The House Foreign Affairs Committee has yet to schedule a hearing on the withdrawal from Afghanistan that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised for early this week.
Mrs. Pelosi told reporters in San Francisco that Biden administration officials would testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week to answer amid mounting questions from lawmakers about why the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated so quickly.
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory W. Meeks, New York Democrat, followed up Mrs. Pelosi’s remarks by saying he would schedule a hearing “as early as possible.”
But the House returned to Washington on Monday without the hearing date set and without Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or Secretary of State Antony Blinken committing to testify before Congress.
“The situation in Afghanistan is rapidly changing and it is imperative that the administration provide the American people and Congress transparency about its Afghanistan strategy,” Mr. Meeks said in a statement last week. “I have asked Secretaries Blinken and Austin to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and tell Congress what the administration’s plan is to safely evacuate American citizens, SIVs, and other vulnerable Afghans from the country, and to understand our broader counter-terrorism strategy in South Asia following the collapse of the Ghani government.”
Mr. Meeks’ call testimony from Mr. Austin and Mr. Blinken echoed demands for answers coming from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The promise of hearings coming from President Biden’s Democratic Party underscored the political peril for the president after his rapid pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan paved the way for the Taliban to retake the country, erasing the gains of a 20-year war.
A week later, however, the Democrats appeared to lose the sense of urgency.
