[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6609-S6610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, I am going to do something 
that is a little bit unusual. I will start off by saying thank you. We 
have got a lot of people to thank. Yet we never seem to do that.
  When we look at what happened in Afghanistan over the past 20 years--
I can't approximate how many times I was over there--that was tough 
duty for those guys and the gals there; it was not easy. This is not 
the place you want to go take a vacation--and to their families. Then, 
of course, on August 26, we were reminded so painfully of what we ask 
our troops and their families to do. They lay it all on the line for 
this country. Our servicemembers represent the very best of us. Over 
the past 20 years, they did everything that they could in Afghanistan 
to root out evil and to champion American values. I couldn't be more 
grateful to or have more respect for them than I have today.
  I say this not only because we should say it more often but because 
it is important to remember that what we saw in Afghanistan over the 
past few months was not a failure of our military; it was a failure of 
the Commander in Chief--the President of the United States--and the 
people who advised him on his policy in Afghanistan.
  I still don't know who those people are, and, you know, I have 
chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee and other committees. 
People ask me, when I go back to my State of Oklahoma--they will say: 
Hey, who is advising the President to do all these things? I have to 
tell them I don't know, and I have been around for a long time. I don't 
remember any administration where I just honestly didn't know who was 
making the decisions and who was advising--in this case, advising the 
President.
  But what we did witness, though, was a failure of the Commander in 
Chief and whoever was advising him. No one can look at what happened 
over the past few months and claim that it was a success like President 
Biden did. It was a disaster. Leaving Americans behind, and allies--
don't forget our allies who are still left behind. It was un-American.
  The administration keeps saying: ``We didn't inherit a plan.'' That 
is false. They inherited a condition-based agreement and made their own 
policy decisions. It was condition-based; it wasn't open-ended. It was 
something that was out there, and they had the reins.
  Let's keep in mind, this administration has a majority in the House 
and the Senate and the White House, and they make their own decisions. 
And they say: We didn't have a plan. They had a plan, and we had a 
plan, but everything we did and the previous administration did was 
condition-based.
  So according to the condition-based approach, President Trump agreed 
to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan if and only if the Taliban 
acted against al-Qaida. Now, that is one of the things. There were many 
other conditions, and one condition was to leave some of our troops 
there, not just to walk away, to vacate. And those conditions were in 
line when this administration came in, and that didn't happen. 
President Biden knows it. Secretary Blinken admitted it.
  When President Biden announced his decision to withdraw back in 
April, a senior administration official told the Washington Post: ``The 
President has judged that a condition-based approach is a recipe for 
staying in Afghanistan forever.'' That is a quote.
  Just last week, in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 
when asked if the Taliban had severed its relationship with al-Qaida, 
Secretary Blinken said the relationship has not been severed.
  Let's keep that in mind. We keep hearing that, yes, they are taking 
action against that administration, but the relationship has not been 
severed.
  Now President Biden says that he will hold the Taliban accountable, 
but he didn't hold the Taliban accountable while our troops were still 
in Afghanistan. I mean, that is when we had the leverage to do it, but 
we didn't do it, and he has presented no plan for holding the 
terrorists accountable now.
  This decision--this rushed withdrawal that has left the Taliban 
stronger than it was in 9/11 was President Biden's alone. He is 
responsible for the chaos that followed. He is going to be held 
accountable and should--everyone who advised him to make such a 
horrible decision.
  Now, what is more outrageous to me is that President Biden left 
Americans behind. That is not something we do. He said that we were 
going to get everyone out, and that didn't happen.
  You know, when historians look back at this--this may be decades from 
now, centuries from now--this is what they will remember: The Biden 
administration knowingly left Americans behind.
  The administration has tried to downplay this. Early in the 
evacuation, Secretary of State Blinken said that there were perhaps 
10,000 or 15,000 American citizens in Afghanistan. Our men and women in 
uniform, working tirelessly and effectively with our diplomats under 
incredibly difficult circumstances, managed to evacuate about 6,000 of 
our citizens. Now, according to my math, that means that between 4,000 
and 9,000 Americans were left behind. Secretary Blinken says that there 
were only 100 and that the rest of them preferred to stay in 
Afghanistan.
