House GOP blames Biden for chaotic Afghan exit while ignoring Trump administration's role

House Republicans blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, accusing the White House of ignoring Afghan, allied and military advice and conducting a subsequent coverup. The White House called the report partisan and dismissed the accusation of a coverup. Nick Schifrin reports.

Read the Full Transcript

Amna Nawaz: House Republicans today blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, accusing the White House of ignoring Afghan, allied and military advice and conducting a subsequent cover-up.

The U.S. exit from its longest ever war ended with a complete Taliban takeover, a terrorist attack that killed 13 service members and hundreds of Afghans, including many who had worked with the U.S. government left behind. The White House today called the report partisan and dismissed the accusation of a cover-up.

Nick Schifrin is reporting on this story for us. He joins me now.

Nick, so let’s just start with this report. What does it say?

Nick Schifrin: The report from the Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee makes four major conclusions, Amna.

The number one, the administration was — quote — “determined to withdraw” from Afghanistan no matter the cost. The administration — quote — “failed to plan for all contingencies.” As a result, 13 U.S. service members were murdered by a terrorist attack.

U.S. national security was degraded and America’s credibility on the world stage was severely damaged, and the administration conducted a cover-up, misleading and in some instances directly lying to the American people, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): This was a catastrophic failure of epic proportions. Some say Saigon was the worst. I say this is the worst.

Nick Schifrin: The White House called the timing of the report omnipotent for election year politics, full of cherry-picked facts, preexisting biases. Strategically, they reiterated their belief that ending the U.S.’ longest war has made the U.S. stronger.

Amna Nawaz: All right, let’s just take this chronologically then and start with the decision to withdraw. What is the debate here over that?

Nick Schifrin: The core of the debate is whether the fault of the withdrawal goes on to the Biden administration or the Trump administration.

In February 2020, the Trump administration signed the Doha agreement. It committed the U.S. to leave Afghanistan by May the 1st, 2021, and the Taliban to refrain from attacks on U.S. troops and had to — quote — “prevent al-Qaida” from using Afghanistan to threaten the U.S. or its allies.

President Trump then accelerated the U.S. troop production down to 2,500 and Democrats say prevented a proper transition into the Biden administration. And that led to the first key finding of a Democratic House Foreign Affairs Committee report released today — quote — “The Trump administration set a time-bound full withdrawal into motion without regard for facts on the ground and failed to plan for executing it.”

Regardless of that debate, the Republican report and the fact is that Biden had a choice. He could have argued that the Taliban was not living up to their side of the agreement and therefore the U.S. did not have to withdraw troops as scheduled.

But the president argued this. Extending the war would have exposed that relatively small contingent of U.S. troops still in Afghanistan to more attacks. And administration officials did not believe the military when they said that they can conduct their mission with only 2,500 troops and feared a future troop increase.

Whoever is right about that debate, the Trump administration’s Doha agreement and the Biden administration’s announced withdrawal was catastrophic for the Afghan national security forces, which lost the will to fight, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction John Sopko, told me in 2022.

John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction: What really happened was they felt essentially that the Taliban had cut a deal with our government and to some extent maybe their own government and they were left in lurch.

Nick Schifrin: And, Amna, the Afghan security forces collapsed in a matter of weeks or months.

Amna Nawaz: So that’s the decision to withdraw. What about the actual withdrawal, that the nature of that and the chaos we all saw in August of 2021?

Nick Schifrin: The report accuses the administration of failing to plan for and delaying the order for that emergency evacuation of Americans in Afghanistan, therefore creating an unsafe environment at the airport in Kabul and that is what led to those catastrophic scenes from August 2020 that we remember so well, Afghans trying to rush onto the plane, trying to get out of the airport, as you see there, and of course, the suicide bomber who killed hundreds of Afghans trying to get inside the airport and 13 service members protecting the base.

Today, the White House said that the withdrawal planning began before Biden even made the decision to withdraw. And State Department officials have made the following arguments. Any earlier evacuation would have actually collapsed the Afghan government earlier. They did warn Americans to get out, and it was the Trump administration that really eroded the system that evacuated Afghans, and it was the Trump administration that did not have any contingency planning.

At the end of the day, the evacuation that they led was 120,000, the largest in U.S. history. And one more point on this the White House made. The intelligence community said at the time the worst-case scenario was the Afghan government would fall in six months. That meant the administration, the military diplomats thought they had more time than they actually did.

Amna Nawaz: Nick, as you and I both know, we covered Afghanistan for years. It’s fair to say the context here, it’s important, is that none of this is just about the U.S. or decisions made in the weeks or months prior to that withdrawal.

Nick Schifrin: Yes, just two things of what you and I have talked about for years, Amna.

One, Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, he fled on the morning of August 15, despite promises to everyone that he would be there until the end. That is what sparked the government collapse and that is what sparked chaos at the airport.

And, number two, every single Afghan expert that you and I have spoken to document decades of mistakes. Iraq and early Pentagon decisions meant a lack of early U.S. investment in Afghanistan. Counterterrorism rates that killed the very people that the U.S. was trying to protect. Obama’s surge with an end date. Pakistani safe haven for the Taliban. Afghan corruption.

That list, sadly, is very long.

Amna Nawaz: Nick Schifrin, thank you so much for laying that all out so clearly.

Nick Schifrin: Thank you.