One year to the day after a suicide bomber killed almost 200 people outside Kabul’s airport, US Rep. Michael Waltz told a British outlet that he wants a congressional committee to investigate where things went wrong during the abrupt, much-criticized US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“I want a committee dedicated to it. Exactly where that committee will be housed is still under discussion,” the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness on the House Armed Services Committee explained to the Daily Mail.
“But it needs to have oversight–this is the part that I think is critical–it must have oversight of the Defense Department, the intelligence community, and the State Department.”
“I mean, that's obvious,” he continued. “And I think Democrats in Congress want it swept under the rug.”
“I mean, we've seen, what, one hearing…Armed Services Committee, and then one in Foreign Affairs…that was determined that it'd be classified, so it was closed,” Waltz said. “I think it's disgraceful and it's–it's unbecoming, and the families deserve better.”
“No officials have been fired. Not one. Nobody's relieved. Nobody's resigned. No one's taken accountability or responsibility. But I think the thing that really, you know that they feel like it's just a slap in the face is to have Biden standing before the world saying this was an outstanding success.”
Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was widely panned for the hasty departure and an apparent lack of foresight; following the US military’s abandonment of the country, the Taliban recovered over $7 billion in US military hardware. As the US departure came to a close, videos of their Afghan collaborators clinging to the wheel wells of departing planes went viral amid allegations that US service members prioritized pets over their Afghan partners.