Congress, Biden Administration Play Blame Game on Eve of Anniversary of the Surrender of Afghanistan

A year to the day after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, officials with the Biden administration and Republicans in Congress are waging a war of words on the home front about the reasons for the collapse and American actions before and during the chaotic evacuation that occurred after it.Members of the GOP minority on the House Foreign Affairs committee are reportedly planning to release a report Monday claiming that the Biden administration squandered four months of opportunity to plan for the withdrawal and failed to anticipate the deadly chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the final days of the 20-year Afghan conflict. A suicide bombing during the evacuation killed more than 180 people, 13 American troops among them.The brother of one of those servicemen who died in the attack killed himself during a memorial service earlier this month. Dakota Halverson, the 28-year-old younger brother of Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui of Norco, California, took his own life, according to a GoFundMe page put up by his mother, Shana Chappell.The 118-page report by the House committee — based primarily on the accounts of whistleblowers, public records, and an investigation by the U.S. military — makes clear that should the Republicans regain control of Congress following the November midterm elections, they will use congress’ subpoena powers to compel at least 34 current and former administration officials who they claim the State Department blocked from testifying to the committee.Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday, congressman Mike McCaul, a Texan and the leading Republican on the House committee, described the report as a “fairly objective” one about the administration’s failures in the runup to the evacuation and withdrawal. Mr. McCaul said the U.S. intelligence community and military leaders warned Mr. Biden’s White House but those warnings went unheeded.“There was a complete lack and failure to plan,” Mr. McCaul said. “There was no plan and there was no plan executed. And, to your point, you know, even beforehand, I think the State Department probably didn’t have the resources it needed to carry out an evacuation of this size and enormity.”“The problem was the White House and State Department putting their heads in the sand, not wanting to believe what they were saying,” he added.A memo circulated Sunday by the White House in response to the report first obtained by Axios said the committee’s report is “riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information, and false claims.”The White House rebuttal put much of the blame for the fiasco at the feet of President Trump and a deal he made with the Taliban in 2020 without input from the Afghan government.“When we took office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001, former President Trump had released thousands of Taliban fighters from prison, and we had the smallest number of U.S. troops on the ground,” said the memo, which was attributed to National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.Kabul was captured by Taliban forces on August 15, 2021 following a three-month campaign that saw major provincial cities fall to the rebels one after another. In the subsequent weeks, before the full American withdrawal from the country on August 31, the United States and its allies evacuated more than 100,000 American and Afghan citizens from Kabul via airlift.

Congress, Biden Administration Play Blame Game on Eve of Anniversary of the Surrender of Afghanistan

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