The one year anniversary of the Biden administration’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan has provided the occasion for Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and his fellow Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to issue an interim report entitled “A ‘Strategic Failure’: Assessing the Administration’s Afghanistan Withdrawal.” Even before the report appeared, however, the White House launched a preemptive strike against its content by means of a memorandum to “Interested Parties.” The paper, by National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, bore the notation, “Re: Recently Released Partisan Report on the Afghanistan Withdrawal.” Among other assertions, the memo claimed that the GOP report was full of “inaccurate characterizations … and false claims.”

The White House memo asserted that one of the report’s allegedly false claims was that “we are less safe today because of the withdrawal because al Qaeda has reconstituted and Afghanistan has become a terrorist haven.” The memo claimed that, to the contrary, the Intelligence Community had assessed that al Qaeda has not reconstituted in the country. Moreover, the memo continued, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organization’s leader, “was the only key al Qaeda figure who attempted to reestablish their presence in country.” Indeed, it asserted, “there are less than a dozen al Qaeda core members who remain in Afghanistan and they probably were located there prior to the fall of Kabul.” Nor, it pointed out, did al Qaeda have...

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