Republicans fixate on messy Afghanistan withdrawal

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hammered the administration on Tuesday for its 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, seeking to keep the chaotic exit in the public eye even as the two retired generals who oversaw the evacuation offered few new details.

President Joe Biden’s poll numbers tanked three years ago as U.S. forces left Afghanistan, especially after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 13 American service members outside Kabul’s airport. Republicans have since tried to make the withdrawal a political albatross to hang around Biden’s neck, leading Democrats to defend him on the committee dais and beyond.

But it’s unclear just how much of a liability the war in Afghanistan will prove for Biden heading into a likely presidential matchup with Donald Trump, who initiated the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas) has made it a central theme. He culminated his months-long investigation into the evacuation with Tuesday’s high-profile testimony from retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs chair, and retired Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the former chief of U.S. Central Command.

McCaul accused Biden of ignoring advice from the two generals — who had advocated for at least 2,500 U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan. The administration scrambled to secure Kabul airport as hordes of Afghans rushed to board evacuation flights.

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail — and fail they did,” McCaul said.

McCaul, a former prosecutor, addressed the relatives of some of the 13 slain service members. “I will not rest until I get to the bottom of this tragedy,” he said. You deserve answers. The American people deserve answers, and I intend to deliver.”

Here are three takeaways:

Evacuation made too late

Both generals admitted the administration’s decision to conduct the noncombatant evacuation operation from Afghanistan was made too late — reiterating previous stances.

“The fundamental mistake ... fundamental flaw was the timing of the State Department call” of the evacuation operation, Milley told the panel. “That was too slow and too late.”

Even as Afghan troops defended their country, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s decision to flee to the United Arab Emirates — the day after telling Secretary of State Antony Blinken he would stay — demoralized Kabul’s forces and they melted away.

McKenzie argued the chaos surrounding the withdrawal, which included the attack at Kabul’s airport that also wounded 170 Afghans, could have been averted if the State Department had chosen to evacuate earlier.

“The Taliban had overrun the country,” McKenzie said. “As you are aware, the decision to begin [an evacuation operation] rests with the Department of State, not the Department of Defense.”

The State Department’s own report said the agency’s participation in the evacuation was hindered because it wasn’t clear which department was taking the lead.

“Crisis preparation and planning were inhibited to a degree by concerns about the signals that might be sent, especially anything that might suggest the United States had lost confidence in the Afghan government,” the report said.

Calls for more accountability

McKenzie, who led the top command for the Middle East from 2019 to 2022, took responsibility for the military response in Afghanistan. But he also faulted policy decisions for the situation leading up to the final days, adding pressure from the Biden administration to accept some culpability.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a former Green Beret, said while many people in the administration had taken responsibility, no officials in the Biden administration had been held accountable.

“Your government failed you,” he said in an impassioned plea to families in the audience.

Generals agree with Democrats

While McCaul focused on the final deadly days of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, the panel’s top Democrat noted the 20-year war spanned four presidential administrations. He — and the generals — argued that the lessons of the war cannot be learned by its final months, lending ammunition to Biden’s defenders.

“Nothing we're going to discuss today happened overnight,” Milley said. “The outcome in Afghanistan was the cumulative effect of many decisions over many years of war. And like any complex phenomena, there's no single causal factor that determined the outcome.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), who has accused McCaul of politicizing the investigation, argued the testimony did not reveal anything new. He pointed to 2021 testimony from McKenzie and Milley in the months after the withdrawal.

“This is not anything groundbreaking or anything that, you know, is being discovered newly,” he said to Milley.

Meeks carried the Democrats’ rallying cry. He argued the final days of the war were set in motion — not by the withdrawal alone — but by Trump’s 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the location to which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled.