The House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) released its long-awaited final report on the Biden-Harris planning and management of the chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. It isn’t pretty. Though the timeframe for the US departure from Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict encompassed several presidential administrations, the failure of leadership, decision-making, and operational execution was wholly that of the Biden-Harris administration. The public hearings, transcribed interviews, and document discovery dispute any attempt to place the blame elsewhere.
Evaluation of Afghanistan Retreat
For the past two years, the HFAC has been tireless in its efforts to find out just what happened in the waning days of summer 2021 when the Biden-Harris administration withdrew American citizens, military forces, civilians, diplomats, and friendly Afghan refugees. The HFAC’s research and conclusions in its blistering report, “Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Chaos That Followed,” are unsurprising for those who followed the numerous hearings. These insights from the assessment’s executive summary are typical of the critical findings. It is a sobering story of the Biden-Harris administration’s haphazard, bumbling, and dismissive attitude toward the safety of US personnel as it scrambled to get out of Afghanistan. The report explains:
“The Biden-Harris administration was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan, with or without the Doha Agreement and no matter the cost … The Biden-Harris administration prioritized the optics of the withdrawal over the security of the US personnel on the ground … In the aftermath of the withdrawal, US national security was degraded as Afghanistan once again became a haven for terrorists … America’s credibility on the world stage was severely damaged after we abandoned Afghan allies to Taliban reprisal killings – the people of Afghanistan we had promised to protect.”
Among the disturbing findings was the revelation that the “Biden-Harris administration misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal, from the go-to-zero order until today.” Pulling no punches, the report calls out National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan as the “source of the majority of that misinformation campaign.”
The assessment said the “Biden-Harris administration’s failure to prepare for a NEO [non-combatant emergency evacuation] and order a timely NEO created an unsafe environment at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport], exposing US Defense Department and State Department personnel to lethal threats and emotional harm.” As a result, poor planning and failure to secure the international airport led directly to the deaths of 13 US servicemembers, “murdered by a terrorist attack on August 26, 2021.”
As one might expect, within moments of the release of the report, Biden-Harris administration defenders were out in force. The White House dispatched National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who started by blaming the former Trump administration for setting in motion the collapse of the Afghan government. “The Trump administration cut a deal called the Doha Agreement that mandated a complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and, yes, that included Bagram Air Base by the end of May 2021,” Kirby told reporters. This statement by Kirby was designed to absolve the Biden-Harris administration from its disastrous retreat out of HKIA. It was Trump’s fault because the Biden-Harris administration was duty-bound to follow the former president’s plan for withdrawal no matter the cost. A closer look at the HFAC assessment of what actually happened belies this notion.
Trump Was Not President During Chaotic Withdrawal
The Trump administration did not remove US combat forces before an NEO operation; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 64)
The Trump administration did not take away air support for the Afghanistan security forces; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 65)
The Trump administration did not initially set Sept. 11, 2021, as the date by which all US personnel would be out of Afghanistan, and then move the date up to Aug. 31 because the political motivation for the original date was too cute by half; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 57)
The Trump administration did not refuse the Taliban’s offer to allow US military forces to secure Kabul during the retreat, as Gen. Frank McKenzie told the House Armed Services Committee on Sep. 29, 2021, and reported in The Hill; the Biden-Harris administration did.
The Trump administration did not desert Bagram Air Base, a much more defensible air base for getting out of Kabul than HKIA; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 152)
The Trump administration did not choose to evacuate all Americans and friendly Afghans from HKIA without adequate defenses and, in so doing, enable a suicide bomber to murder 13 young American servicemembers, injure 45 US servicemembers, and kill 170 Afghan civilians; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 152)
The Trump administration did not mistakenly authorize an air strike to kill an innocent aid worker and his family; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 27)
The Trump administration did not disregard NATO allies’ recommendation against the “go-to-zero” order; the Biden-Harris administration did. (Page 186)
During a Pentagon press briefing following the release of the HFAC Afghanistan report, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Defense Department press secretary, was asked whether the criticisms were “that the US prioritized the withdrawal over the safety of US personnel and did not adequately prepare for a NEO.” Ryder danced around the question with a variety of non-sequiturs, but, to his credit, he did not deny the allegations.
The stain of the Biden-Harris administration’s catastrophic decision-making and failure to adequately adjust its planning to address a rapidly changing Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is and will continue to be a shameful legacy. Many of the geopolitical conundrums the United States now faces are the direct result of the lasting impression the Biden-Harris administration left of indecision, bad planning, and disastrously poor execution. It is a shadow over America that will take time and leadership light to remove.
Dave is a retired U.S. Air Force Pilot with over 180 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller and has served in executive positions in the private sector aerospace and defense industry. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
Billions of dollars in arms and ancillaries being traded in that part of the world. Thanks for nothing biden.
Nasty politiking! If it's the "Trump administration" why not the "Biden administration" ?
So the House Foreign Affairs Committee has issued its final report on the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. That would be the Republican controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee, a House that is up for re-election on the 5th of November, an election the Republicans might lose. Well, we can hardly expect a nuanced and balanced report from them, can we? Particularly since the Committee is clearly more interested in identifying the narrow culpability for the deaths of the 13 US service people. If no-one had died, they would not be bothering. It would have been another triumph of Donald Trump's deal-making. But people did die, and the terrible deal struck by Trump led directly to the deaths. Without consulting the democratically elected Government of Afghanistan, Trump agreed with the Taliban that all American troops would be gone by 1 May 2021. Biden was obliged to honour that deal, although because Trump's 1 May deadline was impossible to meet he pushed the date out to 11 September 2021, before adjusting it back a few days to 31 August 2021. I suggest that decision was driven by the collapse of the Afghan army once they realised Trump had betrayed them and Biden's concern that American losses might well mount if they waited to 11 September. As it happened, they were lucky to lose only 13 lives in the evacuation. But that's of no concern to the Republicans of course, because if the circumstances were examined with a broader brush, someone might notice it was George W Bush, a Republican, who started the war by invading Afghanistan in 2001. That decision resulted in the loss of 2,439 American service personnel lives and the wounding of a further 20,769. And then there were the deaths of 1,822 civilian contractors. We won't ask how many civilian Afghans died. So why is it only the deaths of the last 13 that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is crying crocodile tears over?
Trump's actions in Afghanistan are a chilling warning about what all allies of the US may expect in the event of a second Trump term. Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, all democratic nations under military threat by dictators, should be particularly worried. We already know Trump is no friend of New Zealand, given that one of his first actions as President was to renege on American participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal being vigorously promoted by New Zealand. He's already talking about the trade barriers he intends erecting to block future imports, so a second term is a clear and present danger to both our defense and trading interests. It is Trump that is the true "shadow over America that will take time and leadership light to remove". And Kamala Harris is the only credible option available to provide that leadership, however much this House Foreign Affairs Committee huffs and puffs about Afghanistan.
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