(New York Post) 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.
His administration consistently lied to and misled the American public to try to convince them to support his consequences-be-damned view that the US should swiftly end it’s 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, formed in 2020, held that the US would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan if the Taliban met certain obligations.
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.
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.
“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.
