The theme of this article will be “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” It won’t take long for you to understand what I mean by that.
Despite what the Biden administration would have us believe, the evacuation in Afghanistan is not going well. Yes, thousands of people are finally being transported out of the region after the initial SNAFU that occurred when the Taliban retook the country. But the president’s poor planning and failure to listen to advice from the intelligence community has placed American civilians and Afghan allies in grave danger.
President Joe Biden seems to think that touting the fact that evacuations are running more smoothly than they were a week ago will assure the American public that perhaps he didn’t completely foul up the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. But as I pointed out previously, the actual effects of the White House’s handling of the matter won’t be seen until after the August 31 deadline for removing troops has passed. The fate of Americans and Afghan allies who may be left behind will show the world how well the end of the Afghanistan war was handled.
As it stands today, the Biden administration is going to be facing scrutiny from Congress over the facilitation of the evacuation efforts. The Washington Examiner noted that “multiple hearings and briefings are on the schedule after lawmakers demanded an explanation for the unfolding crisis.”
Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans are still stranded in Afghanistan as of Thursday. Thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. military remain in the region despite being promised they would be protected from the Taliban.
During an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said there would be “plenty of inquiries.” He continued:
We need to find out how this happened and monitor and keep the pressure on. This job is not over, and this withdrawal is not complete until all the Americans are safely out.
Democrats in Congress are planning to hold hearings on the withdrawal and have requested that the White House provide briefings on the matter. The witnesses who will be called include Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
With the Biden administration facing criticism from both the left and the right, these hearings will likely get contentious. Perhaps lawmakers will be able to get some answers on how this situation was so screwed up from the beginning.
But it can’t stop there.
Several high-profile Democratic lawmakers – including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) – have defended the president’s handling of the evacuation effort. This means that these hearings will likely be the only light that is shed on this disaster – at least until Republicans retake one or both chambers of Congress.
If and when the GOP takes control of the legislature, they must give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine. Right now, the Democrats are still milking the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building for all it is worth. They are in the middle of a probe conducted by a blatantly partisan House select committee ostensibly to get to the bottom of how the assault on the Capitol building began.
In reality, the proceedings are nothing more than a propaganda apparatus by which the left seeks to smear the right. The Democrats and their close friends and allies in the activist media are hoping the lawmakers involved can find – or even manufacture – something that will cast former President Donald Trump and Republicans in a negative light. With the FBI’s recent announcement that it did not find evidence that the riot was pre-planned, it seems unlikely that the Democratic select committee will uncover anything of significance – but as we know, that’s never stopped them before right?
It seems appropriate, then, that Republicans would launch investigations into the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Indeed, the fact that the U.S. just lost 13 soldiers from suicide bombings near the Kabul airport presents even more reason for a similar type of probe. The Democrats – many of whom are defending the president’s handling of the evacuation efforts – are not going to push for answers in any meaningful way and might even prevent Republicans from trying to discover how the decisions were made leading up to this debacle.
The American people deserve to know what happened here. They deserve to know why the end of the war in Afghanistan has devolved into an utter disaster. And yes, they need to be reminded that it was Democrats who fouled this whole operation up in the first place. If Democrats can put on a sham of an investigation into the Capitol riot, then they won’t have much ground to stand on when they complain about Republicans investigating a situation that caused the unnecessary deaths of 13 service members. Republican lawmakers would do well to go on the offensive when they finally have the power to do so.
