Congressman Who Flew to Kabul Demands Resignations in D.C.
杰基·库西尼奇
每日野兽 2021年8月28日，星期六，2：02.m
周二，众议员彼得·梅耶尔秘密飞往阿富汗，亲眼目睹了哈米德·哈尔齐机场疏散的混乱局面。上周五，他发现自己正为13名守卫他观察到的大门的军人的死亡而苦苦挣扎。
现在，这位共和党的新人说，负责将军队置于他所谓的”不可能的位置”的官员应该下台，尽管他拒绝透露姓名。
“如果他们没有荣誉感，坦率地说辞职，承担责任，我认为这将是相当可耻的，我认为这是个人需要作出的决定。但是，如果他们有任何荣誉，他们会认识到自己的罪责，”他告诉每日野兽在周五的一次采访中。我不想透露姓名，但你可以清楚地看到，个人需要为此承担巨大的战略、运营失败责任。
他补充说，如果这些人没有做”正确的事情”，国会将不得不介入。
当被问及这是否延伸到共和党会议一些成员最近提出的可能的弹劾调查时，梅耶尔只说，他将审查这些条款，并”根据指控的力度和实地事实作出决定”。
他说：”对于那些把我们的部队置于他们目前所处的不可能位置的人，绝对需要毫不留支的责任。
三天前，这位在美军预备役部队服役并在阿富汗一家非政府组织工作的密歇根州共和党人亲眼目睹了这一立场，当时他和民主党众议员赛斯·莫尔顿（MA）未经许可前往喀布尔，震惊并激怒了华盛顿官员。
但梅耶尔说，他们的无奈之旅是绝对必要的，以了解真相后，军方面临的情况，国会收到的简报要么是老的，不完整的，或矛盾的实地报道。
他们观察到的现实使他和穆尔顿都改变了对是否应延长撤军日期的看法。
“这是一个颠倒的世界。我非常希望我们尽可能长时间地留下来，尽可能多地得到人，但可悲的现实是，我们完全依赖塔利班，”他说。”在塔利班的支持下，我们至少能够把大多数人赶出去，大部分都没有问题。
违反这一规定可能会引发与塔利班的公开冲突，从而可能夺去更多的美国和阿富汗平民的生命。
“只是一个灾难性的离奇场景，那里没有人丢失，”他说。
他形容军队必须护送携带婴儿或轮椅的阿富汗人，而没有适当的证件，返回大门外，这是一项令人心痛的任务，”没有训练”。
“当我说这是一个不可能的立场，它不只是从安全的角度来看，而不仅仅是从战术的角度来看，从道德的角度来看，”他说。
参众两院的几个委员会，包括梅耶尔所在的众议院外交事务委员会，已经表示将在未来几个月内就阿富汗撤离问题举行听证会。
但是，除了对阿富汗当前局势的监督之外，梅耶尔说，国会必须重新夺回其战争权力，而不是允许它”外包”给白宫，立法部门利用其第一条的权力，从一开始就对阿富汗战争进行彻底审查。
梅耶尔从极度独立的议员贾斯汀·阿马什手中接过密歇根州的席位，他似乎正在从前共和党自由派议员阿马什离开国会战争权力的地方开始回升。
梅耶尔说：”问题在于，我们已将这一切外包给总统。”这些固有是国会的责任。
他接着说，20年的战争是”当立法部门完全依赖于总统操纵的情报分析”，然后提到前总统乔治·布什关于伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器的谎言，以及前总统巴拉克·奥巴马在白宫期间轻描淡写ISIS的力量。
他说：”当他们利用评估来支持当下的政治权宜之计时，会发生什么。”我们否认现实这么久之前， 它回来， 咬你的头。
梅耶尔还表示支持可能成立一个9/11式委员会，以全面、无懈可击地叙述阿富汗战争。
“这是至关重要的，尤其是此时此刻仍然新鲜。我们不能分心，”他说。”我们有责任感谢那些献出生命的人，我们献出了他们的心，他们为这次任务献出了青春，以确保我们永远不会让另一个美国士兵、水手、飞行员或情报官员担任过去20年，特别是过去20天我们把军队派到海外的位置上。
周四，13名军人丧生，当时一名自杀式炸弹袭击者设法接近一个军方人员正在检查试图进入机场的阿富汗人证件的大门。
当被问及是否见过任何死者时，梅耶尔停顿了一下，深深地叹了口气。
“我不想太投入，但我确实了解这个群体，”他说。”我只是从远处，对，我的心只是打破那些男人，显然，为他们的家人，为他们的同事。他们不应该被放在那个位置上， 但他们是， 他们尽了最大的努力， 他们可以与他们所拥有的。他们拯救了生命。
On Tuesday, Rep. Peter Meijer secretly flew to Afghanistan and viewed the chaos of the evacuation at Hamid Kharzi Airport firsthand. On Friday, he found himself grappling with the deaths of 13 service members who guarded the very gates he observed.
Now, the freshman Republican said, the officials responsible for putting troops in what he called an “impossible position” should step down, though he declined to name names just yet.
“If they don’t have the sense of honor to frankly resign, to take responsibility, I think that would be pretty shameful and I think that’s a decision that individual needs to make. But if they have any honor, they will recognize their own culpability,” he told The Daily Beast in an interview Friday.“I don’t want to get into names but you can clearly see just overwhelming strategic, operational failure that individuals need to be held accountable for.”
He added that, if those individuals didn’t do “the right thing,” that’s where Congress would have to step in.
Asked if that extended to a possible impeachment inquiry—as floated recently by some members of the Republican Conference—Meijer said only that he would review the articles and “make a determination based on the strength of the charges and the facts on the ground.”
