KABUL: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Thursday to sell Afghan leaders and a wary public on President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all American troops from the country and end America’s longest-running war.
Blinken was meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, and civic figures, a day after Biden announced that the remaining 2,500 US soldiers in Afghanistan would be coming home by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that led to the US invasion.
His trip also came after NATO immediately followed suit, saying its roughly 7,000 non-American forces in Afghanistan would be departing within a few months, ending the foreign military presence that had been a fact of life for a generation of Afghans already reeling from more than 40 years of conflict.
Blinken sought to reassure the Afghan leadership that the withdrawal did not mean an end to the US-Afghan relationship.
“I wanted to demonstrate with my visit the ongoing to commitment of the United States to the Islamic Republic and the people of Afghanistan,” Blinken told Ghani as they met at the presidential palace in Kabul. “The partnership is changing, but the partnership itself is enduring.”
“We respect the decision and are adjusting our priorities,” Ghani told Blinken, expressing gratitude for the sacrifices of US troops.
Blinken arrived in the Afghan capital from Brussels where he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin briefed NATO officials on the move and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance would also be leaving.
Biden, Blinken, Austin and Stoltenberg have all sought to put a brave face on the pullout, maintaining that the US- and NATO-led missions to Afghanistan had achieved their goal of decimating Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network that launched the 9/11 attacks and clearing the country of terrorist elements that could use Afghan soil to plot similar strikes.
However, that argument has faced pushback from some U.S, lawmakers and human rights advocates who say the withdrawal will result in the loss of freedoms that Afghans enjoyed after the Taliban was ousted from power in late 2001.
Later, in a meeting with Abdullah, Blinken repeated his message, saying that “we have a new chapter, but it is a new chapter that we’re writing together.”
“We are grateful to your people, your country, your administration,” Abdullah said.
Despite billions of US dollars in aid, Afghanistan 20 years on has a poverty rate of 52 percent according to World Bank figures. That means more than half of Afghanistan’s 36 million people live on less than $1.90 a day. Afghanistan is also considered one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman according to the Georgetown Institute for Women Peace and Security.
For many Afghans the past two decades have been disappointing, as corruption has overtaken successive governments and powerful warlords have amassed wealth and loyal militias who are well armed. Many Afghans fear worsening chaos even more once America leaves.
Peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are at a stalemate but are supposed to resume later this month in Istanbul.
Under an agreement signed between the Trump administration and the Taliban last year, the US was to have completed its military withdrawal by May 1. Although Biden is blowing through that deadline, angering the Taliban leadership, his plan calls for the pull-out to begin on May 1. The NATO withdrawal will commence the same day.
“It is time to end America’s longest war,” Biden said in his announcement in Washington on Tuesday, but he added that the US will “not conduct a hasty rush to the exit.”
“We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan hoping to create the ideal conditions for our withdrawal, expecting a different result,” said Biden, who delivered his address from the White House Treaty Room, the same location where President George W. Bush announced the start of the war. “I am now the fourth United States president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth.”
Biden, along with Blinken and Austin in Brussels, vowed that the US would remain committed to Afghanistan’s people and development.
“Bringing our troops home does not mean ending our relationship with Afghanistan or our support for the country,” Blinken said. “Our support, our engagement and our determination remain.”
Austin also said that the US military, after withdrawing from Afghanistan, will keep counterterrorism “capabilities” in the region to keep pressure on extremist groups operating within Afghanistan. Asked for details, he declined to elaborate on where those US forces would be positioned or in what numbers.
Blinken in unannounced visit to Afghanistan to sell US troop withdrawal
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Blinken in unannounced visit to Afghanistan to sell US troop withdrawal
- NATO says its roughly 7,000 non-American forces in Afghanistan are also departing within a few months
House Republicans barely defeat Venezuela war powers resolution to check Trump’s military actions
WASHINGTON: The House rejected a Democratic-backed resolution Thursday that would have prevented President Donald Trump from sending US military forces to Venezuela after a tied vote on the legislation fell just short of the majority needed for passage.
