Combat veteran Sen. Joni Ernst slammed the White House for calling an explosive Republican-led hearing on Afghanistan withdrawal a “political spectacle” while blaming President Joe Biden for the mistakes which led to the death of 13 soldiers.
Now-retired military generals Mark Milley and Kenneth McKenzie gave a scathing assessment of the deadly sorties during a hearing Tuesday, revealing that Biden ignored their advice and that his evacuation orders came “too late,” blocking allies as the Taliban took power in 2021.
The White House attempted to dismiss the severity of the hearing, saying it was “shameless of the Republican Party to use Afghanistan for politics.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams posted on X that Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee were only trying to “distract attention from their own current failures” by holding the hearing.
Ernst, who served in the military for more than 23 years, told DailyMail.com it was “not a political show.” This is something that should have been done a long time ago.
Ernst said yesterday’s hearing demonstrated “the willy-nilly attitude that President Joe Biden has taken in withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan.”
A U.S. Marine grabbed a baby over a barbed wire fence during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 19, 2021.
Milley told lawmakers the withdrawal was “personal to me” and offered his condolences to the Gold Star families present in person.
McKenzie agreed, saying he too believed the events of August 2021 were the result of late decisions that were the responsibility of the State Department.
She said yesterday’s hearing demonstrated President Joe Biden’s “willy-nilly attitude in withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan.”
“Not only did he endanger the lives of the Afghans we had worked with, but our allies were completely caught off guard when we withdrew, as were our American troops,” she told DailyMail.com during an interview at the Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation. Top of the base.
She said there was an immediate need for empowerment of Gold Star families seeking peace.
One of the soldiers killed at Abbey Gate in August 2021 was from southwest Iowa, the senator added, and she knew his mother “very well.”
“Unfortunately, we have seen two decades of attempts to secure and stabilize this region fail because President Joe Biden was unwilling to listen to his military advisors.”
Ernst also spoke to the Reagan Institute, giving Congress an “F-” grade in its annual defense modernization report due to a “lack of action” that is “limiting progress on major initiatives.”
In particular, the lack of a budget for fiscal year 2024 has resulted in “significant development delays for priority programs.”
The Republican senator pushed back against the failing grade, while admitting that Congress is “doing a poor job of allocating money to the right projects at the right time.
Ernst said much of the blame should be placed on the Biden administration for issuing budgets that “largely fund” the innovations needed for defense spending.
“The administration is focusing much more heavily on climate ideology and other types of domestic agendas that do not keep our nation safe.” she added.
Ernst told DailyMail.com that the United States needs to “invest much more” in public and private innovation in order to “stay ahead of the power curve when it comes to emerging technologies.”
In his opening remarks before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Milley told lawmakers the withdrawal was “personal to me” and offered his condolences to the Gold Star families present in person.
He and McKenzie placed the State Department at the center of the communications breakdown that led to the tragic deaths of 13 soldiers and the abandonment of hundreds of Americans and key Afghan partners when the Taliban took power.
“On August 14 (2021), the decision for the noncombatant evacuation operation was made by the Department of State and the U.S. military was alerted, mobilized, and rapidly deployed faster than any army in the world would never do it,” Milley said.
“I think this decision came too late.”
He added that his analysis was that an “accelerated withdrawal” would likely lead to “the general collapse of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government” and a complete takeover by the Taliban.
However, when expressing this to Biden, Milley said the president ignored his advice to keep a few hundred troops on the ground.
McKenzie agreed, saying he too believed the events of August 2021 were the result of late decisions that were the responsibility of the State Department.
“I remain of the view that if there is culpability in this attack, it lies in the political decisions that created the environment.”
‘VSthe guilt and responsibility does not lie with the troops on the ground,” he added.
Afghans sit aboard a U.S. military plane to leave Afghanistan, at the Kabul military airport, August 19, 2021, after the Taliban military takeover of Afghanistan.
British citizens and dual nationals board a military plane at Kabul airport, Afghanistan.
A suicide attack during the withdrawal cost the lives of 13 American soldiers.
Conversations between Biden administration officials and generals about when and how to evacuate continued for months before the August withdrawal.
Milley said that if he could have made the decision again, he would have started the evacuation more than a month before the withdrawal was ordered.
“I would have had the embassy and the State Department come in with the military by mid-July,” he said. “If there was an overhaul, this would be it.”