Veterans Look to House GOP Majority to Get Answers on Afghanistan Withdrawal

S ince the Biden administration withdrew troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, our nation has been searching for answers. Americans are still asking how it came to pass that, after expending 20 years of blood and treasure on the conflict, we abandoned the country to the Taliban.

Those with perhaps the greatest stake in determining what went wrong in Afghanistan are the veterans who served there. Cole Lyle, a former Marine and the executive director of Mission Roll Call, a leading veterans’ advocacy group, said that this is why his organization supports House Republicans’ efforts to investigate the Biden administration’s reckless Afghanistan withdrawal.

“The timing of the withdrawal and how it was handled was a betrayal,” Lyle told National Review. “It was a betrayal of the military personnel who served in Afghanistan. It was a betrayal of our allies. It was a betrayal of the women and religious minorities whose lives we worked to improve. And it was a betrayal of the Afghans who were helping us on the ground. We have to get to the bottom of what went wrong.”

Lyle said that this isn’t just his opinion but the consensus view among veterans. In a Mission Roll Call poll on the first anniversary of the pullout, 84 percent of veterans expressed dissatisfaction with how top leaders handled the withdrawal, and two-thirds of respondents said that the Afghanistan disengagement negatively affected how they viewed “America’s legacy in the Global War on Terror.”

This prevailing sentiment among veterans has created a credibility crisis for the civilian and military leadership responsible for managing the withdrawal. That’s why Lyle asserts that “we need transparency about who knew what and when. Certain decisions like closing the airfield at Bagram must be looked into.” Bagram Airbase was infamously looted by the local civilian population after the U.S. vacated it in the lead-up to the final withdrawal from the country, and Taliban forces eventually captured it after we left.

The abandonment of Bagram is one of the questions Representative Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says he is determined to get to the bottom of. “It is absurd and disgraceful that the Biden administration has repeatedly denied our longstanding oversight requests and continues to withhold information related to the withdrawal,” said McCaul in a statement. “In the event of continued noncompliance, the Committee will use the authorities available to it to enforce these requests as necessary, including through a compulsory process. . . . We owe this to the American people, especially our service members and veterans.”

Pronouncements like these are reason for some optimism, Lyle said, but he’s still waiting to see what the committee produces. “Accountability is harder when we’re past the point where protest, resignations or firings would have any force or effect on decision making.”

PHOTOS: Afghanistan Withdrawal

As for whether pursuing an investigation like this is worthwhile long after the withdrawal was completed and at a moment when there are many other pressing national-security priorities, including the war in Ukraine and the threat from China, Lyle believes it remains necessary and important work. “The United States Congress . . . is more than capable of confronting the pressing challenges at hand while also investigating what went wrong and why,” he said. “Failing to do so would be an affront to all those who served.”

Republicans will face plenty of resistance, as Democrats have shown little interest in reexamining the withdrawal. Last October, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) informed legislators on Capitol Hill that the Biden administration has been stonewalling its investigation into the disorderly military exit from the country. The president’s allies, such as Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), have maintained that there’s nothing to see here, with Murphy saying it’s an “unrealistic, fantastical belief that withdrawal, under the circumstances, could have been done in a way that didn’t involve some really tough negative outcomes.”

But Lyle criticized Democrats who claim that there’s nothing to investigate and that President Biden’s hands were tied at the time because the Trump administration inked the deal that precipitated the American withdrawal. “That’s a hollow excuse. President Biden could have changed course as soon as he became commander in chief, but he still went through with it.” Lyle didn’t spare Republicans from reproach either. He said that the GOP members of Congress who are reluctant to admit Afghans who helped us during the conflict “are eroding the trust and confidence allies and potential allies have in us.” Nevertheless, Lyle said he hopes efforts to probe the withdrawal remain bipartisan and are conducted with the utmost civility.

Thousands of servicemen and -women devoted years of their lives to the Afghanistan war; many of them gave their lives. The war may never have ended in a clear triumph, but instead of celebrating a hard-won, workable status quo, those veterans who fought and survived watched all that sacrifice culminate in one of the worst American foreign-policy disasters in modern times. They deserve a sense of finality. The new Congress has an opportunity to begin to right the wrongs of our botched withdrawal.