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US Lawmakers to Probe Biden over Failed Afghan Policy

US Lawmakers to Probe Biden over Failed Afghan Policy
folder_openUnited States access_time2 years ago
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By Staff, Agencies

US lawmakers are seeking to investigate the administration of President Joe Biden over the ongoing ill-prepared withdrawal from Afghanistan that has brought about immense chaos and confusion to the country after two decades of occupation.

Congress members, including many of Biden's fellow Democrats, issued a statement Tuesday, promising to probe what went wrong in the war-torn country.

This comes after the Taliban took over the capital Kabul on Sunday and declared the war in Afghanistan was over. The militants entered the presidential palace after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, saying he wanted to “prevent a flood of bloodshed.”

“The events of recent days have been the culmination of a series of mistakes made by Republican and Democratic administrations over the past 20 years,” said Senator Bob Menendez, Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He further stated: “We are now witnessing the horrifying result of many years of policy and intelligence failures.”

Menendez said his committee was planning to hold a hearing on US policy toward Afghanistan, including negotiations held between the administration of former Republican president Donald Trump and the Taliban as well as the Biden's administration's execution of the troops withdrawal.

Meanwhile, Committee Republicans said they wanted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to testify, “to understand why the State Department was so ill prepared for the contingencies unfolding before us,” according to a letter sent to Menendez.

“Updates from the State Department have been inconsistent, lacked important detail, and not be responsive to Members and the American people,” the Republicans wrote.

The date of the hearing is yet to be announced.

On Monday, Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic Intelligence Committee chairman, said he wanted to work with other committees “to ask tough but necessary questions” about why the US was unprepared for the collapse of the Afghan government.

Republicans went on to harshly criticize Biden's policies. “The security and humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Afghanistan could have been avoided if you had done any planning,” Republicans on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee wrote in a letter to the White House on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a new poll shows Biden's approval rating fell by 7 percentage points and hit its lowest level so far as the Afghan government collapsed.

Just over 45 percent of American adults approved of Biden's performance in office which is the lowest recorded in weekly polls that began when he took office in January, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Monday.

It is also down from the 53% who had the same view in a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll that ran on Friday.

Republican Congressman Steve Scalise has said the likely fall of Kabul to the Taliban is US President Joe Biden’s “Saigon moment,” calling it an “an epic failure on President Biden

In a separate Ipsos snap poll carried out on Monday, fewer than half of Americans approved of the way Biden has steered the US military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan this year.

Biden was rated worse than the other three presidents who presided over the US’ longest war.

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