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
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.

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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.

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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.