1 of 4 | Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairs a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday as the committee moves to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt after he did not show up for to testify on the 2021 withdrawal that resulted in 13 U.S. service members and 170 others being killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport. Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI |
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Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The Republican head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Tuesday a resolution he is sponsoring will hold accountable the Biden-Harris administration for the deadly and chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and its deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on Tuesday urged passage of H.R. 1469, the "Ensuring Accountability for Key Officials in the Biden-Harris Administration Responsible for Decision-Making and Execution Failures Throughout the Withdrawal from Afghanistan" resolution.
McCaul sponsored the resolution and said it "will serve as a step toward holding the administration accountable for its deadly Afghanistan withdrawal on behalf of U.S. service members, veterans, Gold Star families and the American people," he told the House Rules Committee Monday.
"More than three years after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris have yet to hold a single person accountable for this catastrophic failure of epic proportions," McCaul said.
McCaul was referring to the deaths of the 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghan civilians who were killed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 26, 2021.
McCaul said National Security Adviser John Kirby earlier this month responded to a question regarding accountability for the tragedy by saying, "We've all held ourselves accountable."
"That answer doesn't fool anybody," McCaul said.
McCaul and other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday also voted to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt for ignoring a House subpoena to appear before the committee to address concerns regarding the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Blinken said it's not possible to appear before the committee while the United Nations General Assembly is underway this week at the U.N. headquarters in New York City, but McCaul said he has sought Blinken's testimony since May.
McCaul and other committee members want answers from Blinken following the recent publication of a three-year investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He said the Biden-Harris administration ignored the Taliban's violations of the Doha Agreement to withdraw U.S. troops.
They also ignored the objections of the nation's military and intelligence experts and NATO allies, McCaul said.
"The Biden-Harris administration was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter the cost," McCaul said. "According to their own admission, the Doha Agreement was 'immaterial' to that decision."
He said the Taliban captured many provinces in Afghanistan in violation of the Doha Agreement while the U.S. left fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground, which caused the nation's Afghan allies to suffer "unsustainable losses."
Some Democrat lawmakers have called the recently published report a partisan effort that focuses on the Biden-Harris administration's withdrawal without considering the effect of former President Donald Trump's agreement to withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan.
"This investigation is just not about serious fact-finding or oversight," Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told the committee Monday.
"It's about narrowing the scope of the end of the United States' longest war to just a few months of the Biden administration ... to play politics," Meeks, who is the committee's ranking member, said.
He called the effort to hold a vote holding Blinken in contempt a partisan attack aimed at influencing the Nov. 5 general election.
