Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday after being voted in contempt for failing to testify on the disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. Representative Brian Mast (R-FL) tore into Blinken with both barrels on the federal government continuing to send foreign aid to the country despite having no diplomatic presence there.
Rep. Mast started immediately into his dressing down of Blinken, saying, "Sometimes we speak about decorum in here, and I would say that it does not take a four-letter word to violate decorum. We insult every single person that served when we come in here, and we say words like, 'We are sorry that the Afghanistan withdrawal was not exactly perfect, but maybe we could have done a few things."
The Florida Congressman referred to the apparent haphazard planning and execution of the withdrawal and subsequent refusal by the Biden Administration to hold itself accountable for the tragedies that unfolded, adding, "That is a violation of decorum against every person that put on a uniform, and this place absolutely lives up to being a swamp when we try to cover up the fact that 26 of your [Blinken] diplomats told you directly that if you continue down the path that you were going, that it was going to be a disaster, and we should not talk about covering that up."
Rep. Mast briefly asked Secretary Blinken if he or any of his staff had been to the embassy since the withdrawal or knew if anyone was currently there, to which he said "no" due to a lack of diplomatic presence.
"Yet we are still giving the Taliban tens of millions of dollars," Rep. Mast continued, "There is an American citizen out there [who] literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck, and a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad, and this is something we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years."
Mast detailed the various forms of foreign aid going to Afghanistan, including $9 million for teaching carpet weaving, $75 million to teach Afghan women agriculture, $280 million in cash transfers for food, and $3.5 billion for "the Afghan Fund that is intended to protect the macro-financial stability on behalf of the Afghan people," which he dismissed as "a bunch of gibberish," and another $9 billion to resettle approximately 90,000 refugees in the United States.
"We do not even have an embassy in Afghanistan. We have no diplomats there. What are we doing giving them one dollar?" Mast fumed.
Blinken insisted the money was handled properly and helped divert a total collapse, only for the Florida Congressman to reply that recipients of foreign aid have blatantly lied before.
"Again, we do not even have an embassy there. We have no business putting one dollar into that place," Mast concluded.
