“Everybody screwed up”: the blame game begins after the turbulent exit of the United States from Afghanistan

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A week after the evacuation of Kabul began, the US military was forced to take a drastic measure: stop all flights from Hamid Karzai International Airport for seven hours because there was nowhere to go to the evacuees.

For months, military officials had urged the US State Department to convince other countries to take Afghans at risk of Taliban retaliation. They had largely failed to make deals with other countries, prompting U.S. government officials to rush to try and find space for the evacuees. The Biden administration’s scramble was emblematic of last month’s failures, which culminated in a hastily organized airlift that left thousands of Afghans allied with the United States and was punctuated by a suicide bombing in the United States. outside Kabul airport which killed 13 American soldiers and dozens of Afghans.

The chaotic end of America’s longest war sparked President Joe Biden’s biggest crisis in seven months in the White House, pointing fingers in the administration and wondering who, if any, would be held responsible. Despite the missteps, the administration flew one of the largest airlifts in history, evacuating more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and people of other nationalities under threat of attack by state militants Islamic.

The last US troops left Afghanistan on Monday. Current and former officials and lawmakers have said Biden has little appetite to fire or demote key advisers regarding the handling of the US withdrawal. The Democratic president, meanwhile, has firmly defended his administration’s actions.

Frustrated and angry, Pentagon officials privately blamed the lack of urgency leading up to the airlift to the Departments of State and Homeland Security, which in turn blamed the White House for the slowness of the takeover. decision. “Pointing fingers is a nasty sport in Washington (…)

“Failure like this is collective. Everyone fucked up,” Fried added. A source familiar with the matter defended the evacuation plan and said the State Department was not aware of any Defense Department concerns about the effort’s lack of urgency.

White House officials told Reuters the layoffs had not been discussed, but the administration expects Congress to aggressively investigate the turbulent exit from Afghanistan in hearings. A Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any dismissal would be seen as a tacit admission that the president had made a mistake in unconditionally withdrawing troops from the South Asian nation.

Biden, in a provocative speech on Tuesday, defended his decision to withdraw the troops and supported the evacuation plan. “Some say we should have started the mass evacuations earlier and ‘Couldn’t it have been done – could it have been done in a more orderly fashion?’ I disagree with respect, ”said Biden, who noted he was ultimately responsible for the pullout.

POLICY DECISION Biden’s party tightly controls the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and advisers from both houses have said that while Democrats will investigate and expect to hold hearings, they are reluctant to give Republicans a platform to attack the president.

Democratic leaders of congressional committees have promised a thorough review of events in Afghanistan, but have made it clear that they intend to review the entire 20-year conflict, which has unfolded under the watchful eye of four presidents, starting with Republican President George W. Bush. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Tuesday the administration had provided numerous classified and unclassified briefings to lawmakers.

“Now it’s a 20 year war, so there is obviously a lot to dig into,” she said. Democrats want to continue Biden’s national agenda – expanding social programs, funding infrastructure, and protecting voting rights. On the national security front, they want to shed light on their investigation into the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

How Congress proceeds will depend on the level of voter interest. Less than 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released on Monday.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said last month that the Biden administration would conduct a “hotwash” – an after-action review – to find out what was wrong with Afghanistan, and that he expected this. that the results of this review be made public. White House officials said on Tuesday that the review had not started.

WHO IS TO BLAME? The past month in Afghanistan has been a series of failures, from intelligence and military to diplomatic and immigration fronts, with a fundamental error the inability to anticipate the speed of the Taliban’s advance and the collapse of the Afghan army.

“In a way, everyone is to blame,” one US official said on condition of anonymity. Some Republicans have singled out Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as primarily responsible for setting the conditions for a chaotic evacuation, and demanded their departure.

Republicans also called on Biden to fire U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who brokered the Trump administration’s 2020 deal with the Taliban that set the stage for the pullout. But when minority parliamentary leader Kevin McCarthy was asked if he thought Biden or Blinken should be impeached, the California Republican did not respond, saying he was instead focusing on getting Americans out. from Afghanistan.

Defense officials told Reuters the State Department seemed out of touch with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan and had too much faith in the Afghan government. At a congressional hearing in June, Blinken was asked if the administration was considering removing at-risk Afghans from the country while their cases were being examined.

“If there is a significant deterioration in security it could well happen, we have discussed this before, I don’t think it will be something that will happen from Friday to Monday,” Blinken said. The Taliban captured two of Afghanistan’s three largest cities – Kandahar and Herat – on Friday, August 13, and captured Kabul, the capital, two days later.

(This story was not edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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