Biden Rebuked

If anyone deserves it, it is he.

At NYT, "In Washington, Recriminations Over Afghanistan Emerge Quickly":

WASHINGTON — A conference call between members of Congress and the Biden administration’s top diplomatic and military leaders on Afghanistan turned contentious on Sunday, as lawmakers pressed the administration on how intelligence could have failed so badly and how long the military would help hold the Kabul airport.

Lawmakers said the 45-minute call with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken; Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III; and Gen. Mark. A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; was not particularly revelatory.

“It was, I would say, a rote exercise in telling us what we had already learned from the media and social media,” said Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan and a former Army reservist who did conflict analysis in Afghanistan.

But the questioning was pointed and at times contentious, centering on which Afghans the United States would get out and how. Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, who was a State Department official in the Obama administration and a former leader of Human Rights Watch, pressed the top officials on how long the U.S. military would be able to keep the Kabul airport open to charter and commercial flights.

Lawmakers also asked whether the Afghans that Americans were trying to help leave would include more than those who worked for the embassy, interpreters for the military and others with special immigrant visas, or S.I.V.s. The briefers assured them that they would try to help a broader group, including human rights and women’s rights activists, journalists and students of the American University of Afghanistan.

“I want to make sure we don’t pick up and leave when all the Americans and S.I.V.s are out,” Mr. Malinowski said.

Democrats said they did emerge from the call convinced that the military would hold on to the airport for a while, even if the Taliban took full control of the government. But that is no guarantee that all Afghans who want to get out will be able to do so.

“It is overwhelmingly clear to me that this has been a cascade of failures at the Defense Department, with the intelligence community and within our political community,” Mr. Meijer said. “And nothing on the call gave me the confidence that even the magnitude of the failures has been comprehended.”

On the conference call, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, was recognized to ask a question, then began a blistering attack on the Biden administration, saying the collapse in Afghanistan would empower China and weaken the U.S. position in the world, according to people on the call.

He put out a statement afterward saying that during the call “I only heard excuses.”

“Amidst the ongoing chaos and ensuing instability at home and abroad, the only solution President Biden has offered is to play politics and baselessly blame his predecessor,” he said...

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