House condemns Biden administration officials for Afghanistan withdrawal

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 219-194 to pass a resolution condemning 15 government officials in the Biden administration who played a role in the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan.

The list includes President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and more.

Ten Democrats voted in favor of the package.

All of the names on Tuesday’s resolution stem from a 300-page report released by the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month. The report is the culmination of two years of investigation into the deadly Abbey Gate bombing on Aug. 26, 2021. The attack, carried out by an ISIS-K insurgent with a suicide explosive, killed 13 American servicemembers and roughly 170 Afghan civilians, according to the Department of Defense.

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee believe a lack of coordination, communication, and foresight unnecessarily contributed to the likelihood of such an attack. Their report expands on those perceived failures in three broad categories: strategic failures, tactical failures part I, and tactical failures part II.

Democrats claimed that the report and Wednesday’s vote are little more than a political stunt, politicizing the tragic events of August 26. When asked about many of the report’s details, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Republicans are using the benefit of hindsight to inappropriately attack government officials who made the best judgment call they could under the circumstances.

What does the resolution accomplish? On its own, the bill has no binding power. Republicans hope to draw more attention to the Biden administration’s foreign policy weaknesses with less than two months until the November elections.

Although the report itself identifies Vice President Kamala Harris individually by name only three times in the body of the report, Republicans have especially focused on Harris’ claim that she was the “last person in the room” while President Joe Biden deliberated the evacuations of the U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan. The report also makes hundreds of references to, “the Biden-Harris administration.”

Asked what other kinds of accountability Republicans might look to implement, Rep. Mark Green, R-T.N., told WORLD he hopes a potential Republican administration will continue to shift the country’s policy priorities away from those of the Biden administration as it relates to Afghanistan.

“I know one thing for certain. A lot of the money that’s going to the Taliban still—that’s going to end,” Green said.

Dig deeper: I report on what Republicans hope to see as a result of the report.