How might the GOP's Afghanistan report impact the presidential race?

House Republicans released a report on Sept. 9 excoriating President Joe Biden and his administration for the United States' deadly 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, while congressional Democrats quickly came to the defense of the White House. Now, the debate has led some to wonder whether the GOP's report will affect the presidential race between the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The report, published by the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, claimed that the Biden-Harris administration "misled and, in some instances, directly lied to the American people at every stage of the withdrawal, from before the go-to-zero order until today." The report is "about getting to the bottom of what happened so we can make sure it never happens again," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chair of the committee, said in a statement.

The information in the report created a "predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal," said the committee's ranking member, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), in a memorandum. It was part of "Republicans' partisan attempts to garner headlines," said Meeks, further noting that the report went to "particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Trump" and his role in the Afghanistan withdrawal. The White House similarly released a statement denouncing the report. But could the partisan nature of the report play a role in November?

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

Republicans have "frequently criticized" Biden for how his administration "handled the evacuation," and the report's release came just a day before the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump, said Luke Garrett at NPR. Harris is "mentioned 28 times in the report's executive summary, while Trump's name is cited twice." However, despite criticism of Biden, Democrats have noted that it was Trump who "set the withdrawal in motion when his administration made a widely criticized deal with the Taliban in 2020," known as the Doha Agreement.

The release of the report "signaled a strategy that the GOP plans to keep the debate over how America ended its longest war at the top of voters' minds this fall," said Jesus Mesa at Newsweek. Trump and his allies have "tried to make the chaotic events of August 2021 stick" to Harris. Trump will argue that even if Harris was not "directly involved in the withdrawal decisions, leaving billions of dollars in equipment behind and losing soldiers' lives makes them unfit to lead as commander-in-chief," former New York state legislator and political analyst Joshua Lafazan said to Newsweek.

But the "good news for the Democratic nominee is that, at least so far, the issue ranks far behind other more pressing concerns around immigration and the economy," Mesa said. Tying Harris to Afghanistan "isn't as potent a line of attack as the GOP thinks it is," Republican strategist Alex Patton said to Newsweek. Beyond this, Trump's "push to capitalize politically on the withdrawal has also boomeranged on him," Robbie Gramer and Joe Gould said at Politico. The Harris campaign and others have "criticized Trump over reports that Trump's campaign staff got into a confrontation with an official at the Arlington National Cemetery." It remains an "open question whether the inquiry into decisions made under Biden's leadership will transfer into a political liability for Harris."

What next?

The GOP report also recommended several other points to avoid future incidents like Afghanistan. This includes a "focus on making future non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) successful, calling for Congress to put into place standard operating procedures for such a drawdown and requirements for the State Department and DOD to brief Congress on NEO plans when an embassy has been designated as a high threat post," said CNN.

But beyond Trump or Biden, the botched withdrawal was a result of "decades of mistakes," said Nick Schifrin at PBS News. Both "Iraq and early Pentagon decisions meant a lack of early U.S. investment in Afghanistan." Other factors that played a role include "counterterrorism rates that killed the very people that the U.S. was trying to protect," as well as "Obama's surge with an end date," Pakistan's "safe haven for the Taliban," and "Afghan corruption," said Schifrin. The full list of reasons for U.S. problems in Afghanistan is "very long."