The tied vote was the latest sign of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenuous hold on the majority, as well as some of the growing pushback in the GOP-controlled Congress to Trump’s aggressions in the Western Hemisphere. A Senate vote on a similar resolution was also tied last week until Vice President JD Vance broke the deadlock.
To defeat the resolution Thursday, Republican leaders had to hold the vote open for more than 20 minutes while Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt, who had been out of Washington all week campaigning for a Senate seat in Texas, rushed back to Capitol Hill to cast the decisive vote.
On the House floor, Democrats responded with shouts that Republican leaders were violating the chamber’s procedural rules. Two Republicans — Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted with all Democrats for the legislation.
The war powers resolution would have directed Trump to remove US troops from Venezuela. The Trump administration told senators last week that there are no US troops on the ground in the South American nation and committed to getting congressional approval before launching major military operations there.
But Democrats argued that the resolution is necessary after the US raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and since Trump has stated plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.
The response to Trump’s foreign policy
Thursday’s vote was the latest test in Congress of how much leeway Republicans will give a president who campaigned on removing the US from foreign entanglements but has increasingly reached for military options to impose his will in the Western Hemisphere. So far, almost all Republicans have declined to put checks on Trump through the war powers votes.
Rep. Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, accused Democrats of bringing the war powers resolution to a vote out of “spite” for Trump.
“It’s about the fact that you don’t want President Trump to arrest Maduro, and you will condemn him no matter what he does, even though he brought Maduro to justice with possibly the most successful law enforcement operation in history,” Mast added.
Still, Democrats stridently argued that Congress needs to assert its role in determining when the president can use wartime powers. They have been able to force a series of votes in both the House and Senate as Trump, in recent months, ramped up his campaign against Maduro and set his sights on other conflicts overseas.
“Donald Trump is reducing the United States to a regional bully with fewer allies and more enemies,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a floor debate. “This isn’t making America great again. It’s making us isolated and weak.”
Last week, Senate Republicans were only able to narrowly dismiss the Venezuela war powers resolution after the Trump administration persuaded two Republicans to back away from their earlier support. As part of that effort, Secretary of State Marco Rubio committed to a briefing next week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Yet Trump’s insistence that the US will possess Greenland over the objections of Denmark, a NATO ally, has alarmed some Republicans on Capitol Hill. They have mounted some of the most outspoken objections to almost anything the president has done since taking office.
Trump this week backed away from military and tariff threats against European allies as he announced that his administration was working with NATO on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security.
But Bacon still expressed frustration with Trump’s aggressive foreign policy and voted for the war powers resolution even though it only applies to Venezuela.
“I’m tired of all the threats,” he said.
Trump’s recent military actions — and threats to do more — have reignited a decades-old debate in Congress over the War Powers Act, a law passed in the early 1970s by lawmakers looking to claw back their authority over military actions.
The war powers debate
The War Powers Resolution was passed in the Vietnam War era as the US sent troops to conflicts throughout Asia. It attempted to force presidents to work with Congress to deploy troops if there hasn’t already been a formal declaration of war.
Under the legislation, lawmakers can also force votes on legislation that directs the president to remove US forces from hostilities.
Presidents have long tested the limits of those parameters, and Democrats argue that Trump in his second term has pushed those limits farther than ever.
The Trump administration left Congress in the dark ahead of the surprise raid to capture Maduro. It has also used an evolving set of legal justifications to blow up alleged drug boats and seize sanctioned oil tankers near Venezuela.
Democrats question who gets to benefit from Venezuelan oil licenses
As the Trump administration oversees the sale of Venezuela’s petroleum worldwide, Senate Democrats are also questioning who is benefiting from the contracts.
In one of the first transactions, the US granted Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil broker, a license worth roughly $250 million. A senior partner at Vitol, John Addison, gave roughly $6 million to Trump-aligned political action committees during the presidential election, according to donation records compiled by OpenSecrets.
“Congress and the American people deserve full transparency regarding any financial commitments, promises, deals, or other arrangements related to Venezuela that could favor donors to the President’s campaign and political operation,” 13 Democratic senators wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Thursday in a letter led by Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
The White House has said it is safeguarding the South American country’s oil for the benefit of both the people of Venezuela and the US
