A top House Republican condemned President Joe Biden for a “stunning failure of leadership” ahead of a House committee’s first public hearing about the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee
, led by Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), is holding a hearing, “During and After the Fall of Kabul: Examining the Administration’s Emergency Evacuation from Afghanistan
,” on Wednesday. Four witnesses are expected to testify in the hearing, all of whom were involved in the emergency evacuation efforts where the U.S. military, along with a couple of allies, evacuated more than 120,000 Afghans who were at risk under the Taliban regime.
AFGHANISTAN’S GOVERNMENT FELL BECAUSE OF THESE SIX BLUNDERS, WATCHDOG SAYS
“What happened in Afghanistan was a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level — and a stunning failure of leadership by the Biden administration,” McCaul said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “As a result, the world watched heartbreaking scenes unfold in and around the Kabul airport. I want every gold and blue star family member, and every veteran out there who watch this hearing to know: I will not rest until we determine how this happened — and hold those accountable responsible.”
Three of the witnesses testifying in front of the committee are Francis Hoang, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, and Peter Lucier, all of whom were parts of different organizations that helped get at-risk Afghans out. Aidan Gunderson, a former Army combat medic who was in Hamid Karzai International Airport during the chaotic 2021 evacuation, is also appearing before the committee.
Mann told the Washington Examiner in an interview that the hearing is “long overdue” and he plans to ”speak from a veterans point of view,” which he said he believes has “been missing from all of this.”
“On the mental health front, I think we’re on the front end of a mental health tsunami right now with this moral injury. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface with what this is potentially going to manifest as in the years ahead,” he continued. “I think one of the things that veterans are going to be looking at, and military family members, is what measures are put in place to prevent this generational systemic abandonment of our partners.”
The final days of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan were marred by brutal circumstances. On Aug. 26, 2021, an ISIS-K operative detonated a suicide vest killing 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 civilians outside the gates of the airport where the evacuations were occurring, while days later, U.S. forces launched a strike at what was believed to be another imminent threat to the personnel at the airport, but the target was wrongly identified, and 10 civilians were killed, including multiple children.
The administration has not cooperated with the committee’s investigation, according to a committee staffer, prompting McCaul to send a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the department’s failure to provide documents. To date, the department has provided the committee with 236 pages of documents, though many were already publicly available or substantially redacted, the staffer added.
Several House Republican lawmakers have eagerly discussed dragging the withdrawal back into the spotlight.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent letters in December, before he took the committee gavel, requesting information and documents from a number of senior administration officials, while Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) of the House Intelligence Committee and Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) of the House Armed Services Committee have indicated their desires to seek oversight on the withdrawal, too.
While the withdrawal was a major black eye on the Biden administration, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, who has provided oversight to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan for more than a decade, believes one of the biggest factors in the collapse of both the Afghan government and military in the weeks before the U.S. was scheduled to depart was, in fact, the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban for a negotiated withdrawal.
Days after Kabul fell, Biden said he “would’ve tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops” even without the Taliban agreement.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
McCaul released an investigative report about the withdrawal last August, which the White House pushed back on.
The report found that Biden’s choices “led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe,” while National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson circulated a memo attacking the GOP report
.
