House Foreign Affairs Chair Meeks: ‘You Can’t’ Just Examine Evacuation of Afghanistan, ‘You’ve Got to Look at the 20 Years’

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) responded to charges by the committee’s Ranking Member, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) that Democrats weren’t interested in investigating the withdrawal from Afghanistan by stating that “if you want to examine what took place on those 20 days…leading up to the evacuation of Afghanistan, you can’t.” And “you’ve got to look at the 20 years.”

Meeks said, “We had over 14 hearings and briefings from various individuals from the administration. In fact, right afterwards, Secretary of State Blinken, the first committee he testified before on what took place was our committee. We continued, and we still are. The fact of the matter is, though, if you want to examine what took place on those 20 days up to — leading up to the evacuation of Afghanistan, you can’t. That’s just — you’ve got to look at the 20 years. There are so many interconnecting factors therein that led to that final result. And so, what we said was, let’s look at all 20 years. Let’s look at what took place, what led up, and what we could do to make sure that this never happens again. There’s clearly — it was not perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, but we thought that it needed to — if we’re going to be serious about it, similar to what the [special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction] said, similar to a commission that was authorized by Congress, but we’re still waiting for a Republican co-chair to be added on, that we thought that we could do that in a comprehensive manner. … But for me, what they wanted to do was just a small focus without looking at the contributions and what took place by everybody that led up to the fall in Kabul.”

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