Sen. Dan Sullivan said Tuesday that during his recent visit back home to Alaska, the Biden Administration’s mishandling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was the Number 1 issue he heard about from Alaskans.
“I have never seen my constituents more upset, more mad, feeling like the country’s humiliated and asking, where is the accountability?” Sullivan said.
“We are beginning that accountability process and these hearings are going to be important. Keep an eye on one issue: The military’s credibility, versus the Biden Administration’s accountability,” Sullivan said.
He said Biden strategy was to blame former President Donald Trump and blame the generals. Biden called the withdrawal an “extraordinary success.”
Sullivan disagreed. “Everybody in America, everybody in the world knows it was not an extraordinary success,” he said, adding that it will harm America’s foreign policy efforts for years to come.
During the hearings the generals will be asked if it was indeed an extraordinary success, if Al Qaeda’s capabilities were wiped out, and whether we have over-the-horizon capabilities, all claims from President Joe Biden.
The generals will be asked other questions, such as whether America’s NATO allies were in agreement with the Aug. 31 deadline.
Every one of those statements by the president are not true, Sullivan said.
“We’re going to be asking our military members to weigh in on these statements. I will say, General [Austin] Miller was asked a lot of these today and I would say, as expected with someone with his record of service to his country, he did a very admirable job. But it’s just beginning. Those are going to be the important issues,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a former assistant U.S. secretary of state, and a former Attorney General for Alaska, said the hearings are being done behind closed doors.
He told Dana Perino on Fox News that the hearings are closed “for classified reasons, in terms of the information that the generals are sharing with the committee, but we intend to have General Miller in an open session, General Milley, the CENTCOM Commander, General Mackenzie, and Secretary Austin in an open hearing soon. But what I can tell you is that it is becoming increasingly clear that the military advice to President Biden last spring was to not go to zero troops in the country. He rejected that. But, more importantly, some of the military advice also predicted the chaos that we’re seeing right now. He rejected that. President Biden rejected that even though he was forewarned. And, again, I think this foreign policy fiasco, given that he was given this advice, these predictions of chaos, is something that President Biden solely owns.”
Watch Sullivan’s press conference remarks here:
