Republicans on a U.S. House of Representatives committee issued a report Sunday criticizing the Biden administration for the chaotic August 2021 U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal from Afghanistan after a nearly 20-year war.
The report faulted President Joe Biden for failing to “mitigate the likely consequences of the decision” to withdraw, while ignoring warnings that Taliban fighters were seizing key cities in Afghanistan faster than U.S. officials expected.
In the last days of the withdrawal, a suicide bombing attack by an Islamic State terrorist killed 13 U.S. soldiers and about 170 Afghan civilians at the Kabul airport. Many Afghans clinging to the underbellies of departing aircraft leaving Afghanistan fell to their deaths.
Former President Donald Trump initiated the withdrawal process in February 2020 by signing an agreement with the Taliban, a pact that Biden honored as he looked to end America’s longest war.
The fateful withdrawal also played a role in Biden’s political fortunes. Until that time, Americans in national surveys approved of Biden’s performance during the first seven months of his presidency.
But his approval rating dipped into negative territory after the chaotic troop withdrawal and the deaths of the 13 soldiers and has never again advanced into a favorable standing.
The report from Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee followed a three-year investigation and includes accusations that the Biden administration did not have adequate plans or security in place to safely carry out the withdrawal.
Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”
Previous investigations have faulted multiple U.S. administrations, including a 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan which cited both Trump’s and Biden’s determination to go forward with the withdrawal despite the Taliban breaking key commitments the militants made in the 2020 agreement.
Congressman Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a letter to colleagues that Republicans "cherry-picked witness testimony to exclude anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal."
In a lengthy statement, the U.S. State Department said, “There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded.” But the country’s top diplomatic agency said it “has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.”
The State Department said the U.S. government successfully evacuated 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals from Afghanistan in the final two weeks of August 2021 and has resettled 165,000 Afghans across the U.S.
The State Department said it “stands ready to work alongside” lawmakers who have a “serious interest” in finding legislative and administrative solutions to avoid the chaos of the withdrawal from the Afghan war zone. But the State Department said it would “not stand by silently” as the agency and “its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.”
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
