Senator Risch (R-Idaho) is a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This morning Risch released a scathing 65-page report on Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. The minority report is titled “ Left Behind: A Brief Assessment of the Biden Administration’s Strategic Failures during the Afghanistan Evacuation” and labels Biden’s actions as a failure of duty. There is no nuance here, nor should there be. The report gives an overview of what went wrong and recommendations going forward.

President Unity has failed miserably to bring Americans together, a key campaign promise. However, one area in which he has brought people from both sides of the aisle together is voicing criticism of how the Biden administration withdrew from Afghanistan. Yesterday Jazz wrote about a leaked set of notes taken in a meeting in the Situation Room which show how unprepared the administration was for how quickly the Taliban took over the country. We know the disastrous results of Biden’s incompetence. Americans, Afghan helpers, green card holders, and others were left behind. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack at the airport in Kabul. It is important that this doesn’t happen again.

“While there is substantial disagreement about the policy to leave Afghanistan, Americans share outrage over how the United States withdrew last August, and what that failure has done to America’s standing in the world,” said Risch. “My report describes how the Biden Administration’s failure of duty allowed for a quick Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and a botched withdrawal that left hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan partners behind. The United States will have to deal with the fallout of this failure for years to come, so it is imperative that we mitigate the strategic implications to ensure we do not repeat mistakes.”

The key findings listed in Risch’s report are shocking. The administration did not hold any senior-level interagency meetings to discuss the evacuation. They did not assign the State Department to contact those at risk in the country, including Americans, until just hours before Kabul fell on August 14. They were literally left without notification and then left to fend for themselves. Risch’s executive summary of the report should leave every American outraged and ashamed of such an incompetent administration. It will take years for our reputation as a nation that does not leave people behind to improve on the world stage.

The Biden Administration:

Failed to do any contingency planning for worst-case scenarios.
Ignored intelligence reports about the risk of an imminent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Disregarded dissent cables from Foreign Service Officers on the front lines.
Abandoned Bagram Air Base based on arbitrary troop caps and political considerations, hampering the evacuations and the reinserted troops.
Failed to take significant steps to improve the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program despite clear evidence that the program was flawed.

The Biden Administration failed to protect:

American citizens in Afghanistan – thousands of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents were left behind.
Afghan partners – tens of thousands of SIV applicants were left behind, jeopardizing America’s credibility and ability to recruit partners in the future.
The botched withdrawal damaged U.S. credibility with our allies.

The minority report offers some suggestions. They are probably all too practical for implementation by this administration. The Biden administration has consistently been tone deaf on how best to do crisis management. The worst part is that the administration has brought on itself all of the crises it is dealing with, whether it is ending the Afghanistan war, securing the southern border, or dealing with domestic issues that trouble every American, like inflation and school closures. This is truly the gang that can’t shoot straight.

State should:

Develop a new system for accounting U.S. citizens overseas.
Properly resource consular services and immigration personnel.
State and the Department of Defense should:

Review their memorandum of agreement for noncombatant evacuation operations.
Use an updated Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker system to track SIV employment.
Improve transparency and coordination efforts with Congress.

The administration was repeatedly warned that the Taliban were capable of quickly taking over the country. Despite the warnings, the administration failed to take heed and plan for evacuations. They waited until mere hours before Kabul fell to make leadership decisions on organizing and executing a withdrawal. Risch’s report calls it “too little, too late.” Risch points out that it was ” junior and mid-level civil servants, Foreign Service and military officers, and enlisted personnel” who were left to deal with the fallout. The report does not criticize them but lauds their heroic efforts.

In conducting interviews for this report, it is clear that despite substantial failures of leadership and foresight, it was junior and mid-level civil servants, Foreign Service and military officers, and enlisted personnel who would help mitigate a number of issues through extraordinary feats. In fact, it was the heroic initiative taken by these people that prevented the evacuation from being even more disastrous than it could have been. Our diplomats on the ground and in Washington outdid themselves, working around the clock while the enemy circled, with few, if any, resources outside of the Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Any criticisms found in this report are not of the many people mentioned above, or their herculean effort. America, and the myriad Afghans they helped, owe them an enormous debt of
gratitude, and I am thankful for their dedication and excellence.

The Department of Defense and the State Department failed to work together. The manager of the interagency effort was the National Security Council (NCS), which was charged with coordinating the withdrawal of all U.S. personnel. That interagency coordination didn’t happen. The report states that NSC “wasted” 115 days and didn’t conduct its first senior meeting to discuss the withdrawal from Afghanistan until August 14 at 3:30 pm, hours before Kabul fell. By that time it was impossible for the administration turn things around and oversee a more successful evacuation.

The report slams the administration for leaving so many people behind and using the excuse that Americans are not required to register with the embassy, so the State Department didn’t know exactly where people were to evacuate them. Blinken uses that excuse to this day as though it justifies the horrific situation that thousands of people find themselves in even now in Afghanistan, unable to get out of the country before the Taliban kills them. Blinken and DOD have continually lied about the “small” number of people still trapped in Afghanistan. On July 13, a cable was sent to Blinken and the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmed, by 23 U.S. embassy staff in Kabul who wanted to deliver firsthand witnesses to the deteriorating security situation. They specifically warned of how quickly the Taliban was taking over territory in the country. That was a full month before NSC even sat down and met to discuss evacuations.

As I mentioned above, the report is 65 pages long and it is chock full of details which will make you angry over how we got here. The administration – Biden, specifically – was more concerned about being able to say he ended the 20 year war in Afghanistan as he promised to do in his campaign than he was in bringing home Americans and Afghan helpers who are at risk of being killed by the Taliban. Biden wanted a success to preen about and instead the withdrawal from Afghanistan turned out to be the point in which his polling numbers began to crash. It was the first real indication of how inept Biden is and not up to the task of leading the free world. He has blood on his hands and Americans of all sides are horrified. Biden trashed America’s reputation for keeping our word to those who help us overseas during times of war. It will take years for the United States to recover from the damage he has inflicted, if ever.