The White House dismissed a report released Sunday by Republican lawmakers criticizing President Biden's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as partisan and containing “little to nothing new.”
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 found that the U.S. failed 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 the Taliban likely had access to $7 billion worth of abandoned U.S. military weapons after the withdrawal, as well as up to $57 million in military funds initially provided to the Afghan government.
On Monday, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby defended Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal during a White House press conference.
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A U.S. soldier stands guard behind barbed wire as Afghans sit on the side of the road near the military zone at the airport in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in August 2021. (Wakil Koshar/AFP via Getty Images)
Kirby told reporters the Republican report came two years after the first, adding: “There's little to nothing new in this report.”
He then outlined the “actual facts” he considered important.
“First of all, the day this administration took office, the Taliban were in the strongest position they'd been in years. The Afghan government was at its weakest,” Kirby said. “The Trump administration struck a deal called the Doha Accord, which mandated a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of May 2021, and that, of course, included Bagram Air Base.”
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National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby on Monday pushed back against a report from Republican lawmakers that criticized the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The deal included the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison in return for the Taliban agreeing not to attack U.S. forces, he explained.
Kirby cited testimony from Gen. Frank McKenzie, former head of U.S. Central Command, who said the Doha agreement had a very detrimental effect on the Afghan government and undermined its morale.
“They realized then and there that the U.S. was heading for a withdrawal,” Kirby said. “Indeed, in October 2020, then-President Trump ordered troops to expedite their withdrawal from Afghanistan, to have them all out by Christmas of that year.”
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A U.S. Marine pulls an infant through a barbed wire fence during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 19, 2021. (Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images)
“President Biden faced a stark choice when he took office: stick to the flawed agreement and end the longest war in American history, or abandon the agreement and extend the war, with far fewer U.S. troops returning to fight the Taliban,” Kirby added. “He chose the former, buying himself time until the summer to prepare for a withdrawal that leaves us as a nation safer.”
Kirby then pointed out what he called “falsehoods” from the report. The first problem he found was that evacuation planning had actually begun in the spring of 2021.
Kirby said the Pentagon has proposed deploying additional troops to the region so it would be prepared to respond if a decision was made to withdraw.
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Afghan refugees board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on August 24, 2021. (Master Sergeant Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Forces Europe-Africa via Getty Images)
He also said it would not make sense to secure Bagram Air Base during the withdrawal because it would require thousands of additional U.S. troops, and that the withdrawal would be made even more difficult by requiring “displaced people to make dangerous journeys” through Taliban territory.
Kirby also said no US equipment had been handed over to the Taliban.
“This equipment was properly provided to Afghan security forces with congressional authorization during 20 years of war,” he said. “This equipment was left behind when Afghan forces surrendered or ceased fighting.”
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Finally, Kirby told reporters that the Biden administration has not misled, lied or been less than transparent during or after the withdrawal.
“We did our best every day to let the American people know what was going on,” he said. “We did our own after-action reports and we communicated those to the public.”
Fox News Digital's Landon Mion contributed to this report.
