U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Peter Meijer (R-MI) secretly traveled to the Kabul airport on Tuesday to personally inspect the ongoing chaotic evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghans, who worked with the American troops and Western allies and were facing highly-possible prosecution from the Taliban.
The two congressmen flew into Kabul, Afghanistan on a charter plane without asking for approval from the U.S. Defense Department or the State Department, which angered officials from the White House and those two departments. Critics have claimed that State Department and U.S. military personnel had to divert resources to provide security and information to the two members of Congress.
A flurry of media reports followed their visit, detailing the stunned response to the congressmens’ unannounced visit to the Kabul airport, where they remained on the ground for several hours. Moulton and Meijer issued a statement about what prompted them to make the trip, which was shared with The Item on Tuesday night.
“We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand,” the statement said. “As members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch.”
During their visit the two lawmakers came to the conclusion that the American mission won’t be able to evacuate everyone before the end of the month, despite assurances from President Joe Biden, the statement said. The visit followed statements from Moulton last week, wherein he criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the evacuation effort in Afghanistan.
“After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by Sept. 11,” said the lawmakers in their statement.
Both Moulton and Meijer are military veterans. Moulton, a Marine, served four tours in Iraq — despite being an outspoken critic of the war — from 2003-08; he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for valor and a Bronze Star Medal. As a part of the U.S. Army Reserve, Meijer served in an intelligence unit in Iraq in 2010-11 and later worked as a civilian at a non-governmental organization in Kabul.
“Washington should be ashamed of the position we put our service members in,” said Moulton and Meijer. “These men and women have been run ragged and are still running strong.”
Jane Ferguson of PBS reported from Kabul on Monday that almost 6,000 U.S. Marines and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were on the ground to support the emergency evacuations. Without proper immigration services at the airport, military personnel were left to decide who could get in past the gates and board the flights.
“The moral injury of having to turn people away, and play a role in their pain, is weighing on many here,” said Ferguson in her report. “No training can prepare soldiers for something like this, a sea of human trauma.”
The congressmen flew out of Afghanistan on a military plane. Predicting accusations of using evacuation resources, they said in the statement, “We left on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence.”
The unauthorized trip spurred a lot of criticism stateside from the Biden administration, lawmakers and private citizens on social media.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on Tuesday evening discouraging members of Congress from traveling to Afghanistan and the region.
“Departments of Defense and State have requested that members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger,” her statement said. “Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating Americans and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan.”
“This is deadly serious. We don’t want people to go,” said Pelosi during her weekly briefing to the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Pelosi said she heard about the trip a few hours before it was announced to the public and postponed her reaction while the congressmen were in the air, so as to not put them in danger.
“It was not, in my view, a good idea,” Pelosi said. “They have to make their own cases for why they went.”
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said that the surprise visit created a need to flex and provide protection for the lawmakers.
“They certainly took time from what we were planning to do that day,” said Kirby during a Defense Department briefing on Afghanistan evacuations on Wednesday.
Major Gen. Hank Taylor reported at the same briefing that 95 flights left the Kabul airport in the previous 24 hours, carrying 19,000 people. Together, the U.S. Military, Coalition forces and allied partners had evacuated 88,000 people as of Wednesday.
Taylor said that more than 10,000 people were currently at the airport awaiting departure.
