Blinken hearing: Republican shows photos of dead marines and accuses secretary of state of treason

The Biden administration has been preparing for an era dealing with the Taliban not as an insurgent group, but as a de facto government – and in a press conference last week, Mr Blinken expressed misgivings about what that government looks like so far, and specifically who is in it.

Watch his remarks below.

As we prepare to watch the Secretary of State’s most intense public encounter since he took up the job, here’s The Independent’s profile of the veteran diplomat – whom Borzou Daragahi described as “a veteran of Washington’s old-school foreign policy elite” whose “conventional approach to diplomacy” may not go down well in today’s world.

Republican congressman from Indiana Jim Banks, a staunch Trump ally, tweeted on Monday that the only thing Secretary Blinken should tell the House Foreign Affairs Committee this afternoon is: “I resign.”

Other Republicans who have called for the resignation of Mr Blinken include Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks opened the hearing by criticising former President Donald Trump.

“Trump’s deal forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 prisoners and offered international legitimacy to the Taliban,” he said.

But he also said about the Biden team: “Are there things the administration could have done differently? Absolutely yes.”

The Ranking Member on the House Foreign Committee, Republican Michael McCaul said the US has lost to the terrorists as he blasted the Biden administration in his opening statement.

“This was an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. I never thought in my lifetime that I would see an unconditional surrender to the Taliban,” he said.

“The American people don’t like to lose, especially not to the terrorists. But that is exactly what has happened,” he added.

In a prepared opening statement to Congress, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US achieved its objectives in Afghanistan “long ago”.

“Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Al Qaeda’s capabilities were degraded significantly, including its ability to plan and conduct external operations. After 20 years, 2,641 American lives lost, 20,000 injuries, and two trillion dollars spent, it was time to end America’s longest war,” Mr Blinken said in the statement.

You can read the entire opening statement here.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $64 million in aid to Afghanistan’s civilian population on Monday while vowing at a committee hearing held by the House Foreign Affairs panel to continue working to extract Americans and others from the country.

In prepared remarks, Mr Blinken claimed that the contribution from USAID would “meet critical health and nutrition needs, address the protection concerns of women, children, and minorities, to help more children – including girls – go back to school.”

USAID had initially announced the aid just hours earlier in a news release, but Mr Blinken was the first Biden administration official to speak publicly on the news.

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“When President Biden took office in January, he inherited an agreement that his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. troops by May 1 of this year,” Mr Blinken said in a prepared statement.

“As part of that agreement, the previous Administration pressed the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners – including some top war commanders,” he added. “Meanwhile, it reduced our own force presence to 2,500 troops. In return, the Taliban agreed to stop attacking U.S. and partner forces and to refrain from threatening Afghanistan’s major cities. But the Taliban continued its relentless march on remote outposts, checkpoints, villages, and districts, as well as the major roads connecting the cities.”

You can read the entire opening statement here.

“By January 2021, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 9/11, and we had the smallest number of troops on the ground since 2001,” Mr Blinken said in a prepared opening statement to Congress.

“As a result, upon taking office, President Biden immediately faced the choice between ending the war or escalating it. Had he not followed through on his predecessor’s commitment, attacks on our forces and those of our allies would have resumed and the Taliban’s nationwide assault on Afghanistan’s major cities would have commenced. That would have required sending substantially more U.S. forces into Afghanistan to defend ourselves and prevent a Taliban 2 takeover, taking casualties – and with at best the prospect of restoring a stalemate and remaining stuck in Afghanistan, under fire, indefinitely,” Mr Blinken added, echoing arguments made by Mr Biden.

“There’s no evidence that staying longer would have made the Afghan security forces or the Afghan government any more resilient or self-sustaining. If 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in support, equipment, and training did not suffice, why would another year, or five, or ten, make a difference?” Mr Blinken said.

You can read the entire opening statement here.

“In April, we began drawing down our embassy, ordering non-essential personnel to depart,” Mr Blinken said in a prepared statement.

“We also used this time to significantly speed up the processing of Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans who worked for us. When we took office, we inherited a program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress and involving multiple government agencies – and a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applicants.

“There had not been a single interview of an SIV applicant in Kabul in nine months, going back to March of 2020. The program was basically in a dead stall. Within two weeks of taking office, we restarted the SIV interview process in Kabul. On February 4th, one of the first executive orders issued by President Biden directed us to immediately review the SIV program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process SIV applications more quickly.

“This spring, I directed significant additional resources to the program, expanding the team of people in Washington processing applications from 10 to 50 and doubling the number of SIV adjudicators at our embassy in Kabul. Even as many embassy personnel returned to the United States, we sent more consular officers to Kabul to process SIV applications.”

You can read the entire opening statement here.