House Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee released their own memo on President Biden’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan after committee Republicans released a report criticizing the president for what happened at the time.
Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the committee’s Republican chairman, released a GOP-led report refuting Biden’s claims that his hands were tied by former President Trump’s deal with the Taliban, which set a deadline for a U.S. withdrawal by summer 2021. It also said State Department officials had no plan to help Americans and their allies while there were still troops in the region to protect them.
McCaul’s report also noted the lack of an adequate response to terrorist threats before the ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate at Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that the Taliban likely had post-withdrawal access to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons and up to $57 million in U.S. funds that were initially given to the Afghan government.
But New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the committee’s ranking Democratic member, released a conflicting report in response to the GOP-led report, accusing Republicans of criticizing the Biden administration for the politically motivated withdrawal and failing to offer viable alternatives.
GOP releases scathing report on Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal
A US Marine holds a baby over a barbed wire fence during an evacuation at the then Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 19, 2021. (Courtesy of Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images)
Meeks also said Republicans did not involve Democratic members in their report and stressed that plans to withdraw from Afghanistan began under the Trump administration.
He said in the memo summary that Republicans sought to avoid facts involving Trump, including “his U.S. commitment to a full, time-bound withdrawal from a deal he negotiated with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government or any reference to the rights of Afghan women and girls.”
The senior member also criticized Trump's “unilateral announcements to withdraw troops — often a surprise to many of his own senior officials — that undermined U.S. leverage because those announcements were divorced from the Taliban's compliance with the deal; and his decision to force the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters back to the battlefield before a final Taliban offensive ultimately took Kabul.”
“When former President Trump took office, there were approximately 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan,” Meeks wrote. “Days before leaving office, the former president ordered a further drawdown to 2,500. President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban.”
Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
“All the witnesses who testified on this issue agreed that the United States would have had to face a new fight with the Taliban if we had not continued the withdrawal,” he added. “Instead of sending more Americans to fight in a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it.”
Commenting on the Abbey Gate attack, Meeks said republicans had “known for months that the attack could not be prevented and that, although one witness told our Committee that he believed he had the ISIS-K terrorist in his sights, he did not.”
Meeks claimed Republicans made partisan attempts to grab headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of their investigation during the height of the election cycle. He also said Republicans tried to link Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, to the withdrawal, despite her being referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of committee interview transcripts.
House committee subpoenas Blinken over Afghan withdrawal
U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Air-Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, assist with security at an evacuation control post (ECC) during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26. ((U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla))
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“American taxpayers have funded this Committee's oversight, and the American people deserve the truth,” Meeks said. “We owe it to them to point out the facts that have emerged from this investigation without beating around the bush and with respect for the gravity of the subject matter and the witnesses who have voluntarily testified before us about it.”
“Now, as in the hearing, I realize that many of the withdrawal critics simply have a fundamental objection to President Biden fulfilling his promise to be the last commander in chief presiding over the war in Afghanistan,” he added. “They are masking their displeasure with criticism, but they have not offered viable alternatives. We must continue to wrestle with these issues, not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to identify lessons that can help us fight better and end wars in the future.”
