'Withdrawal Was A Catastrophe': Veterans Deliver Emotional Testimony Of Afghan Fall

The majority of witnesses blamed that the fall of Kabul was an American failure touching every presidential administration from George W Bush to Joe Biden.

US active service members and veterans testified about the Afghan fall in US Congress. (Representational Image)

Active-service members and veterans on Wednesday provided first hand testimony about the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and described the harrowing details of the carnage and death they witnessed on the ground while imploring Congress to help the allies left behind, reported the Associated Press. 

In his testimony to Congress, former Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews described about the stench of human flesh under a large plume of smoke as the screams of children, women and men filled the space around Kabul’s airport after two suicide bombers attacked crowds of Afghans.

Vargas-Andrews,  with a prosthetic arm and scars of his own grave wounds from the bombing, sobbed as he told lawmakers of being thwarted in an attempt to stop the single deadliest moment in the U.S. evacuation — a suicide bombing that killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. servicemen and women.

“The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion. And there was an inexcusable lack of accountability,” said Aidan Gunderson, an Army medic who was stationed at Abbey Gate. 

“I see the faces of all of those we could not save, those we left behind,” said Gunderson, testifying “I wonder if our Afghan allies fled to safety or they were killed by the Taliban.”

The initial hearing of a long-promised investigation by House Republicans displayed the open wounds from the end of America’s longest war in August 2021 where the witnesses recalled how they saw mothers carrying dead babies and the Taliban shooting and brutally beating people.

The hearing was the first of what is expected to be a series of Republican-led hearings examining the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. 

The majority of witnesses blamed that the fall of Kabul was an American failure touching every presidential administration from George W Bush to Joe Biden. The testimonies were focused not only on the decision to withdraw but on what witnesses depicted as a desperate attempt to rescue American citizens and Afghan allies with little U.S. planning and inadequate U.S. support.