  By the way, some legitimately did prefer to stay in Afghanistan 
because they were married people, they had families, and they made it 
very clear that--when something like this normally happens, families 
are moved as a family unit. Not there. That is not what happened.
  So that is more than bad math; it is a lie. We know and every 
congressional office that tried to get people out of Afghanistan 
knows--and I know this because our Senate office was very busy at that 
time helping people to get out--that there were many U.S. citizens who 
wanted to leave Afghanistan, but they couldn't leave because the 
Taliban would not let their families go with them. Well, that is 
exactly what I would expect from the terrorists who were there at that 
time.
  So Secretary Blinken wants you to think that these people made a 
choice. He wants to hide the fact that the administration in which he 
serves created its own hostage crisis and gave the Taliban the upper 
hand.
  Keep in mind when we talk about this, it is the Taliban. They were 
the terrorists.
  He also wants you to think it was the fault of those families they 
didn't get out before August, repeating that they had been telling 
Americans to leave for months. There is a kernel of truth to that, but 
it is clouded by the fact that they repeatedly stated that it would be 
a year, probably more, before Kabul was at risk of falling to the 
Taliban. Instead of 36 months, the fall of Kabul only took 36 hours.
  In addition to American citizens, President Biden left behind our 
Afghan partners who risked everything to support our shared security 
goals. I was out there many times in the past, talking about that very 
thing, about the problems they had and the dangers they were in.
  Now, these are not our American citizens; they were some of our 
allies who were left over there. In addition to American citizens, 
President Biden left behind our Afghan partners who risked everything 
to support our shared security goals. As a result of the President's 
decision, Afghan women and children have been thrown back to the stone 
age. We all know that. We know what they are doing right now. We don't 
have to guess.

  Our allies and partners around the world are questioning our 
credibility, our leadership, and our commitment. These are our allies. 
They are not used to having the rug pulled out from under them. This is 
the first time.
  Our enemies are bolstered by President Biden's policy, which puts 
Taliban terrorists in charge of Afghanistan--a policy that spread the 
perception that we not only abandoned our allies and partners, but we 
also abandoned our own citizens.
  Seeing all these failures, Americans are demanding accountability, 
and they deserve it.

[[Page S6610]]

  But let's make this crystal clear: None of this is the fault of our 
military. Our military leaders, the ones with real experience on the 
ground, advised the same thing that I did, and that is, leave a small 
force in Afghanistan. Now, this would have supported the Afghan 
military, prevented the Taliban's takeover, kept the pressure on the 
terrorists, reassured our regional partners, and kept our homeland 
safe.
  President Biden pretends that none of this was possible. He claims 
that he had two options: a massive deployment or zero troops, which is 
not true. In fact, I publicly supported a third option: maintain a 
small force to preserve our air power. We can't do the air power 
without some troops on the ground. We needed to have some troops on the 
ground--we did--counterterrorism operations and military options.
  Many of us here supported a small, tailored deployment to protect our 
core interests, and so did his own military advisers. Yet, when he was 
asked, ``Did your top military advisers warn against withdrawing on 
this timeline? Did they ask you to keep 2,500 troops?'' President Biden 
said, ``No, they didn't. That wasn't true.''
  But it was true. We talked to the--in fact, you are going to find 
something out this coming Tuesday when we have a hearing. We are going 
to have many of the principals whom we really haven't heard from, 
principals who were involved in advising the administration as to what 
the military wanted and didn't want.
  Except it was. We know that now. The former commander of U.S. Forces-
Afghanistan, General Miller, told the Senate Armed Services Committee 
just this last week--this is our committee, the committee I chaired for 
some period of time--he said no. Now, he didn't tell President Biden 
directly because President Biden didn't even bother calling his top 
commander on the ground before making his decision, but General Miller 
did report it to the chain of command.
