WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, facing questions for the final time about some of the darkest moments of Joe Biden’s presidency: the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The hearing comes in the twilight of Blinken’s diplomatic career, with just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and at the end of the chairmanship of Representative Michael McCaul, who will no longer lead the committee in the next Congress . It caps nearly four years of animosity between the two men following the end of America’s longest war.
“This catastrophic event was the beginning of a failed foreign policy that set the world on fire,” McCaul, a Republican from Texas, said in his opening statement. “I welcome your testimony today and hope you take this opportunity to take responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal.”
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Blinken opened his appearance before the committee by addressing the families of American troops killed in the withdrawal and apologizing to them. Cries of “genocide” and other protests from demonstrators in the audience repeatedly interrupted his testimony.
Blinken again defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying the withdrawal deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban before leaving office left him with no viable alternative.
“To the extent that President Biden faced a choice, it was between ending the war or escalating it,” Blinken said. “Had he not kept his predecessor’s promise, attacks on our armed forces and allies would have resumed and the Taliban’s assault on the country’s major cities would have begun.”
His long-awaited testimony comes months after House Republicans released a scathing report on their investigation into the withdrawal, blaming Biden’s administration for the disastrous ending. They downplayed Trump’s role in the failures, even though he had signed the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban.
The Republican-led review outlined the final months of military and civilian failures following Trump’s withdrawal deal in February 2020, which allowed America’s fundamentalist Taliban enemy to sweep across and conquer the entire country even before the last US officials arrived on August 30 left. , 2021. The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others in danger from the Taliban.
Previous investigations and analyzes have pointed to a systemic failure of the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump share the heaviest blame.
