USA 2020 Elections: Thread

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Biden Misled Public On Afghanistan; New GOP Report Finds

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/15/new_gop_report_biden_misled_public_on_afghanistan__148049.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confidential-state-department-cable-in-july-warned-of-afghanistans-collapse-11629406993
https://twitter.com/AdityaRajKaul/status/1427205356409614336
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22135674-one-year-afghanistan-memo-white-house

The frantic and deadly U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was so
disorganized that 1,450 children were evacuated without their parents,
and senior leaders in Vice President Kamala Harris’ and first lady
Jill Biden’s offices, as well as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
asked private veteran groups for assistance evacuating certain people
from the country.

In the waning days of the evacuation, more than 1,000 women and girls
waited more than 24 hours on dozens of buses, desperately circling the
Kabul airport and trying to avoid Taliban checkpoints. Many of them
were told multiple times they were not allowed to enter the airport.
Now, nearly a year since the Taliban took control of the country,
fewer than one-third of them have managed to flee the country.

These are just some of the findings in a new report by Republicans on
the House Foreign Affairs Committee one year after the Taliban swept
into the Afghan capital of Kabul, almost instantly rolling back more
than two decades of U.S. and NATO military support and nation-building
efforts.

More broadly, the report, which RealClearPolitics obtained late last
week, asserts President Biden and top officials in his administration
repeatedly – and perhaps intentionally – misled the American people
when they said the fall of Kabul came as a surprise and there was no
alternative other than depending on the Taliban for security in the
Afghan capital as the U.S. military evacuated hastily.

The report asserts that the chaotic withdrawal that left more than 800
American citizens stranded in the country was completely avoidable if
Biden and his national security team had listened to the warnings and
advice of military leaders, U.S. diplomatic officials operating on the
ground, and international allies.

It adds that one of the most tragic outcomes of the evacuation – the
death of 13 U.S. servicemembers and 160 Afghans in a suicide bombing
at the Kabul airport – could have been prevented if the administration
had accepted the Taliban’s Aug. 15 offer for the U.S. to control the
capital city’s security until the end of the withdrawal.

Such an arrangement would have allowed American forces to extend the
airport’s security perimeter, creating more space for evacuating
Afghans and a far more orderly process. It also would have prevented
U.S. servicemembers from being penned in amid the frantic crush of
Afghans desperately trying to board U.S. military planes, leaving them
vulnerable to the suicide attack, several former officials told
committee Republicans, according to the report.

“There were many sins if you will – there was a complete lack of and
failure to plan,” Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the panel
told CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday. “There was no plan executed.”

In a new memo over the weekend, the White House started defending its
decision to withdraw troops, arguing that the move strengthened U.S.
national security by freeing up military and intelligence agents and
assets. The memo, written by National Security Council spokesperson
Adrienne Watson and first reported by Axios, is a direct response to
the House Republicans’ interim report outlining their view of the
administration’s withdrawal failures.

It assails the House Republicans’ report as a partisan exercise
“riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry picked information,
and false claims…. It advocates for endless war and for sending more
troops to Afghanistan, and it ignores the impacts of the flawed deal
that former President Trump struck with the Taliban,” the memo states.

Republicans are standing by their findings, arguing that a failure to
plan left the State Department with only 36 consular officers at the
airport trying to process hundreds of thousands of people in a matter
of days. These officials were overwhelmed, McCaul said, but the lack
of resources for a withdrawal of this magnitude was just one of the
many mistakes involved in failing to plan for Kabul’s fall despite
multiple warnings.

    United States of America fled Afghanistan leaving behind innocent Afghans.

    These shocking visuals from Kabul today describe the US withdrawal
from Afghanistan. Betrayal. Escape. Lack of empathy. No clarity.
Failure. Chaos. pic.twitter.com/UCDMC7CffT
    — Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) August 16, 2021

Several top U.S. military leaders for months had warned the president
that the Afghan government would likely collapse if the U.S. left
fewer than 2,500 troops stationed there, the report states.

The report also cites “more realistic assessments on the ground,”
including a July 13, 2021, embassy cable from 23 U.S. personnel
assigned to the embassy in Kabul, which reportedly contained “a stark
warning” about the potential collapse of the Afghan state. The cable,
which the Wall Street Journal first reported a year ago, and was sent
to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of Policy Planning
Salman Ahmed, called on the State Department to respond more urgently
to the Taliban’s offensive.

Although Blinken acknowledged the existence of the cable, he has
refused to share it or disclose his response to it with congressional
committees, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The biggest mistake of all, McCaul argued, was Biden’s rejection of
the Taliban’s offer for the U.S. to take control of Kabul’s security
until the evacuation was over.

“Think about what that would have changed,” McCaul said. “We had to
rely on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of [the airport], that led
to the chaos, and it also led to the suicide bomber who killed 13
servicemen and women and injured hundreds of people.”

The Biden administration also rebuffed other offers that could have
helped prevent the frantic crush of Afghans at the airport and
preserve America’s reputation abroad, the report states. U.S. leaders
ignored a proposal from Guam for the U.S. territory to serve as an
interim processing center to help evacuate interpreters and other
at-risk allies. It similarly declined an offer from Pakistan to have a
facility there serve as a transit center for evacuees, despite other
facilities in Qatar and Germany reaching capacity.

The report, which will serve as a roadmap for several lines of inquiry
if Republicans win back the majority in either chamber this fall, is
based on open-source information, along with interviews with U.S.
officials and civilians involved in evacuating U.S. citizens and
Afghan allies. Several whistleblowers who requested anonymity also
played a key role, along with sworn statements by U.S. military
personnel who were part of the investigation into the August 26, 2021,
suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.

