The White House on Wednesday called a hearing by the House Oversight Committee on the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal “political stunts,” slamming Republicans for what it sees as a lack of support for aid to the country and its U.S. allies in the war.
Ian Sams, special assistant to the president and White House oversight spokesperson, sent a memo ahead of the hearing that outlines an expectation that Republicans on the committee would “distract from their own failures” on solutions to evacuate thousands of people from Afghanistan.
“Instead of supporting these successful efforts to evacuate Americans and give Afghan allies safe harbor, MAGA House Republicans are refusing to acknowledge their own history of opposing efforts to aid Afghan allies and are turning their backs on those who risked their lives alongside American servicemembers for two decades in Afghanistan by opposing and delaying legislation like the Afghan Adjustment Act, revealing that these hearings are nothing more than political stunts solely aimed at attacking the President,” Sams wrote.
The Afghan Adjustment Act aims to support Afghans who assisted the U.S. mission, provide adequate vetting for parolees from Afghanistan, create an adjustment of status for certain Afghan nationals, and give special immigrant status for at-risk Afghan allies and others.
The White House also expects the Republicans to say the Biden administration obstructed oversight and instead, it pointed to a document the Pentagon provided to Congress earlier this month that examines the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021. That memo placed a significant amount of blame on the Trump administration for not leaving the current White House plans to execute an evacuation.
House Republicans have pledged to use their new majority to scrutinize the withdrawal, including the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate near the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans. The White House also released an unclassified outline that defended the decisions around the withdrawal and said that President Biden took the advice of military commanders, while largely blaming the lack of preparations under the Trump administration.
The memo on Wednesday also highlights attacks of Afghan allies and provides quotes from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) calling Afghan refugees “known terrorists” and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) saying Afghan refugees “do not belong in our country.”
It also outlines that the Biden administration restarted SIV interviews and increased resources, surging resources and staff “by nearly 8-fold between January and July 2021” to allow for the U.S. to welcome approximately 100,000 Afghans.
If Republicans “really care about America’s ongoing commitments on Afghanistan, instead of staging political stunts aimed at attacking President Biden, House Republicans should do their job and take action on these important ongoing priorities,” Sams said.