Cloture Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRAMER. Madam President, I am here today to join my colleagues and first associate myself with all of the words from the ranking Republican from the Armed Services Committee, Senator Inhofe.
Very well said, Senator, and I agree wholeheartedly.
I express my profound disappointment in President Biden's handling of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. The American people and certainly my constituents in North Dakota are upset, and they have every right to be.
For weeks, we were inundated with horrifying stories of Americans and our allies fleeing for their lives, paired with the constant stream of disturbing images and videos out of Afghanistan as it was taken over by the Taliban. Yet, somehow--somehow--President Biden has the audacity to call the withdrawal an ``extraordinary success.'' Well, President Biden is wrong. It was not an extraordinary success. The withdrawal was an abject failure, and President Biden bears all of the responsibility for it, and that is to say that he is the reason it was an abject failure, because our heroes in uniform did an incredible job against very difficult odds and, frankly, with very poor leadership coming from the Oval Office.
The reality is, the President misled the American people to justify his decisions and to downplay his failures. Now, terrorists are emboldened, our allies are questioning the resolve of the United States, and the United States is less safe because of it.
The reality is, his deceitful rhetoric really began several months ago. In August, he led us to believe our military leaders were united in their support of his withdrawal plans. Like many of my colleagues, I expressed concerns at the time when his plans were first announced and urged him to follow a conditions-based withdrawal. He did not.
To rationalize his choices, he worked to convince us that the most senior leaders in the Pentagon were standing behind him, agreed with him. They gave him this advice, he said. As we have heard from multiple generals, that is simply not true.
The President also misled us about the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. In an August speech, he said the Afghan military force had ``300,000 strong, incredibly well equipped fighters.'' The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report that is not true. It said that of the 300,000 members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, only 182,000 of them were Afghan National Army members and the rest were members of the Afghan National Police.
Well, when I discuss the number of servicemembers in our Armed Forces, I don't include the number of police officers or even FBI agents. That would be inaccurate at best, and then deceitful at worst. Yet, here, the President is doing exactly that.
President Biden used that 300,000 number to claim the Afghan Government could defend itself, and he later tried to say no one could predict their forces would fall so quickly.
Was he being dishonest with the American people, or was he just not being given accurate information by his senior leadership about the conditions there?
Well, neither ignorance nor incompetence are a very good answer.
Later in the month, when it became clear the withdrawal was going to be a failure, President Biden insisted that the United States would get all Americans who wanted to leave out of Afghanistan. Well, he didn't. He failed.
And no one, including him--and least of all him--wants to take responsibility. The State Department says, you know, talk to the Defense Department. The Defense Department says talk to the State Department. But no one is taking responsibility.
And I say the buck stops in the Oval Office with the President, who let that happen and who is letting his team dodge taking responsibility, all while Americans fear for their lives in a country run by terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.
Near the end of August, after 13 brave U.S. military members were killed in an ISIS-K terrorist attack during the botched withdrawal, President Biden rushed to release a statement taking credit for this retaliatory drone strike.
He said: ``I said we would go after the group responsible for the attack on our troops and innocent civilians in Kabul, and we have.''
Well, except he hadn't. It was later revealed, as we know, that the strike did not take out any ISIS-K leaders. In fact, it took out 10 civilians, including 7 children. But, since then, the President said nothing. He didn't say anything about this horrifying revelation when it was clear that he misled the American people in the wake of the strike.
Our military leaders did not agree with the withdrawal plans. The Afghan Army was not prepared to defend itself. We did not get every American out of the country, and justice was not delivered to ISIS-K or its leaders after it killed 13 American heroes.
And what now? What do we have to show for it?
Well, America is less safe than it was when President Biden became President. As our top military leaders testified in yet another contradiction of President Biden's claims, al-Qaida is alive in Afghanistan and looks to carry out a strike right here on American soil.
How are we supposed to stop it?
Our military leaders don't have faith in the over-the-horizon strategy that President Biden repeatedly touts to give us reliable information.
Who is going to help us?
Our strongest allies and partners and longest standing friends vocally distanced themselves from us amid this botched withdrawal.
All of this is what President Biden called an extraordinary success. Well, it is an extraordinary embarrassment is what it is. The American people are smart enough to not fall for such an obvious attempt to hide the truth from them.
That is why we, on the Armed Services Committee, are going to continue investigating the withdrawal and holding the Commander in Chief accountable for his poor judgment and actions, even if he won't take the responsibility. That is what our constituents expect and deserve, and I urge my colleagues to join in supporting those efforts.
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