaming the administration of President Joe Biden for the nation’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The State Department had previously put the failed evacuation from Kabul down to the insistence of Biden and former President Donald Trump to quickly end the war.

The partisan investigation, which spanned over three years and was led by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, concluded that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate US personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”

The US had been due to leave Afghanistan by May 2021, according to a peace deal that Biden’s predecessor, Trump, had reached with the Taliban. Biden unilaterally delayed the departure by several months. As US troops began to withdraw, both Biden and his aides repeatedly told reporters that the Afghan government’s forces were capable of holding off the Taliban for at least several months. The US-armed and -funded Afghan army had surrendered to the Taliban without a significant fight, and Kabul fell on August 15, before the US managed to finish the evacuation. 

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The withdrawal led to 13 US service members being killed in a bomb attack in Kabul, which was masterminded by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). 

McCaul argued that Biden had ignored the warning signs of how quickly the Taliban would overrun the country and delayed planning for safe evacuation. 

“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said in a statement.

“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision …was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan,” according to the report.

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, McCaul denied that the report was political and that the release was specifically timed for the Trump-Harris presidential election debate, scheduled to take place on Tuesday. 

He claimed that it had taken “two years to get to this point because of the obstruction,” having to serve “subpoena after subpoena” to gain all the required documentation and testimonies from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He added that the investigation would continue after the November election. 

The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of cherry-picking witness testimony and downplaying Trump’s role in the withdrawal. White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang said that Biden had inherited an “untenable position” because of the “bad deal” the former president had agreed with the Taliban. 

Last year, the State Department released an after-action report, which cited lack of crisis preparation under both administrations, miscommunication with the US-supported government in Kabul and other factors explaining why the pullout was botched. It largely absolved the department, praising its staff for “great agility, determination, and dedication” under extreme circumstances.