(CNN) – The day the United Nations warned that Afghans were facing famine in a country on the brink of total collapse, political rivals in Washington were obsessed with taking political advantage of the chaotic end of the war. longest in the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the first senior Biden administration official to testify before Congress about the hasty, bloody and humiliating U.S. final exit from Kabul last month after two decades of conflict.
As an exercise in figuring out what went wrong in the war and retreat, the often inconsistent and politically charged audience of the House Foreign Affairs Committee provided few answers. But he did offer clear indications of how the Biden administration and its Republican opponents will deal with the messy end of the war in the next year of congressional elections.
And he showed, as was the case during the withdrawal from the United States and the years of battle, that the perception of events in Afghanistan as seen from Washington often differs from the unfortunate reality in a failed state again controlled by rulers. fundamentalists.
The hearing continued after the dire state of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and failed nation-building efforts were highlighted in a warning from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The secretary-general said Afghans are facing the “collapse of an entire country” and, while being bitten by a severe drought, are already experiencing “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.”
“Today, one in three Afghans does not know where their next meal will come from. The poverty rate is rising and basic public services are on the verge of collapse,” Guterres warned at a conference. UN aid to Geneva, a sad reminder that while U.S. leaders review political scores on a lost U.S. conflict, Afghans remain cursed by the dire consequences of the U.S. exit and decades of war ahead of this.
The hearing, which will be followed by Blinken’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, was a test for the Secretary of State and his ability to curb political criticism of President Joe Biden by the withdrawal from the United States.
The deaths of 13 U.S. servicemen in a suicide bombing in front of Kabul airport, along with dozens of Afghans, crystallized the spectacle of a country retreat. The chaotic retreat repeatedly confused Biden’s assurances of a secure and stable exit, which contributed to damaging the president’s political position.
Republicans sought to take advantage of this perception of a crisis of audience competition with scorching attacks on the administration, while the Republican Party forged a narrative of a weak White House surrendering to terrorists, following the example of former President Donald Trump as he tries to revive his own political fortune.
Blinken criticizes Trump’s dealings with the Taliban
While there was some lukewarm Democratic criticism of the administration’s history, the hearing was primarily an example of how the hyperpartisanship of current politics, whatever party it has control over, is not conducive to role of Congress to hold accountable and oversee the White House.
In many ways, Blinken’s performance reflected that of Biden himself after the fall of Kabul required an emergency evacuation that rescued more than 120,000 U.S. and Afghan citizens who aided US forces. Americans during the 20-year war. He shared many guilts. But he seldom admitted that the administration itself was wrong.
In fact, the secretary of state left the impression that the evacuation could hardly have gone better, calling it “extraordinary.” Blinken also rebuked the Trump administration for its deal with the Taliban last year, which it said put the United States on an inexorable path toward a withdrawal.
“We inherited a deadline. We didn’t inherit a plan,” Blinken said, referring to Trump’s agreement last year to withdraw all forces before May 1, a timeline that Biden went extend for four months.
Blinken’s statements were in fact anchored. But they also ignored the fact that Biden has reversed many of Trump’s other foreign policies and had been in office for seven months when the Afghan evacuation took place.
The Secretary of State argued that there were no indications that the Afghan Army, under the assault of the Taliban, would collapse in just 11 days. And he said there was no evidence that staying longer would have made Afghan security forces “more resilient or self-sufficient.” As for the slowness of the operation to process the special visas of Afghan immigrants, he blamed the Trump administration and its hard-line immigration policy.
After entering the audience under strong political pressure, it appeared that Blinken mainly withstood the storm. His experience in a past life as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prepared him well as he flattered his interrogators, even Republicans who denounced the administration’s conduct.
Blinken also argued against the idea proposed by some military strategists that the United States could have stayed in Afghanistan longer with a small garrison, saying the move would have led to clashes with the Taliban and the death of American soldiers. The most controversial thing is that Blinken claimed that if Biden had extended the mission, he would have “resumed the war in Afghanistan for another 5, 10 or 20 years.”
The comment was the latest sign of a tactical assumption by the Biden administration that while the American people may not have been impressed by the chaotic end of 20 years of war, there was great public support. to bring home all safe forces two decades after the 9/11 attacks.
‘An absolute disaster’
Republicans largely tried to create the impression that everything that went wrong in the evacuation was due to the Biden administration, rather than the corrosive impact of a 20-year war that had gone wrong. for years.
They also ignored the fact that Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had set the stage for the U.S. exit with an agreement with the Taliban that released 5,000 Taliban prisoners and, in many ways, cornered Biden, a fact for which the former president has publicly boasted.
House Rep. House Foreign Secretary Michael McCaul of Texas accused Biden’s team of presiding over “an absolute disaster of epic proportions.” He later said in “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer that some of the Afghan allies in the United States who were left behind for the evacuation had already been executed by the Taliban.
“The American people don’t like to lose, especially not with terrorists. But that’s exactly what happened,” McCaul said, coining a line that will likely be heard often during the mid-term election campaign. next year.
The Democratic chairman of the commission, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, tried to stop many of the Republican attacks in his opening statement, even while expressing concern for those Americans and Afghan allies of the northern armed forces. -Americans who wanted to leave.
“Are there things the administration could have done otherwise?” Meeks asked. “Absolutely, yes, as always,” he said, but added that he had not heard of any “clean withdrawal option” that would have worked in Afghanistan.
At times, the audience degenerated into the kind of secondary political spectacle that often surpasses the testimony of senior officials, when members of Congress acted in front of the camera.
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry criticized Blinken for not appearing in person in the courtroom. “Oh, I couldn’t bother coming here and seeing Congress, okay, that’s great,” Perry said.
Meeks said Blinken, who testified via a State Department video link, was not required to appear in person as the hearing was a hybrid event.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia criticized Republican attacks on Blinken as a “salad of selective facts.”
Blinken can expect another difficult trip when he appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. Democratic panel chairman Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that his audience would be one of many to come to the “truth.”
“I think the exit went wrong,” Menendez said, though he nuanced his comment by saying Trump gave a “bad situation” to Biden’s team.
Biden will also face an investigation within his own party into a tragic aspect of the U.S. withdrawal, an airstrike in Kabul last month, from Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who chairs the Intel Commission Of the Chamber.
The attack killed 10 civilians from the same family, including seven children, a relative of the dead told CNN. At the time, the U.S. Central Command said it carried out what it called a defensive air strike on a car, targeting an alleged ISIS-K suicide bomber that posed an “imminent” threat to the US. airport.
An official with the House Intelligence Committee told CNN’s Jeremy Herb on Monday that Schiff plans to examine the airstrike following investigations by The Washington Post and The New York Times that raised questions about claims that the vehicle contained explosives.