Ensuring Accountability for Key Officials in the Biden-Harris Administration Responsible for Decisionmaking and Execution Failures Throughout the Withdrawal From Afghanistan
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1486, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 1469) ensuring accountability for key officials in the Biden-Harris administration responsible for decisionmaking and execution failures throughout the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
Mr. Speaker, 3 years ago, the world witnessed one of the most devastating foreign policy disasters in American history. The Biden- Harris administration withdrew all U.S. forces from Afghanistan with no plan, no care, and no remorse.
As a result, 13 brave U.S. servicemembers and over 170 Afghan civilians were murdered, and 45 U.S. servicemembers and countless others were injured.
Just this month National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked whether there had been any accountability for the administration's deadly and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He responded: ``We've all held ourselves accountable.''
That answer, Mr. Speaker, is detached from all reality.
Today, the administration touts that deadly withdrawal as a success, and they have yet to hold a single person accountable for their role in this tragedy. In fact, many of those responsible for this catastrophe have actually been promoted.
If the administration refuses to hold itself accountable, then Congress must.
On April 14, 2021, the President announced the Biden-Harris administration would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, no matter the cost or the consequence. They ignored the Taliban's violations of the Doha agreement. They ignored objections by our Nation's top military and intelligence experts, and they ignored objections by our NATO allies.
According to the administration's own admission, the Doha agreement was immaterial to that decision.
Following President Biden's go-to-zero order, the Taliban captured province after province in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's collapse was all but set in stone.
Astoundingly, this administration did nothing to plan for an evacuation. Instead, they denied threats to American interests, American citizens, and our decades-long Afghan partners.
On August 15, 2021, after months of Taliban advances, Kabul fell. The administration's utter failure to prepare became painfully clear.
President Biden claimed the very next day that his administration had planned for all contingencies. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At every step, the administration prioritized the optics and the politics of the withdrawal over the security of U.S. personnel and diplomats on the ground.
To protect their partisan aims, they ignored the well-known terrorist threats from ISIS-K and the Taliban to our servicemembers, diplomats, citizens, and allies.
The Biden-Harris administration instead chose to treat the Taliban-- the very terrorists that we had been fighting for 20 years--as security partners, for God's sake, security partners during the evacuation.
This administration created the very environment that allowed an ISIS-K terrorist to pass through a Taliban checkpoint, because, Mr. Speaker, we put the Taliban in charge of the checkpoint.
Mr. Speaker, guess who let the suicide bomber through?
It was the Taliban.
The result of that was the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since 2021.
On August 26, 2021, that terrorist detonated a suicide vest, murdering 13 U.S. servicemembers and over 170 Afghan civilians, and injuring 45 U.S. servicemembers and countless civilians.
Rather than admit their failure, this administration continues to this day to celebrate their deadly evacuation. Never once have they said they are sorry to the Gold Star families.
It took the Speaker of the House at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony to say: I am sorry for what your government did to you.
Just yesterday, President Biden proclaimed to the world that his withdrawal was ``the right decision.''
I believe that is shameful.
When I became chairman, I launched an investigation so that we, the Congress, could work to ensure that what happened in Afghanistan never happens again.
As everyone here knows, you cannot begin to fix a problem without first admitting that there is a problem. That is what accountability is all about.
My 353-page report on this investigation works to provide that accountability. Today, we take the first step in fixing the problem by holding accountable those leaders who were derelict in their duty and are responsible for this disaster.
They are Joseph Biden, President of the United States; Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States; Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor; Jonathan Finer, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor; Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Deputy National Security Advisor; John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson and former Defense Department Spokesperson; Jen Psaki, former White House Press Secretary; Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State; Brian McKeon, former Deputy Secretary of State; Ross Wilson, U.S. Ambassador and former Chief of Mission to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador and former Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation; Ned Price, Deputy to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations and former State Department Spokesperson; Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense; Derek Chollet, Chief of Staff to Secretary Austin and former Counselor to Secretary Blinken; and, finally, Colin Kahl, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
The American people, U.S. servicemembers, veterans, and, most importantly, the Gold Star families, deserve this. They deserve transparency, and they deserve, Mr. Speaker, accountability. This measure is the first step toward that, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, September 24, 2024. Hon. Michael T. McCaul, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman McCaul: I write concerning H. Res. 1469, a resolution condemning the Biden-Harris Administration's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a result of your having consulted with us on provisions within H. Res. 1469 that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Armed Services, I agree to forego any further consideration of this resolution so that it may proceed expeditiously to the House floor for consideration.
