INTERVIEW | ‘Shameful’: Expert Assails State Department on Afghanistan ‘After Action’ Report

The State Department has released an After Action Review on Afghanistannearly two years after the U.S.’ catastrophic military withdrawal from that country, which concluded on Aug. 30, 2021.

The report was released following a 90-day review and included more than “150 interviews with current and former State Department officials at all levels of the organization and reviewed relevant documents and other materials.”

The State Department released the report, finalized in March 2022, on June 30.

“It’s just shameful, and starting with the timing of the release, they dropped it on the afternoon of the Friday before the 4th of July, which is just a naked attempt to bury it, to not have anybody pay attention to it,” says Victoria Coates, a senior research fellow in international affairs and national security at The Heritage Foundation. “But fortunately, there is such interest in this topic that they can’t. They can’t hide how bad this is and this is their own people doing the reporting.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Coates adds:

The State Department was shifting blame to the Department of Defense, and basically nobody wanted to be left holding the bag. And what the result was, was 13 dead American heroes in Kabul that didn’t need to be sacrificed.

Coates joins today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the State Department’s report and her thoughts on the timing of its release, as well as on the end of Israel’s recent military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin.