Last Sunday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Republican chair, Michael McCaul of Texas, released a 350-page report that places Vice President Kamala Harris tooting the last whistle in the Oval Office engine room, authorizing what became a slow-motion 2021 train wreck that surrendered Afghanistan control to the Taliban and left 13 American service members dead in vain hopes of politically timely 9/11 20th anniversary symbolism.
On Aug. 29, Harris had proudly answered "yes" when asked by CNN anchor Dana Bash whether she was "the last person in the room" prior to President Joe Biden's deadly and costly troop withdrawal decision.
Titled "Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration's Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed," the document caps a three-year investigation handicapped by repeated clashes with senior Biden officials over access to documents.
The conclusions stress that the "Biden-Harris administration prioritized the optics of the withdrawal over the security of U.S. personnel on the ground" and "misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal."
The report reveals the portrait of a commander in chief "determined to withdraw," despite warnings by a litany of military advisers that the Afghan government would collapse if the U.S. prematurely removed the small complement of 2,500 troops in country.
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who ran U.S. Central Command at the time, told the committee that "he was unequivocal in his advice to the president."
According to the report, national security adviser Jake Sullivan holds much blame. After conducting a review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Sullivan allowed Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to attend merely "a single NSC [National Security Council] deputies meeting."
The withdrawal decision followed an urgent July 13, 2021 "confidential dissent channel" State Department memo signed by 23 U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul warning that the country would rapidly collapse to Taliban control if the administration held to an arbitrarily revised Aug. 31 troop Biden withdrawal deadline for an intended but not-to-be Sept. 9 victory photo-op.
The hasty retreat also failed to properly plan for the evacuation of Americans, whereby the committee "uncovered that the size of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul instead grew during the retrograde," owing to "a dogmatic insistence" on keeping a diplomatic footprint.
As a chaotic consequence, "a significant amount of classified information was left to the Taliban" in the eventual rush to leave as U.S. personnel frantically scrambled to destroy documents in a bonfire in the embassy courtyard.
Since Biden's refusal to maintain 2,500 troops required abandonment of the highly strategic U.S. Bagram Air Base with its secure runway, this left Kabul's civilian airport as the only remaining evacuation option with security dependence on the Taliban.
Desperate panic and pandemonium ensued, with "at least four Afghan civilians, including children," falling to their deaths from wings of departing U.S. planes.
As observed by Politico, "Republicans and Democrats have traded blame for the 20-year war's calamitous end that saw the Taliban take control of the country."
Democrats argue that while the Biden-Harris administration did execute the withdrawal, it was former President Donald Trump who cut a Doha, Qatar, peace deal with the Taliban in 2020 that included the release of thousands of prisoners and a fixed date for a U.S. exit.
Nevertheless, the Taliban had been violating the agreement, and there was no basis for humiliatingly backing down, caving in, and hightailing it out with troops, leaving defenseless civilians to fend for themselves.
The House report states that the Taliban still hold seven Americans, while "the fate of Afghan women is horrific."
Meanwhile, Afghanistan has once again become a haven for the jihadists of ISIS-K and al- Qaida, Islamic State group attacks on Moscow and Iran may be preludes to an attack on U.S. targets, and the Biden administration "has not conducted a single strike against ISIS-K since 2021."
As noted by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Afghan withdrawal marked the end of credible American deterrence during the Biden presidency.
The board wrote: "You can draw a straight line from the withdrawal to Vladimir Putin's decision to roll into Ukraine, or why the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen aren't afraid to fire missiles at commercial ships in the Red Sea."
Since Vice President Harris was admittedly the last person in the room encouraging Joe to abandon Afghanistan along with many billions of dollars of advanced weaponry to the Taliban, would you really trust her to replace Joe as ultimate commander in chief strategist and decision maker behind the Oval Office desk?
It's ultimately up to we citizen voters to take charge in picking the best of two presumptive candidates for that highest office in less than two months.
Choose carefully as if your future — our children's future — depends on it ... because it does.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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