  Now, we are talking about General Miller. At that time, he was the 
top commander on the ground. So the President didn't even consult him 
as to whether or not we should--he made it very clear he advised him 
not to go, not to close everything up.
  He also tried to say that al-Qaida is ``gone'' from Afghanistan and 
that ``terrorism is not emanating from that part of the world.'' Well, 
we know that is not true. General McKenzie said al-Qaida remains the 
main focus in the region.
  Last week, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency--that is 
LTG Scott Berrier--said that the projected timeline for al-Qaida to 
have the capability to threaten our homeland is 1 to 2 years at most, 
if not sooner, and that is it.
  So President Biden was not telling the truth in that area about 
having only two choices. He didn't tell the truth about getting 
American families out of Afghanistan. He failed to tell the truth about 
the advice that he got from his military commanders, saying that his 
military commanders did not advise him. We know better than that, and 
if you don't know it, stick around for next Tuesday, and you will find 
out. He didn't tell the truth about al-Qaida not being a threat.
  So I have to wonder, if he is not telling the truth about this, what 
else is he not telling the truth about? If we can't trust the President 
on this, if we can't trust him to tell the truth and we can't trust him 
to put together a good strategy in Afghanistan, how can we trust him to 
protect the Nation from our strategic competitors?
  After watching President Biden stumble badly in Afghanistan, I am 
worried that he won't pursue a strong strategy to push back on China, 
and China is our top threat right now. We all know that. We don't like 
to talk about it, but it is true.
  As former Secretary Gates famously wrote in his memoir, President 
Biden has ``been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and 
national security issue over the past four decades.'' That was 
Secretary Gates, former Secretary of Defense.
  I am also worried about the administration desperately trying again 
to return to the Obama administration's failed Iran deal and offering 
Iran massive sanctions relief, sanctions that were put on in the 
previous administration to get their--of course, we know Iran would 
just use the sanctions relief to ramp up terrorism.
  You know, I don't know how the American people--maybe it is the 
people in Oklahoma. They are the ones I have talked to more than any 
other groups. You know, what else would they do? What would Iran, with 
their background, do with sanction relief or with funds? They would use 
it on terrorism. That brings us back to Afghanistan, which is only one 
of many, many examples in the Middle East and North Africa where the 
administration has no plan for countering terrorists and keeping us 
safe.

  President Biden and his administration have broadly talked about a 
new over-the-horizon strategy to counterterrorism. ``Over the horizon'' 
means that we don't have boots on the ground. We send airplanes in from 
afar--something our military leaders have told us is way more difficult 
than most people believe, far more expensive, and almost impossible 
without partners on the ground.
  We can't do it. You can't just lead with military airpower. Even if 
it is possible, experts are telling us it won't be effective. We 
haven't even seen a plan for how this will be enough to keep American 
families safe.
  This is a failure of leadership. Along the way, President Biden has 
tried to blame everyone else--the Afghan Security Forces, the Afghan 
Government, and the previous administration. But the blame lands 
squarely on him, and he owns this.
  We should expect his failures in Afghanistan to bleed into other 
issues. China and Russia see a weak America now. Terrorists see safe 
havens and use Afghanistan as a rallying cry.
  I still have a lot more questions and expect President Biden and his 
administration to have more answers. Thirteen brave Americans died in 
the chaos created by President Biden's policies. We need explanations 
and we need accountability.
  We are going to hear from Secretary Austin, General Milley, and 
General McKenzie next week. This is going to be on Tuesday. I have 
reminded people of that for a long time because we need to have a clear 
understanding, and we will get that understanding. We are going to 
start to understand this--just what went wrong, who is to blame, and 
what we need to do to protect ourselves. This is going to be an open 
meeting. This is not a classified meeting. This is an open meeting that 
is going to take place this coming Tuesday. We are going to be doing 
this as transparently and openly as possible because the American 
people deserve the truth. Our servicemembers and their families who 
sacrificed so much over the last 20 years deserve that, too, and we are 
going to give them the truth. That is going to happen next week.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.