'Biden was hellbent on leaving Afghanistan — ignoring military advice,
NATO objections and Afghan pleas: House report'

<https://nypost.com/2024/09/08/us-news/biden-was-hellbent-on-leaving-afghanistan-ignoring-military-advice-nato-objections-and-afghan-pleas-house-report/>

'WASHINGTON — President Biden was so hellbent on getting out of
Afghanistan that he rebuked any advice to the contrary, ignored the
pleas of the Afghan government and disregarded objections from US
allies.

That was the one of the main takeaways from the House Foreign Affairs
Committee’s more than two-year investigation into America’s chaotic,
deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, according to a blistering report released
Sunday.

“During his decades-long tenure as a Delaware US senator, eight years as
vice president of the United States and nearly four years as president,
Mr. Biden has demonstrated distrust of America’s military experts and
advisors and has prioritized politics and his personal legacy over
America’s national security interests,” the roughly 350-page report
asserted.

President Biden
10
President Biden was going to order the deadly, chaotic US withdrawal
from Afghanistan come hell or high water, a new congressional report has
found.
AFP via Getty Images
His administration consistently lied to and misled the American public
to try to convince it to support his consequences-be-damned view that
the US should swiftly end its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the review
said.

Former President Donald Trump’s administration had previously created
and entered into the Doha Agreement with the Afghan government and the
Taliban to end the US war in Afghanistan.

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But Biden forged ahead with little deference to the terms of the
agreement — no matter the cost — though he would later blame the same
document for forcing his hand, the report found.

The Doha Agreement, made in 2020, held that the US would withdraw its
troops from Afghanistan if the Taliban met certain obligations.

Taliban fighters carry dummy yellow canisters intended to represent
homemade explosives, as they celebrate the third anniversary of the
withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, in Lashkar Gah, Helmand
province, southwestern Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024.
10
The Taliban paraded around dummy yellow canisters intended to represent
homemade explosives while celebrating the anniversary of the US
withdrawal in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, on Aug. 14, 2024.
AP Photo/Abdul Khaliq
For example, the terrorist group was responsible for “cutting ties with
al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, ceasing attacks on US and
coalition troops, reducing violence against Afghan forces and starting
negotiations with the Afghan government,” according to the report.

But Biden’s reckless, blind determination pushed aside the agreement’s
critical details, the document said.

All for show
On Feb. 4, 2021, then-State Department spokesman Ned Price announced
that the US would begin the review to assess the Taliban’s adherence to
the Doha Agreement to evaluate whether the US should imminently withdraw
from Afghanistan.

Taliban fighters march during a military parade to mark the third
anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan, in
Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug.
14, 2024.
10
A Taliban military parade marks the anniversary of the US withdrawal at
Bagram Air Base on Aug. 14, 2024.
AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai
But “in his testimony before the committee, contrary to his public
statement, Mr. Price asserted the Taliban’s adherence to the Doha
Agreement was in fact ‘immaterial’ to the Biden-Harris administration’s
decision to withdraw from Afghanistan,” the document found.

The administration’s “lies” and “misrepresentations” only continued, the
report said.

“Missing from press releases was information related to the Taliban’s
failure to adhere to the Doha Agreement, the ongoing presence of
terrorism in Afghanistan, the capabilities of the Afghan government and
military with and without U.S. support, and dissent from NATO allies on
the US plan to withdraw,” according to the report.

“The Taliban were in breach of key elements of the Doha Agreement,
[though] the Biden-Harris administration claimed to be assessing the
Taliban’s compliance therewith,” the report said.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump
looks on as he addresses the Fraternal Order of Police at their meeting
in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S. September 6, 2024.
10
The report defended President Donald Trump’s actions surrounding
Afghanistan.
REUTERS
“In reality, the conditions were entirely irrelevant to them.”

Advice ignored
Biden made the decision to pull out entirely despite nearly every
military official advising against it, the document said.

“Despite President Biden’s public assertions to the contrary, our
investigation has revealed the secretary of defense, the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, the commander of US Central Command, the secretary of
state, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the
commander of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission and United States
Forces-Afghanistan all advised against withdrawing all US troops from
the country — both during and after the interagency review,” the report
said.

