A long-awaited report on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan paid close attention to the spin from Biden-Harris administration spokespeople that belied the “imminent-threat environment.”
While Vice President Kamala Harris and her corporate media allies attempted to perpetuate a hoax about former President Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery marking the third anniversary of the tragedy at Abbey Gate, House Republicans released an extensive report featuring the months of crafted messaging that downplayed the ever-deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
At nearly 250 pages, with dozens more dedicated to citations, the House Foreign Affairs Committee released their report Monday entitled, “Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed.”
Within the effort from the GOP, a breakdown of the missteps from President Joe Biden throughout his first year in office that culminated in the deaths of 13 service members while leaving behind thousands of allies and billions of dollars worth of equipment included the spin from then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, then-Defense Department spokesman John Kirby and then-State Department spokesman Ned Price.
The report detailed:
“Perhaps most significantly, after President Biden’s go-to-zero order, the White House and the State Department continued to present the situation in Afghanistan as well-planned when the reality was anything but. On June 3, 2021, when asked about planning for a potential evacuation of SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants to third-party countries, Mr. Price did not directly respond, instead asserting the Biden-Harris administration planned to keep Embassy Kabul open to process applications…On June 23, 2021, when asked about what steps were being taken to protect SIV applicants, Ms. Psaki claimed, ‘[W]e’re doing the kind of extensive planning for potential evacuation should that become necessary.’…She also claimed, the ‘State Department and our team takes very seriously and assesses whether there is a need to take any additional action,’ in the event the Taliban advanced quicker than anticipated.”
“On July 6, 2021, when a reporter asked Mr. Price about a plan for an evacuation in light of the rapid Taliban advances on the battlefield, he responded, ‘We’re always planning for any contingency … we’re planning for any number of contingencies,'” stated the report that contended, “those representations were wrong,” citing multiple witness accounts that asserted the State Department never developed a plan to evacuate a Taliban-controlled Kabul.
Additional contradictions quoted then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley who’d acknowledged that “al-Qaeda is still in Afghanistan” and had been “there in mid-August,” whereas on April 14, 2021, Psaki had stated, “al-Qaeda … is not being harbored in a safe haven in Afghanistan how it was 20 years ago.”
Likewise, Price said on May 10, 2021, “We went into Afghanistan 20 years ago — just about 20 years ago — with a singular mission, and that was to go after the group that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and to see to it that Afghanistan could not again be leveraged as a staging ground for attacks on the United States. We were able to achieve those goals.”
Elsewhere in the report, the White House press secretary had preceded remarks from Biden when she said in April 2021, “The United States is going to remain deeply engaged with the government of Afghanistan, committed to the Afghan people who have made … extraordinary sacrifices during this conflict.”
The president himself stated on July 8, 2021, “While we [will] not stay involved in Afghanistan militarily, our diplomatic and humanitarian work will continue. We’ll continue to support the government of Afghanistan. We will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defenses and Security Forces.”
Those remarks and a commitment to a messaging deadline that aimed to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 for the withdrawal ran contrary to positions from the military like then commander of the U.S. Central Command, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie who was referenced in the report as expressing concern “about leaving with a date certain” because of lacking confidence in the “ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they’re on.”
A statement from White House spokesperson Sharon Yang was dismissive of the report led by committee chair Texas Rep. Michael McCaul and said, “Everything we have seen and heard of Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report shows that it based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start.”
She further defended, “As we have said many times, ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result.”
The spin could not navigate around the fact that on May 2, 2021, Kirby referenced attacks from the Taliban as “small, harassing attacks” while claiming they hadn’t impacted the withdrawal only to state on Aug. 13, 2021, less than two weeks before the tragedy at Abbey Gate that killed 13 service members, and contended “Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent-threat environment.”
As noted by the report, “Kabul fell to the Taliban two days later.”
After he took the role as White House National Security Communications Advisor, Kirby maintained, “For all this talk of chaos [at the airport in Kabul], I just didn’t see it, not from my perch.”
Meanwhile, while the reality showed the withdrawal abandoning allies in Afghanistan, Psaki said on July 14, 2021, “Our objective is to get individuals who are eligible relocated out of the country in advance of the removal — of the withdrawal of troops at the end of August.”
Shortly after the fall, she remarked, “I don’t think anyone assessed that they would collapse as quickly as they did. Anyone. Anyone in the room. Anyone in the region. Anyone anywhere in the world.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.