Congress Must Force Secretary of State Antony Blinken To Answer for Devastating Afghanistan Failures, Leaving 10% of Americans Behind

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will appear in front of the full Committee, chaired by Greg Meeks (NY-5), on Monday, September 13th.

With the Afghanistan crisis still unfolding, the Committee Members should not let the Secretary of State off easy.  Blinken should be required to answer why he and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman stayed silent while President Biden pulled the 2,500 U.S. troops and 5,000 NATO troops from a war-torn country about to be taken over by the Taliban terrorist group before evacuating State Department employees.

The Committee should require Blinken and Sherman to answer why they allowed their employees to be stranded in a hostile zone. It’s hard to comprehend how a Cabinet Secretary could sit in the Cabinet meetings without demanding that the U.S. Embassy be evacuated before the closing of Bagram Air Base.

Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), members of the intelligence community, Pentagon officials, and commanders in the field had been warning National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that the Taliban were on the march.  No one in the Biden Administration should be surprised that city by city, the entire country was eventually taken over by the terrorist group.  There were many warnings.

President Trump handed Joe Biden a stable Afghanistan and a functioning U.S. Embassy in Kabul.  And within weeks, the Taliban began its march.  The fact is that under Donald Trump, the Taliban was afraid to make a move; but under Joe Biden, it took over the whole country without consequences.  Joe Biden’s weakness proves there’s a difference between a threat of military action and a credible threat of military action.

The Biden Administration is trying to turn the page on the Afghanistan debacle and the House Foreign Affairs Committee should not let them. The crisis is not over.

The massive arsenal and military equipment left behind have already been reported to have arrived in Iran.  The weaponry left in the hands of the Taliban means the terrorist group is equipped at NATO-member levels. This Biden debacle will come back to haunt us because the Taliban and its allies will be able to kill Americans and our allies with U.S.-taxpayer-funded arms.

And the atrocious vetting we have seen unfolding means we may already have welcomed terrorists, jihadist radicals, and human traffickers into the United States.

Antony Blinken and Wendy Sherman should face tough questioning next week because to date, they have refused to admit their mistakes and give us a plan to ensure this debacle will never happen again. I have lost confidence in their ability to lead Americans at the Department of State and will continue to call for them to resign in disgrace. After all, Blinken and Sherman left 10% of the Americans behind and serve a President who was proud of getting only 90% of the Americans out.

The ACLJ has already taken action to demand the truth from this Administration, submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding President Biden’s failures on Afghanistan. We will not back down. The American people deserve the truth.