Secretary of State Antony Blinken has defied a Congressional subpoena and now the House is getting ready to hold him in contempt of Congress.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) wants to hear from Blinken to get answers about the botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021. After twenty years of fighting what politicians call the “war on terror” in the ground in that country, the Biden administration finally called off the conflict. But the operation was so badly managed that 13 military members were killed during the withdrawal, and the American pullback left the country in the hands of the extreme Islamist terror group the Taliban.
The HFAC subpoenaed Blinken to testify on September 24, but the Secretary treated it as an invitation that he regretfully declined. So the Committee voted 26-25 to hold him in contempt.
Committee chairman Michael McCaul said “I wish we were not here today,” speaking of the contempt vote. He said that Antony Blinken “brought this on himself.”
Blinken was more interested in attending meetings at the United Nations in New York this week, which is holding its annual General Assembly. In a letter to HFAC chairman McCaul last week, Blinken wrote that he was “disappointed” that the committee would not accept any of the alternate dates he had proposed. Blinken said he was doing his job to carry out President Biden’s “foreign policy objectives” by attending the UN meeting this week.
An unnamed spokesman for the State Department told media that the HFAC’s contempt vote was a “naked political exercise masquerading as an oversight.” The spokesman claimed the subpoena itself was just a ruse to ask Blinken questions “that have long ago been answered.”
Both the State Department and the Biden administration have been targeted for blame over the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is apparent to most observers that the operation was poorly planned, and it was not clear what the chain of command was supposed to be.
Indeed, the State Department itself wrote in a post-withdrawal report that Department staff were unsure who was the lead decision maker. The report also said that staff at the highest levels did not adequately contemplate “worst-case scenarios” nor did they have sufficient back-up plans if worse came to worst.
