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Quote:The Biden administration sacrificed U.S. attention that could have ensured a calculated military withdrawal from Afghanistan, instead of focusing on advancing the progressive agenda in the Department of Defense, said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.

“Joe Biden and his team were more interested in advancing their phony culture war than they were protecting American lives. Their misplaced priorities had devastating consequences – 13 American service members died, and hundreds of Americans were left stranded behind enemy lines,” Hawley told The Federalist. “Rather than worrying about flying the ‘Progress Flag’ or adding a ‘nonbinary’ option to U.S. passports, Joe Biden and his team should’ve been focused on how to safely withdraw from Afghanistan. The Biden administration must be held accountable.”

Hawley contrasted the timeline of the administration’s failures in Afghanistan with the Pentagon’s simultaneous progressive agenda on the Senate floor on Thursday.

In June, Hawley noted, while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promoted a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” focus in the military during a Senate hearing, the Taliban were gearing up to take over multiple Afghan districts and provinces the next week which prompted members of the Afghan army to flee.

A few weeks later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. would start flying the colorful “progress flag” at the State Department to commemorate a “couple of important turning points in our history for LGBTQI rights.” This “diversity and intersectionality,” Hawley said, not only mirrors the language used in critical race theory but also dominated the government’s focus while the Taliban “seized the main Afghan trade gateway.”

One day before U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the Afghan government was likely to collapse shortly after a U.S. military withdrawal, Gen. Mark Milley told senators in a hearing that he wanted to understand “white rage” and did not appear to have qualms with a woke takeover of the Defense Department.

At practically the same time that Blinken announced that U.S. passports can include anti-science terminology that denies biological sex, U.S. troops were pulled from the Bagram airbase. Two weeks later, on July 14, the secretary of state called on the United Nations to investigate “the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia in the United States” while the Taliban continued their takeover of Afghanistan.

By August, U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the Afghan government would collapse much sooner than previously predicted but the defense secretary was busy mandating the COVID-19 for service members sacrificing their time, efforts, and even lives for the United States.

When the Afghan government officially collapsed in mid-August, the Taliban had taken over, and the Biden administration was left with thousands of people who wanted to go to the U.S., including stranded Americans. At the time, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan endowed the Taliban with the authority to give Americans fleeing the capital city of Kabul “safe passage” out of the country. Seven days later, 13 American service members were killed in an explosion near the Kabul airport where they were facilitating the evacuation of people out of Afghanistan.

“Facts are facts. These are the facts. And they tell the story. Joe Biden and his team were more focused on their culture war than they were on protecting Americans. That’s the long and the short of it,” Hawley said. “They were more interested in imposing a radical left social agenda than in getting Americans out of Afghanistan. They were interested in using the military as a social experiment, rather than respecting it as the warfighting institution it was built to be. Rather than making decisions that were sound in tactics and sound in strategy, Joe Biden and his team were aiming to please their radical woke progressive base and the American people paid the price.”

Hawley pointed out that the administration is simply trying to “whitewash” what happened in Afghanistan, but said it’s up to the Senate to hold the president and his team accountable for the ongoing crisis.

“Hundreds of American civilians were left behind, and are still there, Americans are still trapped in Afghanistan, trying to get out, trying to be rescued, left to their own devices, and yet the president of the United States, insists that it never happened. ‘It was all a success. All is well,'” Hawley said. “The president said ‘it had to be this way. Those soldiers had to die? What does that even mean? That the military had to abandon billions of dollars of equipment to the enemy? That civilians, hundreds of them, had to die? All those Americans had to be left behind? I mean, is he serious about that? Does anyone honestly believe that?”