Dear John,
Since 2019, I, along with other members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) have expressed concerns regarding a quick withdraw from Afghanistan and negotiations with the Taliban, especially since the Afghanistan government was not a party to these negotiations. In 2020, a bipartisan group of HASC Members, including myself, decided that legislative guardrails had to be put in place to help prevent the disastrous events we are now watching unfold.
During last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) markup, I supported and voted for an amendment offered by Democratic Congressman and fellow veteran Rep. Jason Crow’s (CO-06) placing limits on how far the withdraw could proceed subject to the Administration providing additional certifications and consultations with Congress. (RollCall Vote) The amendment passed and ultimately was incorporated as Section 1215 of the FY21 NDAA. This provision was later cited by President Trump as a basis of his decision to veto the FY21 defense bill, an action that Congress later overrode by a wide bi-partisan margin.
We were so concerned about the path being taken to withdraw our troops that we wrote and passed a law to limit the actions of the Executive Branch. This provision received broad bi-partisan support both in committee and in conference. The narrative that members
did nothing’ or were silent about Trump’s policy is complete nonsense. What I actually did was THE MOST any member of Congress can do which is to pass a LAW to limit executive branch actions.
Section 1215 prohibited the use of funds to withdraw forces below certain levels until the Administration, either Trump or Biden, could certify the following:
- An assessment that the withdrawal will not impede our counterterrorism mission against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and associated forces, or endanger our national security.
- An assessment of the risk the withdrawal poses to United States personnel in Afghanistan.
- An assessment of the risk that Afghanistan will again become a terrorist safe haven following U.S. withdrawal.
- An assessment of the threat posed by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations in
- Afghanistan to U.S. national security interests and to those of U.S. partners and allies.
- An assessment of the effects the withdrawal will have on the NATO-led training mission and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ ability to effectively defend against terrorist attacks and sustain their operations.
In June 2021, I joined several members of HASC to send a letter to Secretary of Defense Austin following-up on each of the elements of Section 1215 and clarifying Congressional intent and expectations (attached). Several weeks later, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy responded with a letter (attached) stating that the Administration had elected to “waive” the certification and reporting requirements under Section 1215 on “national security” grounds and was proceeding with the drawdown as announced without providing the required Congressional certifications.
The text of the letter is damning in view of all that has transpired over the past month.
Bottom Line – Congress did everything it could on a bi-partisan basis to prevent this fiasco, but the Biden Administration made the deliberate determination to ignore this consultation because it believed it knew better.
Aside from the multiple layers of the human tragedy we are witnessing, both for our Afghan partners and our own service members and Gold Star families, there is no longer any Government of Afghanistan, our embassy has been evacuated and will soon be ransacked or worse and, most tragic of all, we have lost out counter-terrorism capability in Afghanistan which was the entire reason we fought this war in the first place.
The tragic irony is that days before the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban is once again in complete control of Afghanistan, thousands of Americans are now trapped inside the country, Al Qaida operatives roam free, and both are better armed than before.
The long-term implications of the staggering incompetence of the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan are difficult to fully comprehend. As the Commander in Chief, President Biden owns this disaster and must be held fully accountable for the catastrophic damage he has inflicted on our national security.
God Bless,
