Sept. 16, 2024, 6 p.m.
The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago has once again become a focal point of Washington infighting and the race for the White House.
Republicans, led by the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, released a 354-page report last week on the failures of the U.S. operation in the departure from Afghanistan that has received widespread backlash from Democrats.
The document accuses the Biden administration of prioritizing the optics of the U.S. decision to leave Afghanistan instead of the safety of U.S. service members, 13 of whom were killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport as the U.S. evacuated troops and Afghan allies. The report did not scrutinize former President Trump’s role in negotiating directly with the Taliban in the months before he left office, cutting out the Afghan government from the negotiations—setting the wheels in motion for the full withdrawal of U.S. troops. The report also mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, nearly 300 times, even though the current presidential candidate did not have a significant decision-making role in the withdrawal.
“Our investigation reveals the Biden-Harris 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,” McCaul said in a statement when he released the report. “At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security.”
Biden administration officials argue that there was no indication that the Afghan government and security forces would collapse as quickly as they did, leaving the country vulnerable to a swift and complete Taliban takeover in 2021. However, the lengthy GOP document argues that the Biden team ignored warnings about security threats in its rush to leave the country.
It blames officials such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad for failing to prepare the withdrawal adequately, both during the negotiations and the implementation phase. The report, based on congressional testimony from over a dozen administration officials, claims the administration left classified documents and military equipment behind in Afghanistan due to improper planning.
Republican members of Congress were quick to jump on the report of evidence of the administration’s incompetence. Just days after the committee released the document, House Speaker Mike Johnson gave the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow, to the 13 service members who died during the withdrawal. Both Democrats and Republicans supported the move to honor the fallen troops. However, Republicans used the event to highlight the failures of the Biden administration.
“They lost their lives because of this administration’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Johnson told reporters ahead of the ceremony Tuesday.
The attempt to politicize the events in Afghanistan led to a flurry of responses from Democrats in Washington and a rare and lengthy rebuttal directly from the State Department. President Biden “inherited an agreement his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021,” the State Department noted in a statement that included extensive footnotes.
“As part of that agreement, the previous Administration compelled the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including several top war commanders helping the Taliban achieve their strongest position in 20 years,” the State Department statement said. “Meanwhile, the agreement reduced our force presence to 2,500 troops. And while the Taliban had agreed to cease attacks on our troops, it was contingent that all were withdrawn by the May 31 deadline.
“When the Biden Administration entered office it found a revitalized and emboldened Taliban, along with a decimated [Special Immigrant Visa] program and a complete lack of planning for a withdrawal,” the statement continued.
The Biden administration delayed the exit date until Aug. 26, the day the 13 troops were killed during the chaotic departure.
The State Department also accused Republicans of playing partisan politics, highlighting its willingness to provide Congress with information over the past three years.
“Misinformation about the Department’s role and efforts have sought to tarnish the reputation of dedicated non-partisan professionals, many of whom tirelessly worked on Afghanistan policy for years,” the State Department said. “This is why it remains frustrating that time and time again, Majority members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with their Republican counterparts in the House, issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture.”
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, similarly issued a memorandum in response to the GOP report, saying he was concerned by attempts to politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“They are masking their displeasure with criticisms but have failed to offer feasible alternatives,” Meeks said. “We must continue to wrestle with these matters not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to identify lessons that can help us better fight and end wars in the future.”
The issue also came up in the presidential debate last week. Moderators questioned Harris on whether she was responsible for how the withdrawal unfolded.
“I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan,” Harris said. She then went on to use the opportunity to accuse Trump of negotiating a bad deal with the Taliban.
“He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban," she said. "The negotiation involved the Taliban getting 5,000 Taliban terrorists released, and, get this, the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David—a place of storied significance for us as Americans, a place where we honor the importance of American diplomacy, where we invite and receive respected world leaders.”
There have been nonpartisan efforts to analyze what went wrong with U.S. engagements in Afghanistan. The leading U.S. government watchdog for the war, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, determined that Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban was “the single most important factor” in the collapse of the U.S.-allied Afghan government and near immediate Taliban takeover. Biden’s decision to move forward with the withdrawal was determined to be the second most significant factor.
In May, a bipartisan group of experts was also appointed to an Afghan War Commission. The commission will study not only the decision to leave the country but also what went wrong during the decades U.S. troops were stationed there. The 16-member panel will deliver a final report in August 2026.
In the three years since the Taliban re-seized control of the country, the Afghan economy has crashed and women have been banned from public places without a male guardian. In late August, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued a sweeping morality law that forbids women from leaving the house unless it is “urgent.”
