WASHINGTON: Republicans on Sunday released a critical report on US President Joe Biden’s 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan — reigniting criticism over the chaotic end to America’s longest war.
The report repeated long-standing Republican criticisms of the withdrawal, which saw the deaths of 13 US service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport and the near-immediate retaking of the capital by the Taliban.
Written by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the report criticized Biden for failing to “mitigate the likely consequences of the decision” to withdraw, which had been made by the previous administration under Donald Trump. Republicans pointed to concerns shared by military leaders that the US should have kept troops in the country, continuing the war launched there in 2001 after the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Democrats slammed the report as timed to upset the upcoming US presidential election.
“If they have had three years to assess what happened, why are they delivering a report after Labor Day in a presidential election year?” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asked on Saturday, ahead of the report’s release.
“Look, this administration made the decision not to allow this war to be inherited by a fifth president and to end that conflict,” he told CNN.
House Republicans charged that “Biden’s decision to withdraw all US troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies.”
“Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan.” The Doha agreement was signed on February 29, 2020, between the Taliban and the United States under Trump. It paved the path for the US withdrawal, but excluded Afghanistan’s ruling government.
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