Republicans Plan To Highlight Afghanistan Withdrawal Chaos

The chaotic exit of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, with its images of desperate Afghan citizens trying to clamber aboard American planes and a suicide bombing that took the lives of 13 U.S. troops, marked the beginning of the end for President Joe Biden’s presidential approval ratings.

Three years later, with Biden off the White House ticket and his vice president instead running, Republicans hope to make it a political anchor for her as well.

The House may only be scheduled to be in session for three weeks in September so lawmakers can hit the trail for the final stretch of the 2024 campaign season, but Republicans there have lined up a number of ways to keep the Afghanistan exit issue on the front burner: a posthumous medals ceremony the dead troops, the release of a long-awaited report by Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee and possible fight over whether Secretary of State Antony Blinken will testify publicly again.

The efforts will build on former president Donald Trump’s own seeming attempt to call attention to the service members’ deaths, with his recent attendance at a private Arlington National Cemetery service. At that ceremony, a campaign staffer allegedly got into an altercation with cemetery staffer when it became clear the visit would be recorded in defiance of Arlington’s rules.

In a letter Tuesday accompanying a subpoena for Blinken to testify Sept. 19, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called Blinken “the final decisionmaker” for State’s withdrawal plans.

“You are therefore in a position to inform the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal, including potential reforms to the Department’s legislative authorization,” McCaul wrote.

McCaul and his fellow Republicans on the Foreign Affairs panel are planning to release a report on the withdrawal on Sunday, with a press conference Monday afternoon as lawmakers return to the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats are already dismissing the report and McCaul’s efforts to put Blinken on the spot to testify as partisan politics.

“While @SecBlinken deals with pressing issues around the world — like securing a ceasefire deal in Gaza or the war in Ukraine — the House GOP continues its political theater to compel testimony they’ve already heard; it’s clear who the adults are in the room,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) in a social media post after the subpoena was announced.

State spokesperson Matthew Miller in a statement said it was disappointing that Foreign Affairs had issued “yet another unnecessary subpoena.”

“Though the Secretary is currently unavailable to testify on dates proposed by the Committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. Blinken has already testified on Afghanistan more than 14 times, including four times at McCaul’s committee, Miller said.

McCaul’s report, now expected to be issued well before any Blinken appearance, will be the product of three years of investigation and numerous interviews. In a statement on the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate suicide bombing Aug. 26, McCaul left no doubt it will be highly critical of the Biden administration.

“It will serve as an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to properly prepare for the withdrawal, their cold indifference to the safety and security of U.S. personnel on the ground before and during the emergency evacuation, and their culpability in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers who perished in the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate,” he said.

According to McCaul, the hasty Afghanistan exit stranded at least 1,000 Americans in the country and left behind more than $7 billion in equipment and has allowed Afghanistan to again become a terrorist safe haven.

In a 12-page White House report released in 2023, the White House said the decision to keep the evacuation going as long as it did was based on the view that the risks were manageable and more time would ensure the success of the evacuation.

“The entire national security team, including senior military officials, supported this commitment to continuing operations, despite known risks, and the President accepted the recommendation to extend evacuation operations for this period,” the report said.

The report also placed blame on the Trump administration for how quickly it drew down forces in Afghanistan in late 2020 and for failing to leave final phase withdrawal plans for the incoming administration.

It’s unclear whether the wrangling over the causes of the Abbey Gate deaths will spill over into the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony. That is slated for Tuesday, the day after McCaul’s press conference.

A spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pointed out that the 2021 vote to award the medals was done by voice, a mechanism often used when issues are not controversial and neither party feels the need for a roll call vote. He also said the programming for the ceremony will be bipartisan.

Republicans have said there has been little if any accountability for the manner of the withdrawal and the Abbey Gate deaths, even, as far as Biden administration scandals go, it has probably been the one with the most bipartisan criticism for how it was handled.

But the idea that a single simple cause or specific person is to blame is unrealistic, one Foreign Affairs Committee Democratic aide told HuffPost.

For one thing, Republicans have avoided investigating the military’s role while focusing on the State Department, likely because of the perception Blinken would be a softer target politically than military officials.

“We don’t do force protection. We don’t do how to secure airports. That’s not our jurisdiction and the decision-making that goes behind that, that’s the Armed Services Committee’s jurisdiction,” the aide said.

“It is a short-sighted effort to just look at this as if you could look at the mistakes of 15 days, if you’d call it mistakes, without looking at the other 15, 20 years of decisions that went into that.”