While President Joe Biden’s administration report this week on the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan blamed the administration of former President Donald Trump for its failures, Republican lawmakers rebuked the claim, with one GOP congressman calling it a “spineless piece of fiction.”
“The public summary on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal released by the Biden White House today is a spineless piece of fiction. It predictably blames the Trump administration and disgracefully blames senior military advisers and the intelligence community for President Biden’s decisions,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told the Washington Examiner. “President Biden conducted this withdrawal, and President Biden needs to accept responsibility for the tragedy that occurred.”
The report released Thursday said that the incoming Biden administration was “severely constrained” in executing the pull out because of the “conditions” imposed through the Trump administration negotiations with the Taliban.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report said. “President Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting with our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government at the negotiating table.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday that the Biden administration did not understand how quickly the Taliban could retake the country, leading to the chaotic and deadly evacuations in the final days of August 2021 that saw a suicide bomber at one of the Kabul airport gates kill 13 U.S. service members on Aug. 26, 2021.
“Clearly, we didn’t get things right here with Afghanistan about how fast the Taliban were moving across the country,” Kirby said. “I don’t think we fully anticipated the degree to which they were constructing these deals in the hinterlands that kind of fell like dominoes. We didn’t anticipate how fast the Afghan National Security Forces were going to fold, were not going to fight for their country — particularly after we had, as I said, dedicated 20 years, trained, and equipped them. I don’t think we fully appreciated the degree of corruption that was in the officer ranks in the military.”
Kirby said that despite the chaos, the U.S. was able to evacuate more than 124,000 people from the country during the turbulent withdrawal.
The assessment did not go over well with Republican lawmakers.
“In a functional administration, there would be many individuals held accountable for this failure,” Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told the Examiner. “Instead of addressing honestly and openly the substantial flaws in its decision-making process, the Biden administration has provided the public a full-throated and deeply partisan explanation of its indefensible Afghanistan policy.”
The Senate Foreign Relations ranking member, Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said that the botched effort in Afghanistan was noted by the leaders of both China and Russia, who saw United States' weakness.
“The White House’s release today of its after-action report on the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is sad and untimely. It is nearly two years later and a clear attempt to bury the news during a holiday weekend,” Risch told the Examiner. “But it doesn’t take a report to show that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] watched closely as the Biden administration abandoned allies and failed to act decisively, costing the lives of U.S. service members and many innocent civilians.”
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