A White House official was asked about a group of veterans who were critical of the Biden administration’s mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and said there was no point in responding to a “handful of vets.”
White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby accidentally hit reply all to a Fox News inquiry when he apparently meant to reply to White House staffers. In his response, Kirby diminished the concerns of veterans on the anniversary of 9/11.
“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” Kirby said in his response.
Fox News said it had reached out to the White House on Wednesday afternoon with comments from four veterans, including Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who were unhappy with Kirby’s press conference on Monday. Fox included quotes from four veterans who said Kirby was “deflecting” from the Biden administration’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“The bottom line is that the Biden-Harris administration chose politics over strategy, and Kirby, who I wouldn’t trust to guard my grocery list, is now trying to cover for them,” Mills said in one of the quotes.
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The situation began when the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), released a report that disputed the Biden administration’s long-held claim that the withdrawal was former President Donald Trump’s fault and that President Joe Biden was bound by an agreement Trump made with Afghanistan. Trump’s agreement established a deadline in 2021 but included conditions for withdrawal.
The report from McCaul found that State Department officials had no plan to help Americans and Afghan allies get out of the country while American troops were still there to protect them, Fox News reported. The report also determined that the Biden administration didn’t adequately respond to terror threats ahead of the withdrawal, leading to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians. The botched withdrawal also left the Taliban with upwards of $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons and equipment and $57 million that had been given to the Afghan government before the Taliban took over.
In April 2021, Biden announced that he would fully withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan before September 11, which precluded him from determining if conditions on the ground warranted the withdrawal.
After McCaul had released his report, Kirby attended a White House briefing to dismiss its findings and defend Biden by blaming Trump for the disaster that had happened under Biden’s watch.
“President Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office: Abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,” Kirby said at the press briefing. “He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into summer, and we, as a nation, are safer for it.”