House Republicans: 'Failure to Plan' Caused Afghanistan 'Catastrophe'

WASHINGTON - On Capitol Hill Thursday, members of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee examined the Biden administration's preparation for the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, speaking with witnesses involved in the military evacuation.

Among those testifying was Col. Seth Krummrich (Ret.), who was directly involved with the planning of the withdrawal. He told lawmakers President Biden ignored the U.S. military's advice.

"The bottom line is the administration controlled how we withdrew and when we withdrew, making them the majority stakeholder of many guilty parties in the failure and collapse of Afghanistan, and the current Taliban rule," Krummrich said. 

Along with ignoring top military generals, he pointed to three other major decision failures by the administration, including the failure of both sides to follow the Doha Agreement -- a peace deal between the U.S. and the Taliban, selective intelligence blindness, and bad timing.

"The withdrawal window of May to September of '21 was planned during the peak of the well-known Afghan fighting season. Why did the tactically meaningless anniversary of 9/11 drive the timeline?" Krummrich questioned.

Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Jacob Smith, U.S. Army, was the senior enlisted leader responsible for shutting down Bagram Airfield. He said his advice to keep the base open in the case of an evacuation also went unheeded. Instead, he was forced to evacuate and leave only 113 Americans to protect the much less strategic Hamid Karzai Airport.

"The mission asked of this company and subsequent Marines, soldiers, Airmen, and coalition forces, called to reinforce the small security contingent was monumental. They were asked to control absolute panic and anarchy, and they somehow did it," Smith told lawmakers.

While Democrats acknowledged mistakes were made, they stressed, the failures of August 2021 didn't happen in a vacuum. 

"This was a 20-year war. This was America's longest war. Multiple generations fought in this war. Four presidencies were responsible for this war. Ten congresses were responsible for this war," said ranking member, Rep. Jason Crow, (D-WISC)

"Mistakes made throughout 20 years in Afghanistan don't justify stupidity in the end," remarked Rep. Mark Green, (R-TN).

Republicans called the withdrawal an example of a total failure to predict and plan for worst-case scenarios, and they hammered the Biden administration for its lack of accountability.

"What would happen to a leader in the military who ignored intelligence and failed to plan until the day before, resulting in troops killed, what would happen," questioned Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL).

"They would be court-martialed," Krummrich responded. 

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