Congressional Hearings on the Afghanistan Exit Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Turning our backs on what happened in Afghanistan isn’t politically expedient; it’s impossible.

Justice for Afghanistan protest, central London 21st August 2021. (Photo: Steve Eason)

It’s been well over a year since the disastrous U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Somehow, the episode looks worse than ever.

U.S. allies in the Middle East have lost confidence in the United States, as evidenced by the diplomatic deal inked last week between Saudi Arabia and Iran — as brokered by China. Also last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee began hearings into the 2021 Afghanistan exit.

Listening to first-hand testimony from U.S. military service members gravely injured in the Kabul airport bombing; hearing their accounts of losing mentors and friends in the blast; seeing the obvious heartbreak over abandoned Afghan friends and allies — it’s painful.

As well it might be.

In the view of some of these eyewitnesses and distinguished service members, the tragic last-minute losses in Afghanistan were preventable. It isn’t as if U.S. officials didn’t have ample warning that the situation in Afghanistan was shaky at best.

The publication of the Afghanistan Papers by the Washington Post in 2019 revealed a range of systemic failures and mistakes made by the United States in its war in…