Long-awaited Republican Report An analysis of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan paints a picture of President Biden determined to leave the country but fumbling around with his preparations, setting the stage for a chaotic and deadly withdrawal from the longest war in American history.
Three years after the U.S. withdrawal from Iran, a report released by Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the president for rushing the effort and ignoring the advice of allies and advisers, resulting in unnecessary deaths.
“The evidence demonstrates that 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 advisor or allies, but rather was premised on his long-held and unwavering opinion that the United States should no longer remain in Afghanistan,” the report said, referring to the Trump administration's Afghanistan withdrawal agreement.
The report blames the Biden administration for missing warning signs about how quickly Kabul was falling to the Taliban and delaying planning and requesting a withdrawal, fearing both the appearance of withdrawal and further destabilizing the country.
In response, the White House accused House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) of cherry-picking details and not considering the Trump administration's role.
“Everything we have seen and heard about Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report indicates that it is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate portrayals, and the pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation since its beginning. We said “Ending our longest-running war is often the right thing to do, and our nation is stronger today as a result,” White House press secretary Sharon Yang said in a statement.
“Former President Trump's bad deal with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan by May 2021 left President Biden inheriting an unsustainable position. President Biden can choose to either intensify the war with the Taliban in its strongest position in two decades and put even more U.S. troops at risk, or finally end the longest war, 20 years and $2 trillion later. The President has refused to send another generation of Americans into a war that should have ended long ago.”
The report was released ahead of the first presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, who has sought to use Afghanistan as a political attack against her.
Republicans generally have sought to shore up Trump's case against Harris and Biden over Afghanistan, as the 17-day withdrawal from Afghanistan marked one of the low points of the Biden administration.
Just days after the withdrawal, the Taliban took control of Kabul much faster than the regime had anticipated, with crowds swarming Hamid Karzai International Airport and shocking footage of people falling as they tried to hang on to hold on to escape the country.
Roughly 100,000 people who cooperated with the U.S. government operation were left behind, a number that swells when considering others who were vulnerable under Taliban rule.
Additionally, on August 26, 2021, a suicide bomb attack occurred at the Abbey Gate entrance near the airport, killing 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghans.
It's a detail Trump highlighted during a recent campaign stop where he visited the graves of Marines killed in the attack at Arlington National Cemetery, drawing criticism from the Harris campaign and some veterans after cemetery officials said Trump violated rules banning campaign-related activities at the cemetery.
But while the report condemns the actions of the “Biden-Harris Administration,” there is little discussion of Harris' specific role in planning or executing the withdrawal.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat who is a top foreign affairs advocate, also accused Republicans of politicizing the withdrawal and ignoring Trump's failures in brokering the deal, saying the effort to blame Democrats for the withdrawal had “reached a climax” with the new focus on Harris.
“Republicans now claim she was an architect of the withdrawal of U.S. troops, yet in the Committee's 3,288 pages of interview records, she is mentioned only three times,” he said in the minority report released at the same time.
The Republican report also makes no mention of former President Trump's role in facilitating the U.S. withdrawal. It was the Trump administration that brokered the withdrawal deal from Afghanistan, which initially saw the U.S. agree to withdraw all its troops by May 2021.
And under Trump, immigration processing was extremely slow, including for people who qualify for special immigrant visas, a multi-step entry pathway for people coming to the U.S. in support of U.S. troops or contractors. The slow pace of processing has hindered the Biden administration's ability to quickly redeploy allies.
Still, the report offers an inside look at the alarm bells raised by those working within the government ahead of the August 2021 withdrawal.
One of the report's harshest criticisms focuses on the Biden administration's delays in planning and officially launching the evacuations, also known as noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEOs.
The report concluded that the administration had “concerns that NEOs were tantamount to failure” and was “more concerned about the perception of NEOs than about the risks associated with not requesting one.”
People interviewed by the committee said disagreements between the military and the State Department, which delayed evacuation plans, led the military to emphasize the possibility of Kabul falling, in part because it feared such plans would spark further unrest in the country.
One Kabul embassy official told the committee that local leadership appeared opposed to starting evacuations, leading some to start “disruptive NEO meetings,” while another official said the evacuation plan was “too little, too late.”
The evacuation order was not issued until then-Afghanistan ambassador Ross Wilson requested it on Aug. 15, because Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on vacation.
As a result, many of the basic details of the evacuation were not planned and were decided on the spot.
The administration has long maintained that intelligence did not indicate Kabul would fall so quickly, and State Department officials have said they did not anticipate a scenario in which they would be forced to evacuate Kabul without it being under their control. The Republican report said this showed a stunning lack of planning.
One State Department official said the department's Office of Emergency Management and Strategy – the team within the Secretary of State's office responsible for managing global crises – only became involved “after we recognized it as what it really is – NEO/end of operations.”
“This inexcusable delay was compounded by the Department of Defense's failure to develop emergency evacuation plans. The scale of necessary evacuations became unsustainable, and the Department of Defense's inaction forced thousands of Afghan allies and Americans to remain under Taliban control,” the report concluded.
The lack of planning made it unclear who was eligible for evacuation, and Afghans with U.S. ties often received conflicting messages about whether they should assemble at the airport.
“In the end, the heartbreaking task of deciding who could and could not get inside the airport gates was often left to ordinary military and diplomatic personnel,” the report concluded.
President Biden was ultimately forced to send additional troops to Afghanistan, but sporadic civilian efforts to evacuate Afghans have succeeded in getting both citizens and allies out of the country.
The report is heavily critical of Wilson, Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, but focuses primarily on Biden.
The report argues that Biden is not bound by the Doha agreement, which was negotiated under the Trump administration, and can withdraw from it if the Taliban do not live up to their commitments.
But Biden made clear he believes the U.S. is too far down the path of withdrawal to change course, which would see troops return to fighting the Taliban.
“The choice I had to make as president was either to implement the agreement or to prepare to get back to fighting the Taliban,” Biden said in a 2021 televised address.
2023 12 page review “When I took office, I faced the difficult realities left behind by the Trump Administration,” Biden said at the start of the withdrawal plan prepared by the White House.
Although Biden has just four months left in his presidency, Republican lawmakers have indicated they intend to continue investigating.
McCaul has subpoenaed Blinken and asked him to discuss the matter at a hearing on September 19.
“Throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you have been entrusted as Secretary of State to lead these efforts and ensure the safe evacuation of Americans and our Afghan allies,” McCaul wrote.
