Testimonies during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday revealed that not only did President Biden ignore warnings from military leaders about his hasty decision to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, but he also made the life-changing decision to ignore their recommendation not to evacuate from the Kabul airport, but go to the more secure Bagram Air Base instead, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Senior military leader, Command Sergeant Major Jacob Smith, asserted that the Bagram Air Base had the capability to withstand an attack during evacuation with a “completely secured airfield that would require a massive military offensive to overrun or breach.” Evacuation at Bagram would have also allowed for the U.S. to “destroy sensitive equipment on an industrial scale in a short time.”
The Kabul airport, on the other hand, was not completely controlled by U.S. forces, and being in a city surrounded by 4.4 million residents, it posed significant security risks. With Biden’s disregard for the advice of military experts, he made the irresponsible decision to use the Kabul airport which killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and left $7.2. billion in sensitive military equipment that was seized by the Taliban.
Retired Col. Seth Krummrich, former chief of staff for special operations at U.S. Central Command, shared in his testimony that with President Biden, “Prudence and patience were replaced with speed of action without the time to study the consequences and mitigate those risks.”
Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the foreign affairs committee’s chairman, affirmed Krummrich’s assertion by suggesting that the Biden administration never even had a developed evacuation plan.
The failure of the Afghanistan withdrawal suggest that there is “nobody in charge'” said Retired Col. Christopher Kolenda; a scary thought as rogue nations test their limits and U.S. soldiers overseas are under the command of a weak and ignorant Commander in Chief.