“I saw the faces of everyone we couldn’t save, the ones we left behind,” said Vargas-Andrews, wearing a prosthetic arm and the scars of her own grave wounds from the bombing. “The withdrawal was a disaster in my opinion. And there was an inexcusable lack of accountability…”
The initial hearing of the long-promised investigation by House Republicans showed open wounds from the end of America’s longest war in August 2021, with witnesses recalling how they saw mothers carrying the dead children and the Taliban shooting and brutally beating people.
This is the first in what is expected to be a series of Republican-led hearings examining the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal. Taliban forces seized Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, faster than US intelligence had predicted as American forces withdrew. The fall of Kabul turned the Western retreat into a rout, with Kabul airport the center of a desperate air evacuation overseen by US forces temporarily deployed for the task.
Most of the witnesses argued in Congress that the fall of Kabul was an American failure with blame on every presidential administration from George W. Bush to Joe Biden. The testimony focused not on the decision to withdraw, but on what witnesses described as a desperate attempt to save American citizens and allies in Afghanistan with little US planning and insufficient support. in the US.
“America has built a bad reputation for multi-generational systemic abandonment of our allies where we have left a smoldering human haven from the mountains of Vietnam to the Kurds of Syria,” affirmed retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He added, “Our veterans know something else that this committee might do well to consider: We may be done with Afghanistan, but we’re not done with it.”
Vargas-Andrews sobbed as she told lawmakers she was being thwarted in an attempt to stop one of the deadliest instances of displacement in the U.S. — a suicide bombing that killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. servicemen and women.
Vargas-Andrews said Marines and others who assisted in the evacuation operation were given descriptions of people believed to be plotting an attack before it happened. He said he and others saw two men matching the descriptions and acting suspiciously, and eventually put them in their rifle scopes, but didn’t get a response on whether to move.
“No one is being held accountable,” Vargas-Andrew told Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, is the committee chairman. “There wasn’t one, and there hasn’t been one, until now.”
The investigation by the US Central Command concluded in October 2021 that due to the deteriorating security situation at Abbey Gate as the Afghans became more desperate to flee, “the attack could not be stopped at the tactical level without reducing the mission to increase the number of evacuees.” However, that investigation did not look at whether the fire could have been stopped or whether the Marines on the ground had the appropriate authorities to intervene.
McCaul has been highly critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal. “What’s happening in Afghanistan is a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level, and a spectacular failure of leadership by the Biden administration,” he said.
Last month, the US Inspector-General for Afghanistan John Sopko again concluded that the actions taken by the Trump and Biden administrations were the key to the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and military, even before US forces will complete their withdrawal by August 2021.
That includes President Donald Trump’s one-sided withdrawal deal with the Taliban, and Biden’s abrupt withdrawal of US contractors and troops from Afghanistan, stranding an air force in Afghanistan that failed to create self-support in previous administrations.
The report faulted every US administration since American forces invaded in 2001 for constantly changing, inconsistent policies that strive for a quick fix and withdrawal from Afghanistan rather than a consistent efforts to build a capable, sustainable military in Afghanistan.
Witnesses testifying Wednesday urged action to help hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies who worked with US soldiers and are now in limbo in the US and back in Afghanistan.
“If I leave this committee with just one thought it’s this: It’s not too late,” said Peter Lucier, a Marine veteran who now works for Team America Relief, which has helped thousands of Afghans. to transfer. “We will talk a lot today about all the mistakes that were made, until that day, but urgent action now will save many lives.”
One of the solutions discussed Wednesday was to create a path to citizenship for the nearly 76,000 Afghans who have worked with American soldiers since 2001 as translators, interpreters and partners. Those people arrived in the US on military planes after the withdrawal and the government granted the refugees a temporary parole status as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the country’s largest resettlement effort in decades, with the promise of a path in a life of. US for their service.
Congress has begun a bipartisan effort to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would prevent Afghans from being stranded without legal residency status when their two-year humanitarian parole expires in August. The proposal would have enabled qualified Afghans to apply for US citizenship, as refugees have done in the past, including those from Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq.
But that effort stalled in the Senate late last year over opposition from Republicans.
“If we don’t put politics aside and pursue accountability and lessons learned to address this serious morale damage to our military community and right the wrongs inflicted on our most dangerous allies in Afghanistan, this big foreign policy will follow us home. And finally take us back to the graveyard of empires where it all began,” Mann, the retired green beret, told lawmakers.
Associated Press reporter Tara Copp contributed to this report.