The Committee on Armed Services takes this action with our mutual understanding that by foregoing consideration of H. Res. 1469 at this time, we do not waive any jurisdiction over subject matter contained in this or similar legislation and that our committee will be appropriately consulted and involved as this resolution or similar legislation moves forward so that we may address any remaining issues in our jurisdiction.
Finally, I ask that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be included by House Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Congressional Record during floor consideration, to memorialize our understanding. Thank you for the cooperative spirit in which you have worked regarding this matter and others between our respective committees. Sincerely, Michael D. Rogers, Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services. ____ House of Representatives, Committee on foreign affairs, Washington, DC, September 24, 2024. Hon. Mike Rogers, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Rogers: Thank you for consulting with the Foreign Affairs Committee and agreeing to be discharged from further consideration of H. Res. 1469, a resolution condemning the Biden-Harris Administration's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, so that the measure may proceed expeditiously to the House floor.
I agree that your forgoing further action on this measure does not in any way diminish or alter the jurisdiction of your committee, or prejudice its jurisdictional prerogatives on this measure or similar legislation in the future.
I will seek to place our letters on this bill into the Congressional Record during floor consideration. I appreciate your cooperation regarding this legislation and look forward to continuing to work together as this measure moves through the legislative process. Michael T. McCaul, Chairman.
Mr. Speaker, I will address some of the points. I can tell my good friend from New York (Mr. Meeks) has some prosecutorial background, like myself, and I commend him for his skillful arguments.
I will address the argument that this is all political. The timing of our investigation and this report was not of my making. It was not my timeline. It was deliberately delayed by this administration, I think, in a plan to take it well beyond this election, well beyond this Congress.
Fortunately, we had it done in September, and we invited the Secretary to testify about the report. He declined to show up, saying he had no time for the Congress, not one day in September.
Secondly, they had nothing to do with this report. Every transcribed interview had full participation by Members in the minority, Members on the other side of the aisle. They were full participants.
I would have to say, with respect to the report itself, we have 1,812 citations with a very thorough, historic document. Their report is a 50-page memorandum that doesn't even cite to a single piece of the 20,000 pages the administration presented to us after a threat of holding the Secretary in contempt.
The Dissent Channel and the after-action report were the testimonies of the diplomats themselves on the ground. That is what is in our report. That is not political. It is not opinion based, other than what the generals were thinking on the ground and the diplomats were thinking on the ground at the time of the fall.
What is despicable is that Ambassador Wilson abandoned his own Afghan employees and left them to the mercy of the Taliban, and I am sure many of them were executed, along with many of the diplomats in the Embassy.
There is just so much more that I could talk about, and I am sure we will, but the fact is, I take pride in the work we did. I did it as a Federal prosecutor would, along with my team, who is also a former Federal prosecutor, methodically building our case.
We never threw advanced conclusions out. We never made judgment calls in advance. We didn't do much with press on this. We built our case, and all roads lead to the Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, and the National Security Council. I believe those are the facts.
Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution ensuring accountability in the Biden-Harris administration.
Sadly, as a student of history, the Biden-Harris administration's failures in Afghanistan, I believe, have been the most catastrophic ever in American foreign policy and national security.
Thirteen Americans were murdered at Abbey Gate, and three Georgia Army reservists were murdered on January 28 of this year, with dozens of Georgia reservists also suffering permanent traumatic brain injury.
Americans were left behind. Afghan mothers gave up their babies over the wall so that their children could live in freedom. Patriotic Afghans fell from the planes as the Biden administration deserted the people of Afghanistan.
Surrender in Afghanistan, with Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for terrorists, has opened borders for every American family to be at risk of mass murder as we see dictators who have the ability to now come into our country and the potential of mass murder, as has been warned by the FBI.
War criminal Putin has been encouraged, as we see dictators, to conduct the mass murder in Ukraine. The Iranian puppets have slaughtered innocent people in Israel.
The agreements reached in Doha were conditions based, achieved by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. We had testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee by General Milley and General McKenzie. They testified that the conditions were broken. They were broken from the beginning, and this certainly gave the opportunity for Biden-Harris to change course and not to be slaves of a particular time.
President Donald Trump has affirmed over and over--and I have been with him at different events in the past year--that he would have left a contingent of military allies at Bagram base to deter terrorism worldwide.
President Trump would have achieved peace through strength. He would have achieved maintaining the Bagram base so that we would not have it under the control of Taliban terrorists or the Chinese Communist Party.