The State Department did not comply with requests for documents and
transcribed interviews with 34 administration officials involved in
the Afghanistan evacuation effort. The report also criticizes the full
House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Democratic Rep. Greg Meeks of
New York, for holding just one full committee hearing with senior
Biden administration officials on the Afghanistan withdrawal even
though it’s widely recognized as one of the worst U.S. foreign policy
failures in decades.

While the report says more State Department resources would have
helped ease panic and confusion, it faults the agency for basic
communication miscues that further exacerbated the chaos.

By ignoring early warnings that they were not moving quickly enough to
evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans who had worked directly with
the U.S. government, they left American citizens, green-card holders,
and Afghan allies approved for departure stranded outside airport
gates with no assistance.

“Attempts by members of Congress and their staff to help their
constituents or other would-be evacuees were often stymied by
out-of-office replies to email requests and broken links to web pages
mean to submit information,” according to the report.

It also criticizes U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson for
going on a two-week vacation as Afghanistan was falling apart. Wilson
took his summer break immediately after accompanying then-Afghanistan
President Ghani to a late June meeting with Biden who promised the
Afghan envoy, “We’re going to stick with you, and we’re going to do
our best to see to it that you have the tools you need.”

“There were no decisions made in the embassy until [Ross] returned in
mid-July. This made action impossible,” a U.S. military officer told
Army investigators. “Ground could have been gained at this time if the
embassy had been able to do anything.”

A couple of weeks later, it was Biden and Blinken who were on vacation
at Camp David and the Hamptons, respectively, when alarms began
sounding at the Pentagon for the need to relocate all of U.S. embassy
personnel to the Kabul airport. Before the move, the personnel were
being ordered to destroy sensitive documents in response to new fears
of an immediate Taliban takeover of Kabul.

All these hasty actions left no time for the State Department to speed
up the processing of immigration applications for the Afghan allies
Biden had promised to protect.

There were no plans made to evacuate tens of thousands of U.S.-trained
Afghan commandoes and other elite units who possess sensitive
knowledge about American military operations.

Also left behind: women leaders and soldiers whom Americans had
promised sanctuary, along with more than 10,000 Afghans who had been
employed by Embassy Kabul since it was re-established in 2001 and
thousands more who worked with U.S. Agency for International
Development.

Nearly one year after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the Biden
administration still lacks a plan to help these at-risk Afghan allies
who fought and worked alongside U.S. forces, even though the
administration has admitted that the Taliban and other terrorist
groups have subjected these U.S. allies to killings and forced
disappearances.

And, despite Biden’s assurances that the U.S. had accomplished its
original goal of expelling al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from
the country, the report points to the recent U.S. strike against Ayman
al Zawahiri, a top al Qaeda leader, who was living freely in downtown
Kabul, as proof of the group’s presence in Afghanistan.

“Thankfully, al Zawahiri was killed by a U.S. drone strike last month,
but officials warn that al Qaeda and ISIS-K continue to grow their
presence in Afghanistan,” the report states.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal has wreaked havoc on the country’s economy,
with some estimates that 95% of the country needs emergency assistance
to avoid hunger. With the Taliban back in control, there are reports
of targeted revenge killings against those who worked with the U.S.
government or military. U.S.-based volunteer groups seeking to aid
Afghan evacuees have reported nearly 500 reprisal attacks, including
beheadings, hangings, severed limbs, lash marks, and car shootings.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported in July
2022 that these killings are often carried out “execution style – for
example, when an individual is taken out of their house and shot
almost immediately,” the report notes.

One of the worst casualties of the U.S. withdrawal from the country is
the dramatic regression of women and girls, who are now ordered to
wear burqas and are prevented from attending school or universities or
even from walking unaccompanied in public places.

Child marriage is also reportedly on the rise with girls as young as
nine years old being sold into marriage to pay off debts, or families
being forced to marry off their young daughters to Taliban fighters,
the report states, quoting PBS documentary filmmaker Ramita Navai’s
comments earlier this month after two visits to Afghanistan.

The report also cites a finding by Amnesty International that “many
women protesters” in Afghanistan who demonstrated against the
Taliban’s repressive policies “have been subjected to arbitrary arrest
and detention, enforced disappearance and torture,” including
Taliban-administered beatings and electric shocks with tasers.

Although Blinken acknowledged reprisal attacks and killings earlier
this year, the report points out that the secretary played down the
Taliban leadership’s responsibility for the deaths.

“We are of course seeing retribution, attacks by Taliban against those
who are part of the former government,” he told a House Foreign
Affairs Committee hearing on April 28. “These seem to be, for the most
part, not centrally directed, that is they – they tend to be happening
at a local level, but they're happening.”

Many of these allies are still sheltering in safe houses, afraid that
the Taliban informants will expose their previous work with the U.S.
government or NATO allies. Each passing week, they have fewer
resources to purchase basic items such as food, fuel, and shelter.

With the State Department unable to aid these people, the task of
clothing, feeding, and sheltering tens of thousands of Afghans has
fallen to outside veteran or humanitarian groups or sympathetic
individuals. With almost no support from the U.S. government, some of
the personnel running these groups, many of them comprising military
veterans, have drained their personal retirement accounts, quit jobs,
and suspended their small businesses in order to raise the funds to
operate these networks of safe houses.

“But these funds are not limitless, and the resource strains incurred
have endangered the continued existence of these safe houses which
many Afghans and Americans rely on for their very survival,” the
report concludes.