Ohio politicians divided on Afghan withdrawal
The United States ended the war in Afghanistan this week, nearly 20 years after the Sept. 11 attacks that fueled the initial invasion.
But how the conflict ended is likely to pervade Ohio politics for months as elected officials and U.S. Senate candidates clash over how President Joe Biden handled the withdrawal and who should be held accountable for blood shed in the process.
“The choice was NOT leave or stay,” GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno tweeted. “The choice Joe Biden had was to leave properly. Instead, he could not have done a worse job and refuses to acknowledge that fact.”
Moreno’s comments echo a common refrain among Ohio Republicans, who contend Biden’s administration could’ve orchestrated a more effective evacuation without extending the war. Many have called for the president’s resignation.
But Democrats say politics as usual should wait until everyone who wants to leave Afghanistan is home safely.
“We had a lot of extreme Republicans who are trying to politicize it, trying to weaken the president in the middle of the mission that still wasn’t yet accomplished,” said U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Howland Democrat running in Ohio’s 2022 Senate race. “I’ve got no tolerance for that, whether the president’s a Democrat or a Republican.”
Biden announced the war’s conclusion Monday as the final American troops flew out of the country, leaving it in the hands of the Taliban years after the group was overthrown by U.S. forces. The administration has come under fire for failing to anticipate the Taliban’s quick takeover and waiting too long to evacuate Americans and their allies.
Evacuation efforts turned deadly last week when bombings and gunfire carried out by ISIS-K killed 13 American service members, injured 18, and wounded or killed a number of Afghan civilians. Ohio Navy corpsman Max Soviak of Berlin Heights was among those killed.
Fewer than 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan.
Still, Biden maintains that leaving was the right decision after two decades of war.
“If you’re 20 years old today, you’ve never known an America at peace,” Biden said Tuesday. “So when I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we’ve asked of the 1% of this country who put that uniform on.”
‘Failure of leadership’
Now that the war is over, Ohio officials want answers as Afghanistan faces an uncertain future under the Taliban.
U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson said he’s met with veterans who fought in Afghanistan and heard stories of “mass confusion” as people tried to flee in recent weeks. He contends officials need to be held accountable for mismanaging the withdrawal and supports efforts in Congress to investigate that process.
“(Veterans) feel betrayed,” said Balderson, a Zanesville Republican. “They look at this as a failure of leadership at the highest level from the state department all the way up to the White House.”
Ryan said “mistakes were made” during the pullout and believes it’s important to determine what went wrong once everyone is safely out of the country. He also expressed concern about the Taliban’s rule, saying they haven’t been a reliable ally and must be held to their promise to allow the safe departure of any remaining Americans.
“I don’t trust them at all, but we need to work with them within their own selfinterests to be able to achieve our goals of getting every American and every ally out,” Ryan said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown places blame on Trump
Some Democrats don’t believe the war’s chaotic end rests solely on Biden’s shoulders. At a stop in Columbus on Tuesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown cast much of the blame on former President Donald Trump, who negotiated a deal with the Taliban that included the withdrawal of U.S. troops by May 2021.
It’s easy to second guess the end of a war, Brown said, but Trump set the table and made the situation more challenging for Biden.
“I’m grateful it’s finally over,” he said. “The president made the right decision to end this war as he promised. The mistakes that President Trump made with the Taliban didn’t help, but I think President Biden’s made the best of it.”
Republicans in Congress have proposed multiple measures aimed at assessing U.S. intelligence that guided the withdrawal, monitoring human rights violations and determining what U.S. equipment was left behind. Whether Ohio officials on both sides of the aisle will get behind these efforts remains to be seen.
“The anger regarding how President Biden conducted his withdrawal is overwhelmingly bipartisan — behind closed doors,” U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup said in an email. “But we’ll see if our Democrat colleagues will show up when it matters — when we vote on measures to help rescue our Americans abandoned in Afghanistan and hold the Biden administration accountable.”