Additionally, I especially appreciate the success of Afghan veterans keeping America safe for 20 years, with my youngest son, Lieutenant Hunter Wilson, serving in Afghanistan for a year as an Army engineer. I appreciate that so much.
I am also grateful that my former National Guard unit, the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the South Carolina Army National Guard, served for a year in Afghanistan. With the leadership of Adjutant General Bob Livingston, they established what they called a brotherhood with their Afghan brothers. They have been heartbroken to know, as Chairman Mike McCaul has so correctly stated, that by abandoning so many people in Afghanistan, they have been executed.
We know and hear women can no longer go to school, that they must stay in their homes. I saw with the USAID programs where young girls were being able to go to school, and it was just so inspiring to see this. Now, women are being totally subjugated due to the Taliban, and this must stop. The way to do that is to never have this occur in the future.
Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the resolution.
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Mr. McCAUL. I love this argument. This is all Donald Trump's fault.
I would submit to you: Who made the decision to go to zero? You know what that means? Go to zero means withdraw all troops, withdraw all air cover, and withdraw all contractors.
That is precisely why Afghanistan imploded as fast as it did and why President Ghani, like a coward, left his people behind.
All of this talk about Doha is immaterial. Don't take my word for that. That is exactly what the White House said.
The Doha agreement was immaterial to the President's political decision, which, by the way, was going to happen on September 11. What an insult to the victims' families of 9/11.
The fact is, Donald Trump left troops in Afghanistan after his advisers told him that the Doha agreement was being violated by the Taliban.
They didn't cut their ties to al-Qaida. They did hit our troops. As a result, Donald Trump kept 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan and 6,500 NATO troops.
They will tell you that wasn't sufficient. Don't take my word again. Take the word of his top military generals: Milley, McKenzie, and Miller.
Ask for investigations. What did they do when they were in charge?
They had one hearing and no investigation. You talk about political, to cover up the tracks of this administration's disastrous withdrawal.
Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I have no further speakers and reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. McCAUL. Let me just say to my good friend for whom I have tremendous respect, we work together on many bipartisan things, and when we don't agree, we do so civilly. However, I cannot disagree with you more than I do today.
One of the byproducts of Bagram falling is 7,000 ISIS were released from Bagram prisons. Some of them have found their way into the United States.
What happened in Afghanistan is a tragedy, one of the worst foreign policy failures in our Nation's history.
Who could ever forget the harrowing images of Afghans falling off the planes and babies being flung over barbed wire in a desperate attempt by mothers to save their children and escape Afghanistan under Taliban rule?
The women that Mr. Wilson referred to, left behind along with American citizens, are now enslaved under Taliban Sharia law. We are the United States of America. You can't tell me we couldn't have safely evacuated U.S. personnel, Americans, and our brave Afghan allies.
My report shows the administration had the information and the opportunity to do so, but every step of the way, they chose political optics over the safety of Americans. Their deadly and chaotic withdrawal started a chain of events that have led to a world on fire.
We are witnessing the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the CCP has become emboldened and more belligerent in their aggression toward Taiwan, and there is a war raging in the Middle East, Mr. Speaker, with the Ayatollah now rearing his ugly head.
That didn't happen by accident. It happened by design, and it started with the fall of Afghanistan. When you project weakness on the world stage, this is what you get: a world on fire inviting aggression from our adversaries.
Our U.S. national security is degraded, America's credibility on the world stage is damaged, and the moral injury to the American veterans and servicemembers is a stain, an ugly stain, on this administration's legacy.
I close, Mr. Speaker, with a reminder of the consequences of the actions of those named in this resolution, and it is the 13 heroic U.S. servicemembers who made the ultimate sacrifice. I have met with their loved ones, and they live with pain every single day. They wake up to it every single day.
These servicemembers paid with their lives because of this administration's failure on August 26, 2021, and I, for one, in this Chamber, in this House, say I am sorry for what your government did to you.
In their honor, I will read their names:
Marine Lance Corporal David Lee Espinoza
Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee
Marine Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover
Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Christian Knauss
Marine Corporal Hunter Lopez
Marine Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum
Marine Lance Corporal Dylan Merola
Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui
Marine Sergeant Johanny Rosario Pichardo
Marine Corporal Humberto Sanchez
Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz
Navy Corpsman Maxton Soviak
Marine Corporal Daegan William-Tyeler Page
Nothing will bring their lives back. Nothing will bring these children back to their parents, but we can hold those responsible accountable, and that is what this resolution does.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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