“There absolutely needs to be unsparing accountability for those who put our forces in the impossible position they’re in right now,” he said.
Three days ago, the Michigan Republican, who served in Iraq in the Army Reserves and worked in Afghanistan at an NGO, witnessed that position in person when he and Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton (MA) shocked and angered officials in Washington from the Pentagon to the Capitol by making an unauthorized trip to Kabul.
But Meijer said their rogue trip was absolutely necessary to get to the truth of the situation the military faced after briefings Congress received were either old, incomplete, or contradicted by reporting on the ground.
GOP Hawks Rage: We Want Our Forever War Back
The reality they observed caused both him and Moulton to change their minds on whether the date of withdrawal should be extended.
“It’s an upside down world. I would vastly prefer we stay as long as we can to get as many people as we can, but the sad reality is that we are entirely dependent on the Taliban,” he said. “With the Taliban support, we are at least able to get most of the people out, mostly without a problem.”
A violation of that would risk an open conflict with the Taliban which would likely cost even more American and Afghan civilian lives.
“Just a catastrophically bizarre scenario that is lost on no one there,” he said.
He described troops having to escort Afghans carrying infants or those in wheelchairs without the proper documentation back outside the gates—a heart-wrenching task that there “is no training for.”
“When I say this is an impossible position, it’s not just from a security standpoint, not just from a tactical standpoint, from a moral standpoint,” he said.
Several committees in the House and Senate—including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where Meijer is a member—have indicated they will hold hearings on the Afghanistan evacuation in the coming months.
But beyond oversight of the immediate situation in Afghanistan, Meijer said it’s imperative Congress retakes its war power authority instead of allowing it to be “outsourced” to the White House, that the legislative branch uses its Article I authority to conduct a thorough review of the war in Afghanistan starting from its inception.
Why ISIS Attacked the Kabul Airport—and What’s Coming Next
Meijer, who took over his Michigan seat from the fiercely independent lawmaker Justin Amash, seems to be picking up right where the former Republican-turned-Libertarian Amash left off with congressional war authority.
“The problem is we have outsourced all of that to the presidency,” Meijer said. “These are inherently congressional responsibilities.”
He went on to say that a 20-year war was what happens “when the legislative branch is entirely dependent on intelligence analysis that is being manipulated by the president,” before mentioning former President George W. Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and former President Barack Obama downplaying of the strength of ISIS throughout his time in the White House.
“What happens when, when they use assessments to support political expediency of the moment,” he said. “We deny reality for so long before it comes back and bites you in the ass.”
Meijer also expressed support for potentially forming a 9/11 style commission to create a full, unvarnished account of the war in Afghanistan.
“That is essential, especially while this moment is still fresh. We cannot get distracted,” he said. “We owe it to those who gave their lives, we who gave their hearts, who gave their youth to this mission, to make sure we never put another American soldier, sailor, airman, or intelligence officer in the position that we have put our forces overseas in for the past 20 years over in particular the past 20 days.”
Among those who gave their lives were the 13 servicemen on Thursday, who died when a suicide bomber managed to get close to a gate where members of the military were checking the papers of Afghans trying to access the airport.
Asked whether he met any of those who died, Meijer paused and sighed deeply.
“I don’t want to get too into that, but I did know the group,” he said. “I’m just from a distance, right, my heart just breaks for those men, obviously, for their families, for their colleagues. They should have never been put in that position, but they were and they did the absolute best that they could with what they had. And they saved lives.”
第二批载有美国议员的飞机被拒绝在喀布尔降落
古斯塔夫·基兰德
独立报2021年8月27日，星期五，12:40.m
据美国有线电视新闻网报道，这架飞机在飞越土库曼斯坦上空时，可以在开源空中交通网站上看到，但飞机的最终目的地和航线尚不清楚。
代表团中哪些国会议员尚不清楚。
民主党马萨诸塞州众议员赛斯·莫尔顿和密歇根州共和党众议员彼得·梅耶尔周二访问了喀布尔机场，”对撤离美国人和我们的盟友的任务进行监督”。
众议院议长南希·佩洛西批评了这次访问，他说：”我们不希望任何人认为这是个好主意。成员们确实担心会在该地区。
周四喀布尔发生两起爆炸事件，造成阿富汗和美国人员伤亡，另一起发生在附近的一家作为英国基地的酒店，数千人仍在试图离开阿富汗。塔利班发言人说，已有13人死亡，52人受伤。其中一起爆炸似乎是自杀式袭击。
在首次主张美国应延长8月31日撤军期限后，穆尔顿和梅耶尔改变了主意，他们都是伊拉克战争的老兵，并一直批评拜登总统加快撤军。
穆尔顿对《纽约时报》表示：”国会中几乎每个老兵都希望延长8月31日的最后期限，包括我们在内，我们对此的看法在实地有所改变，因为我们这么晚就开始撤离。”即使到了9月11日，我们也不可能把所有人都赶出去。因此，我们需要在离开后与塔利班建立工作关系。实现这一目标的唯一途径是在8月31日之前离开。
“我们处于这个位置，这完全奇怪和令人费解。从让塔利班成为我们试图杀死的对手，到依靠他们来保障安全，协调确保事情顺利进行，”梅耶尔告诉该报。”如果你不在地面上，而且对拯救数以万计的生命至关重要，那么这是一个复杂的情况，是无法理解的。
他补充说：”那里有不知疲倦的外交官员，他们日夜不停地工作，清理积压，处理降落所需的许可，以确保这一切顺利进行。
穆尔顿表示：”我们从这次访问中学到的一个关键事情是，优先考虑所有（特殊移民签证）申请人的特别工作组被国会议员的要求淹没了。这从未传达给我们，但这就是我们现在正在传达给我们的同事的事情”。
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