House Republicans release partisan report blaming Biden for disastrous end to US war in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Sunday released a scathing report on their investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming President Joe Biden’s administration for the disastrous end to America’s longest war and downplaying the role of former President Donald Trump, who signed the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban.

The partisan report describes the final months of military and civilian failures following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal agreement, which allowed America’s fundamentalist enemy, the Taliban, to sweep across and conquer the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on August 30, 2021. The chaotic withdrawal left behind many American citizens, Afghan allies on the battlefield, women’s rights activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

But the House Republicans’ report brings little new information, as the withdrawal has already been thoroughly examined in several independent investigations. Previous investigations and analyses pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidencies and concluded that Biden and Trump bear the main blame.

Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who led the investigation as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Republican review shows that the Biden administration “had the information and the ability to take the necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government so that we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders and our brave Afghan allies.”

“However, at every step of the way, the government has prioritized optics over safety,” he said in a statement.

McCaul had earlier denied earlier that day that the timing of the report’s release before the presidential election was political or that Republicans had ignored Trump’s mistakes in the U.S. withdrawal.

A U.S. State Department spokesman defended the administration after the report was released, saying Biden had acted in the best interests of the United States by permanently ending the country’s involvement in Afghanistan.

Spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement that Republicans had produced a narrative “aimed only at damaging the administration rather than trying to actually inform Americans about how our longest war ended.”

In a statement, House Democrats said their Republican colleagues’ report “cherried witness testimony to exclude anything that was not helpful in supporting a predetermined, partisan narrative of the Afghanistan withdrawal” and ignored facts about Trump’s role.

The more than 18-month-long investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee focused on the months before the U.S. troop withdrawal, concluding that Biden and his administration undermined senior officials and ignored warnings as the Taliban took key cities far faster than most U.S. officials expected or were prepared for.

“I called their advance ‘the red spot,'” retired Colonel Seth Krummrich said of the Taliban. He told the committee that at the Central Special Operations Command, where he was chief of staff, “we were tracking the Taliban advance on a daily basis, and it looked like a red spot that was devouring the terrain.”

“I don’t think we ever thought about it – you know, nobody ever talked about, ‘So what’s going to happen if the Taliban come over the wall?'” Carol Perez, the acting State Department undersecretary for administration at the time of the withdrawal, said of what House Republicans said was minimal planning by the State Department before it abandoned the embassy in mid-August 2021, when the Taliban entered the Afghan capital of Kabul.

The withdrawal ended a nearly two-decade-long occupation by U.S. and allied forces that had begun to drive out the al-Qaeda fighters responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban had allowed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to find refuge in Afghanistan. Committee staff noted reports that the group has rebuilt itself in Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal, including a UN report of up to eight al-Qaeda training camps there.

The Taliban overthrew an Afghan government and military that the United States had spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars building in the hope of preventing the country from once again becoming a base for anti-Western extremists.

A 2023 report by the U.S. Oversight Agency for Afghanistan Operations highlights Trump’s February 2020 deal with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw all American forces and military contractors by spring of next year, and highlights Trump and Biden’s determination to continue the withdrawal of U.S. troops despite the Taliban’s breach of key commitments under the withdrawal agreement.

The more than 350-page document from House Republicans is the product of hours of testimony – including from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command and other senior officials at the time – seven public hearings and roundtable discussions, and more than 20,000 pages of State Department documents reviewed by the committees.

With Biden not seeking re-election, Trump and his Republican allies have sought to make withdrawal a campaign issue against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race.

The House Republicans’ report points to Harris’ overall responsibility as Biden’s adviser, but does not identify any specific advice or actions Harris took that contributed to the many failures.

Some highlights of the report:

Decision to withdraw

Republicans point to testimony and records showing that the Biden administration relied “to a very limited extent” on input from military and civilian leadership on the ground in Afghanistan in the months leading up to the withdrawal. Most decisions were made by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan without consulting key stakeholders.

According to the report, Biden continued the withdrawal despite the Taliban failing to meet some of their commitments under the agreement, including breaking their promise to start talks with the then US-backed Afghan government.

Former U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price testified before the committee that compliance with the Doha agreement was “immaterial” to Biden’s decision to withdraw, the report said.

According to earlier reports, Trump also took the first steps under the withdrawal agreement, reducing the troop presence from around 13,000 to an eventual 2,500 troops, although the Taliban initially failed to abide by some parts of the agreement and escalated their attacks on Afghan forces.

The House report blames not Trump but a long-time US diplomat for Afghanistan, former ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, for the Trump administration’s handling of negotiations with the Taliban. The new report says that Trump followed the recommendations of the American military leadership and drastically reduced the number of US troops in Afghanistan after the agreement was signed.

“We were still in the planning phase” when Kabul fell

The report also addresses the vulnerability of U.S. embassy staff in Kabul as the Biden administration planned its withdrawal. Republicans claim the Biden administration “dogmatically insisted” on maintaining a large diplomatic presence despite concerns about the lack of security for personnel after U.S. forces left.

McKenzie, one of two U.S. generals overseeing the evacuation, told lawmakers that the government’s insistence on keeping the embassy open and fully operational was the “fatal mistake that led to the events in August,” the report said.

The committee report said State Department officials went so far as to water down or “even completely rewrite” reports from the heads of diplomatic security and the Department of Defense that warned of the danger to U.S. personnel as the withdrawal date approached.

“We were still in the planning phase” when Kabul fell, senior U.S. diplomat Perez testified before the committee.

___

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.