The chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, which included images of desperate Afghan civilians trying to board US planes and a suicide bombing that killed 13 US soldiers, marked the beginning of the end for President Joe Biden’s approval ratings.
Three years later, with Biden no longer a candidate for the White House and his vice president running instead, Republicans hope it will become a political anchor for her too.
The House of Representatives will likely meet for only three weeks in September, allowing lawmakers to prepare for the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. But Republicans have come up with a number of ways to keep the issue of withdrawing from Afghanistan fresh: a posthumous awarding of medals to fallen troops, the release of a long-awaited report by Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee and a possible debate over whether Secretary of State Antony Blinken will testify publicly again.
The efforts will build on former President Donald Trump’s apparent effort to draw attention to the deaths of the service members, with his recent attendance at a private service at Arlington National CemeteryDuring that ceremony, a campaign worker reportedly got into an altercation with a cemetery employee when it became clear that the visit would be recorded in violation of Arlington’s rules.
In a letter dated Tuesday Along with a subpoena for Blinken to testify on Sept. 19, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called Blinken “the final decider” for the state’s withdrawal plans.
“You are therefore in a position to brief the Committee on possible legislation aimed at helping to avoid the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal, including possible reforms to the Department’s statutory authority,” McCaul wrote.
McCaul and his Republican colleagues on the House Foreign Affairs Committee plan to release a report on the withdrawal on Sunday and hold a news conference Monday afternoon, when lawmakers return to the U.S. Capitol.
Democrats have already dismissed the report and McCaul’s efforts to corner Blinken into testifying as partisan politics.
“While @SecBlinken is preoccupied with pressing global issues — like securing a ceasefire in Gaza or the war in Ukraine — the Republican Party in the House of Representatives continues its political theater to force testimony they have already heard; it is clear who the adults in the room are,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in a message on social media after the summons was announced.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement that it was disappointing that the State Department had issued “another unnecessary subpoena.”
“While the Secretary is not currently available to testify on the dates proposed by the committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to accommodate Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. Blinken has testified more than 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times to McCaul’s committee, Miller said.
McCaul’s report, now expected to be released well in advance of Blinken’s appearance, will be the product of three years of research and countless interviews. In a statement on the third anniversary of the Aug. 26 Abbey Gate suicide bombing, McCaul left no doubt that it would be highly critical of the Biden administration.
“It will serve as an indictment of the administration’s reckless failure to properly prepare for the withdrawal, its cold indifference to the safety and security of American personnel on the ground before and during the emergency evacuation, and its culpability in the deaths of 13 American service members who died in the Abbey Gate terrorist attack,” he said.
According to McCaul, the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan has left at least 1,000 Americans stranded in the country and more than $7 billion in equipment behind, making Afghanistan a haven for terrorists once again.
In a 12-page White House report released in 2023According to the White House, the decision to continue the evacuation for as long as possible was based on the view that the risks were manageable and that more time would ensure the evacuation’s success.
“The entire national security team, including senior military officials, supported this commitment to continue operations despite the known risks, and the President accepted the recommendation to extend evacuation operations for this period,” the report said.
The report also blames the Trump administration for the speed with which it withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in late 2020 and for failing to provide the new administration with a plan for the final phase of its withdrawal.
It is unclear whether the tug-of-war over the causes of the Abbey Gate deaths will spill over into the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony, scheduled 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 vote, a mechanism often used when issues are not controversial and neither party feels the need for a call-by-name vote. He also said that programming for the ceremony will be bipartisan.
Republicans have said there has been little to no accountability over the handling of the withdrawal and the deaths at Abbey Gate. As far as scandals surrounding the Biden administration go, it is probably the most bipartisan.
But the idea that any single, simple cause or specific person is to blame is unrealistic, a Democratic Foreign Affairs Committee aide told HuffPost.
First, Republicans have avoided investigating the military’s role and have focused primarily on the State Department, likely because they feel Blinken is an easier political target 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 behind that, that’s the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee,” the aide said.
“It’s shortsighted to look at this as if you can only look at the mistakes of 15 days, if you can call them mistakes, without looking at the other 15, 20 years of decisions that came before that.”
