If Antony Blinken didn’t have enough to do coping with the crisis he helped create in Afghanistan, he has another angry mob surrounding the State Department offices at home. Republican lawmakers. They’re howling to know why he aborted a program which could be rushing to the rescue right now. The Taliban gave him until September 1. Congress gave him until the 3rd to comply with their demands.
State Department jealousy
The Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau, established in January, was the brainchild of Mike Pompeo’s State Department. It would have evacuated Americans stationed overseas in the case of an emergency. Like the Saigon moment we’re having in Kabul right now.
That idea made way too much sense for His Wisdom Joe Biden to support, so the palace gave it an abortion. They killed it before “it became fully operational.”
On Thursday, August 26, Two Republican foreign policy leaders initiated a formal investigation. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, who sits on the Republican Study Committee’s foreign affairs task force, teamed up with Jim Banks.
The Indiana lawmaker serves on the House Armed Services Committee. The dynamic duo ordered the Imperial Minister of State to fork over “all documents and internal communications related to” the insane decision to pull the plug right before the program was needed.
In June, Blinken moved “to terminate plans to establish the CCR,” the Washington Free Beacon disclosed previously, “based on an internal memo and sources familiar with the decision.”
Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon signed off on the “discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau.” His signature is on the State Department memo dated June 11.
News spreads fast
News of the bonehead decision spread faster than a California arson fire. FreeBeacon notes the news “fueled intense criticism of the Biden administration, which is struggling to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover.” Blinken doesn’t want to hear about it.
He started wearing ear plugs a week ago when nobody would stop bringing up Saigon, like this was his problem or something. The State Department “attempted to downplay the report, claiming the CCR bureau would not have helped with the Afghanistan evacuation.” There is no way pre-planning could have made an evacuation run any smoother.
Banks and Steil want to know what Blinken has been smoking. They say “the decision to shut down the CCR may very well have cost human lives.” Blinken’s “decision to shut down this program only months before a rushed withdrawal has led to dire consequences and is unacceptable.” His Wisdom shares the blame.
Not only did Joe Biden bug out “without providing a chance for Americans to evacuate, the State Department shut down one of our most vital tools to facilitate the evacuation of Americans in times like these.”
By the end of next week the State Department better hand over the whole pile of evidence. All “documents, communications, and internal notes related to its decision to dissolve the CCR bureau.” Not only that, they demand to know “the name of the officials” who recommended shutting down the program.
They also have to explain to Congress “with an in-person briefing” how killing the program “has affected our efforts to evacuate Americans stranded in Afghanistan.” The Republicans are convinced that the CCR bureau “was set up to provide capabilities that did not [already] exist at the Department.” Not only that, “official explanations for why it was dissolved do not make sense.”
