WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized the White House and State Department for the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan a year ago, saying there was “no plan” for a withdrawal in the country .
“There are many sins, if you will,” McCaul said in an interview with Face the Nation. “There was a complete lack and a failure in planning. There was no plan and no plan was executed. And on your point, you know, I think even before that, the State Department probably didn’t have the resources to carry to prevent an evacuation of this size and magnitude.”
Texas lawmakers discussed the findings of a report to be released Monday by Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. McCaul called it a “fairly objective account of the mistakes that were made” by the Biden administration in the run-up to the withdrawal.
The release of the report coincides with the one-year anniversary of the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Kabul and the flight of then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani from the country. The Biden administration’s failure to anticipate the rapid rise of the Taliban fueled criticism of President Biden, who has repeatedly defended his timeline for withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan by August 31, 2021, ahead of the previously set August 11 deadline September.
The fall of Kabul also sparked a chaotic influx of Afghans trying to flee the country under Taliban rule. As the US military controlled the capital’s main airport for evacuations, dozens of Afghans flocked to the gates surrounding it in hopes of boarding military planes taking people out of the country.
By the time the withdrawal was complete on August 30, 2021, marking the official end of America’s longest war, more than 122,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan since late July 2021, including 5,400 American citizens. Secretary of State Antony Blinken estimated at the time that fewer than 200 Americans remained in the country.
The State Department estimates there are 74,000 vulnerable Afghans who have applied for special immigrant visas and are waiting to leave the country.
McCaul said the State Department was “overwhelmed” by the size of the evacuation. But the biggest problem, he said, is the “rosy picture” being painted by the White House and State Department, despite warnings from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that the Afghan government could collapse sooner than expected.
“There’s a disconnect between intelligence on the ground and what the White House is doing,” he said. “This report says everything like, ‘There is no way we are going to evacuate embassy personnel from helicopters like we did in Vietnam.’ And of course we know that happened.”
McCaul also pointed to the decision to reject a Taliban offer for the US military to take responsibility for securing Kabul.
“Think about what that would have changed,” he said. “We had relied on the Taliban to secure the perimeter [Hamid Karzai International Airport]. That led to chaos. It also resulted in a suicide bomber killing 13 military personnel, men and women, and injuring over hundreds of people. And it could have been avoided.”
The Texas Republican defended the intelligence community and the Pentagon for correctly assessing the Afghan military’s overthrow and Taliban takeover.
“The problem was that the White House and the State Department stuck their heads in the sand, didn’t want to believe what they were saying and therefore didn’t plan properly,” he said.
McCaul said the US broke its promise to thousands of Afghans supporting US troops during the war.
“The women left behind are the worst part of this whole story. I got four busloads of little girls out of music school, but the Schindler’s list, you know, if you’re on the list you’ll live, if you’re not on the list you’ll probably die,” he said . “One hundred thousand Afghan partners left behind – remember what we said, we will protect you. That was our promise to them, no one will be left behind, and we left them at the mercy of the Taliban and now they are being tortured and killed.”
The Biden administration is poised to issue its own report on the disengagement and has provided more than 150 briefings for lawmakers and staff on Afghanistan, covering a range of issues. Blinken has also testified twice in hearings specifically focused on Afghanistan, while senior State Department officials briefed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the matter and answered questions from its Democratic and Republican members.