A bipartisan House majority passed a resolution on Wednesday condemning President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and 13 other current and former members of the administration over their roles in the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 10 Democrats joined all Republicans in delivering the rare and sweeping rebuke.
The 219-to-194 vote was the House’s final roll call before members departed Washington to focus on the election, in which control of the chamber is up for grabs. Though the resolution was uniquely broad and direct in condemning the president, members of his cabinet and top advisers in a personal capacity, instead of as an administration, the vote was symbolic because the measure carries no force of law.
Still, the participation of 10 Democrats — almost all of them facing tight re-election contests — buoyed the Republicans behind the effort to formally hold senior administration officials primarily responsible for the failures of the withdrawal in the summer of 2021, which left 13 U.S. service members dead. Democratic leaders have dismissed the resolution as a politically biased crusade.
“Ten Democrats just joined me in condemning Biden-Harris admin officials who played key roles in the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal,” Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement on social media after the vote. “I am glad these colleagues put politics aside and voted to do what was right — deliver accountability to the American people.”
While the bipartisan vote was a political punch to the Biden administration at the height of a critical campaign season, the move stood as a far cry from the sort of legislative consequences that Republicans had threatened to wield against Mr. Biden when they began the various investigations into his administration’s policies and his personal conduct.
“After their laughingstock flop of an impeachment investigation, they’re flailing about now to attack the president or the vice president however they can,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, who opposed the Afghanistan measure, said after Wednesday’s vote. “The country sees it as cheap election-year antics and games.”
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