RT-Engels: 09-09-2024,
The president rushed and “picked optics over security” in 2021, a partisan report has concluded
US House Republicans issued a scathing report on Sunday blaming the administration of President Joe Biden for the nation’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The State Department had previously put the failed evacuation from Kabul down to the insistence of Biden and former President Donald Trump to quickly end the war.
The partisan investigation, which spanned over three years and was led by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, concluded that the Biden 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 US personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”
The US had been due to leave Afghanistan by May 2021, according to a peace deal that Biden’s predecessor, Trump, had reached with the Taliban. Biden unilaterally delayed the departure by several months. As US troops began to withdraw, both Biden and his aides repeatedly told reporters that the Afghan government’s forces were capable of holding off the Taliban for at least several months. The US-armed and -funded Afghan army had surrendered to the Taliban without a significant fight, and Kabul fell on August 15, before the US managed to finish the evacuation.
The withdrawal led to 13 US service members being killed in a bomb attack in Kabul,