Dem undermines GOP Afghanistan hearing with photo of Trump official meeting with Taliban
Gerry Connolly
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) reminded lawmakers that President-elect Donald Trump's first administration had negotiated with the Taliban for a withdrawal from Afghanistan at a hearing where Republicans attacked President Joe Biden over the decision to pull U.S. forces out of the country.
During Tuesday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Connolly displayed a photo of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with a Taliban negotiator.
"I'd like to put a picture up, which seems to suggest, Mr. Secretary, that the Republican narrative is correct about you," the Virginia Democrat told Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "Isn't that you with the Taliban negotiator, Mr. Secretary?"
"I'm not aware of having spent any time with a Taliban negotiator," Blinken replied.
"Oh, I'm sorry, that's Secretary Pompeo," Connolly said. "Was he your predecessor in the Biden administration as Secretary of State?"
"No, he was my predecessor in the previous administration, the Trump administration," Blinken explained.
Connolly pointed out that Trump had appointed Zalmay Khalilzad to negotiate directly with the Taliban in 2018.
"And he, of course, testified before this committee, and I can remember an exchange with him in which I expressed deep concern about the direction of the U.S. posture and the ramifications with allied Afghans who had worked for us or worked with us, and women," the lawmaker recalled. "And he kind of brushed them off at the time."
Khalilzad went on to forge an agreement with the Taliban in Doha that led to the U.S. withdrawal.
"All U.S. troops were to be out by May 31st," Blinken acknowledged. "In the meantime, 5,000 prisoners were released — Taliban prisoners."
"Among those 5,000 were terrorists, fighters, and people who returned to the battlefield against the Afghan government, which allegedly we were supporting at the time," Connolly remarked.
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"It's kind of hard to follow and it seems to me that we, by agreeing to that in the Trump years with Secretary Pompeo, your predecessor, and Ambassador Khalilzad, we actually set in motion an untenable but probably irrevocable kind of folding of events," he added.
"We cut a deal to get out and cut our losses at the expense of the Afghan government, the Afghan military, and ultimately the Afghan people, and that was all set in motion before you took the oath of office or President Biden took the oath of office."
