The White House pushed back on a report released Sunday by Republican lawmakers criticizing President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, calling the report partisan and offering “little or nothing new.”
Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the committee, released a GOP-led report disputing Biden’s claims that his hands were tied to the agreement former President Trump had made with the Taliban establishing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal for the summer of 2021. It also said State Department officials had no plan for helping Americans and allies out while there were still troops in the region to protect them.
McCaul’s report also noted the failure to adequately respond to terror threats ahead of the ISIS-K bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that the Taliban likely had access after the withdrawal to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons, and up to $57 million in U.S. funds that were initially given to the Afghan government.
On Monday, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby defended Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan during a White House briefing.
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Kirby told reporters the GOP report comes two years after their first report, adding, “This one says little or nothing new.”
He then provided a rundown of what he called “actual facts” that he considered important.
“First, on the very day this administration took office, the Taliban was in the strongest position it had been in years. The Afghan government, the weakest,” Kirby said. “The Trump administration cut a deal called the Doha Agreement that mandated a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and yes, that included Bagram Air Base, by the end of May 2021.”
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Part of the deal was that 5,000 Taliban fighters would be released from prison, and in return, the Taliban agreed not to attack U.S. troops, he explained.
Kirby referred to testimony from former commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, who said the Doha deal had a really pernicious effect on the Afghan government, and it demoralized them.
“They knew right then and there that America was on its way out,” Kirby said. “Indeed, in October of 2020, then-President Trump ordered his military to rush the exit from Afghanistan and have everybody leave by Christmas of that year.
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“President Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office: Abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,” Kirby added. “He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into summer, and we, as a nation, are safer for it.”
Kirby then brought up what he called “falsehoods” from the report. The first issue he found was that there was in fact planning for evacuations beginning in the spring of 2021.
Kirby said the Department of Defense proposed additional military units in the region so when a decision was reached to evacuate, they would be poised to respond.
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He also said there was no point in securing Bagram Air Base during the evacuation because it would have required thousands of additional U.S. troops. It would also have required a “dangerous trek by evacuees” across Taliban territory, making the evacuation even more difficult.
Kirby also mentioned that there was no handover of U.S. equipment to the Taliban.
“That equipment had been provided to Afghan security forces appropriately and with congressional approval over the course of two decades of war,” he said. “That equipment was left by those Afghan forces when they surrendered or stopped fighting.”
Finally, Kirby told reporters the Biden administration did not deceive, lie or fail to be transparent during, or after the withdrawal.
“We did the best we could every day to keep the American people informed of what was happening,” he said. “We conducted our own after-action reports and shared those, too, with the public.”
Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report.
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