Republicans accuse Biden of lying about Afghanistan withdrawal
Photo: US President Joe Biden (getty images)
House Republicans have accused the Biden administration of lying to the American public regarding the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. They also allege that the administration compromised the safety of American soldiers during the pullout, according to Bloomberg.
The report asserts that the Biden team "misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal." According to the document, the administration’s failures directly contributed to the deaths of 13 US service members following a bomb explosion at the Abbey Gate in Kabul.
The investigation, led by Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, spanned two years. In the nearly 350-page document, the Biden-Harris administration is mentioned over 230 times.
No Democrats endorsed the report, and Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee led by McCaul, stated that the report was a partisan attempt to smear Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Meeks argued that the report failed to account for key witness testimonies, including the finding that the US would have faced renewed combat with the Taliban, had we not continued the withdrawal.
McCaul denied that the timing of the report’s release was politically motivated.
A 2023 State Department review attributed the blame for the chaotic withdrawal to both the Trump administration and the Biden administration. “There was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” the review found.
McCaul’s report also faults the Trump administration for negotiating the US-Taliban agreement that led to the 2020 withdrawal deal. However, it places most of the blame on Trump’s representative at the negotiations, former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, rather than the former president himself.
