by Frank Holmes, reporter
The deaths of U.S. servicemen in the line of duty is always a tragedy — but all the more so when politicians shamefully send soldiers into the war without a plan to win, fail to stop preventable military casualties, and then lie to the American people about the whole thing.
That’s exactly what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, according to a comprehensive new report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The 353-page report, titled “Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’sWithdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed,” paints a damning picture of a president—and a vice president who was “the last person in the room with him”—who put politics over American soldiers’ lives time and time again.
The report finds that Biden and Kamala Harris were so hellbent to get out of Afghanistan by September 11 that they intentionally limited military and intelligence input into the decision, to make sure they didn’t contradict the policy they had already settled on.
“The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. 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,” says the report. “As Colonel Seth Krummrich, the chief of staff for Special Operations Command (SOCOM), put it: ‘The president decided we’re gonna leave, and he’s not listening to anybody.’”
They also ignored the Taliban’s flagrant breaking of the agreement’s terms, and increased the number of diplomats in the area as they reduced the number of troops protecting them.
“The drawdown of U.S. troops and U.S. and international contractors in the middle of the Afghan fighting season, which ran annually from April through October and coincided with better weather, created fertile ground for Taliban conquests,” the report finds.
It wasn’t just people; Biden and Harris denied the remaining troops the tools they needed to do their jobs, too.
“There were insufficient military planes to conduct an airlift of this size, and the U.S. Department of Transportation waited until August 20th — five days after the country fell — to allow foreign civil aircrafts to conduct their own flights,” House investigators report.
But Biden and Harris didn’t want to hear that they were leaving Americans vulnerable. “Senior Biden-Harris administration officials were willfully blind to warnings about the degrading security situation on the ground given to them by U.S. military personnel, U.S. intelligence assessments, American and international media reports, and State Department personnel in Kabul who sent a Dissent Channel cable in July 2021,” says the reports. Instead, they “prioritized the optics.” But the Taliban and its terrorist cadre weren’t fooled.
People on the ground were flying blind, without a contingency plan for what to do if the Taliban took advantage of American weakness and overwhelmed a small, poorly armed U.S. force…like they did.
“The fact is the plan wasn’t even initiated until the Taliban had overrun Kabul and were on their way to the Embassy,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, during a press conference on Monday announcing the report’s release.
The U.S. ambassador fled to the airport, “leaving his employees behind,” along with $7 billion of equipment at Bagram Air Base, McCaul said.
“These Marines were sent in unprotected, left out to dry by their government…and what happens?” he asked. A “bomb goes off,” killing 13 U.S. soldiers and wounding 40 Americans, as well as many others.
“The women and children (got) left behind,” McCaul said. “We have the testimony of the beatings” they endured.
“The sad thing is, it could have been prevented,” he concluded.
🚨Afghanistan withdrawal🚨
House republicans release a 300 page report on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that took the lives of 13 U.S. service members. @RepMcCaul says the report shows the Biden- Harris administration botched the withdrawal because there was no plan in… pic.twitter.com/XpHKWsHkfI— Stella Escobedo (@StellaEscoTV) September 9, 2024
But in the Democratic White House, an ounce of lying is worth a pound of cure. “The Biden-Harris administration misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal, from before the go-to-zero order until today,” the committee stated.
The main source behind those lies, which go all the way to the Oval Office, was National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
It’s a cliché to say America’s two political parties have never been further apart than they are today — but their reaction to the death of more than a dozen men in uniform couldn’t be more night-and-day different.
House Republicans honored the 13 soldiers killed by bestowing on them the Congressional Gold Medal on Tuesday morning.
Partisans questioned the timing since it occurred hours before the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris…even though the date had been chosen long before ABC scheduled the debate.
CBS can’t help but try to put a partisan spin on a bipartisan cause.
The date of the Abbey Gate Gold Medal Ceremony was picked far in advance of the candidates agreement to the ABC debate.
Do your homework next time and don’t bring fallen troops into it. pic.twitter.com/swlQZV0aon
— Corinne Day (@CorinneHDay) September 8, 2024
How did the Biden-Harris administration respond? Their Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, actually defended the withdrawal even after the report came out.
“There was no deception, lying, or lack of transparency by this administration either during or after withdrawal,” Kirby said with a straight face—just moments after he said the U.S. hadn’t given the Taliban any equipment.
He tried to blame President Donald Trump for negotiating a “flawed” plan to get most of the troops out, known as the Doha Agreement.
But Kirby didn’t explain why Biden couldn’t renegotiate the deal. After all, he ripped up every other policy implemented by Trump during his four years in office, especially on the U.S. border.
WATCH: White House DEFENDS Afghanistan Withdrawal After New Report pic.twitter.com/QkzAPDPjmB
— DC Shorts (@theDCshorts) September 10, 2024
It seems like Biden and Harris only change Trump policies in a way that will get American citizens killed.