Afghanistan invasion
10
US Marines march during the invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001.
AP Photo/Jim Hollander/Pool
The Harris-Biden administration also ignored the international
community’s concerns, barreling past the objections of other NATO
nations that deployed to Afghanistan in support of the US.

Even key figures in Afghanistan had pleaded against a total US
withdrawal, arguing the landlocked nation simply needed more time to
prepare.

“General Haibatullah Alizai — former Afghan Army general — informed the
committee majority staff that he pleaded for more time from American
commanders on the ground, saying, ‘Just tell your leadership to stay
with us for two more years. … We’re going to take the initiative … it’s
in our favor and we can defeat the Taliban,’ ” the report recounted.

Failure to plan
Across the board, the report painted a picture of an administration that
was heavily fixated on the political optics of the withdrawal while
lacking the foresight to plan ahead, even for predictable scenarios.

Afghanistan withdrawal
10
Footage showed fleeing Afghans trying to get onto a C-17 transport plane
out of the country.
AP
In one striking passage, the report underscored that Biden didn’t
officially order a noncombatant evacuation operation — the largest the
US had ever pursued in history — until Aug. 16, 2021, a day after Kabul
fell to the Taliban and just two weeks before the last US troops left
the city.

“The failure to prepare for a NEO had ramifications not only for
Americans and allies in Afghanistan, but US personnel on the ground
forced to evacuate desperate civilians in a hostile environment,” the
report said. “Those concerns were sidelined by the Biden-Harris
administration in favor of optics.

“Rather than concede their negligence, US service members and foreign
service officers were directed to prioritize evacuating as many people
as possible, no matter the threat posed to their lives.”

Implications for Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris was mentioned sparingly in the report,
which was one factor that former committee senior investigator Jerry
Dunleavy cited in his protest resignation from the probe.

Afghanistan withdrawal
10
Scores of Americans and Afghan allies were left behind during the
horribly botched withdrawal.
U.S. Air Forces Europe-Africa via Getty Images
“Harris was the last person in the room when President Biden made the
decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a fact she
boasted shortly after President Biden issued his go-to-zero order,” the
report stressed, pointing to previous public reporting.

She was one of 15 administration officials whom the report recommended
Congress pass a resolution condemning over the debacle.

Afghans struggle to reach the foreign forces to show their credentials
to flee the country outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in
Kabul, Afghanistan, 26 August 2021
10
Afghanistan is now mired in extreme poverty.
EPA/AKHTER GULFAM
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives in Pittsburgh International
Airport, in Coraopolis, Pa., Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024
10
Vice President Kamala Harris was featured a few times in the report,
though it focused more on President Biden’s role.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
The report’s release comes just two days before Harris’ televised debate
against Trump in Philadelphia.
Critics such as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have accused the
panel of timing the report’s release for political purposes.

But the panel’s chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), fired back to
CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “It’s taken me two years to get to
this point because of the obstruction — I’ve had to serve subpoena after
subpoena.’’

McCaul did fault Trump for one key aspect of the withdrawal — the
omission of the Afghan government from negotiations over the Doha
Agreement, which occurred under his watch.

Congressman Michael McCaul speaks onstage during the launch of the
Global Music Diplomacy Initiative at the U.S. Department of State on
September 27, 2023 in Washington, DC.
10
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul had been
overseeing the investigation for more than two years.
Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Fallout
Despite the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s decision to release its
sprawling report on the Afghanistan withdrawal, its work on the matter
is far from over.

“We have a lot of unanswered questions regarding the [Department of
Defense] … [about] what happened on the ground,” McCaul said.

The panel, which conducted 18 transcribed interviews, pored through more
than 20,000 pages worth of documents and held seven public hearings to
produce the scathing report, is also eyeing reforms for the National
Security Council and State Department.

“Everything we have seen and heard of Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan
report shows that it is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate
characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this
investigation from the start,” said Sharon Yang, a rep for oversight and
investigations at the White House