by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
July 6, 2023
TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said analysis of U.S. leadership blunders while fighting in Afghanistan had to be studied and integrated into training to avoid repeating those mistakes.
Moran, a Kansas Republican, said the U.S. Department of State’s release of the Afghanistan After Action Review included a damning account of mismanagement during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“The inherent difficulties of an evacuation were clearly exacerbated by a void in leadership, which resulted in the deaths of American servicemembers and stranded thousands of our Afghan allies behind enemy lines,” he said.
The State Department report indicated decisions by the administrations of President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden to pull troops from Afghanistan had detrimental consequences in terms of viability of the Afghan government. The report faulted both administrations for “insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios.”
The report detailed shortcomings leading to the evacuation operation after 20 years on the ground. On Aug. 26, 2001, a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport killed 11 U.S. Marines, one U.S. Army paratrooper, one U.S. Navy corpsman and 170 Afghans.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann and U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, both Kansas Republicans, reveled in the U.S. Supreme Court decision that President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation program was unconstitutional.
“The president’s plan would have transferred debt from borrowers who took out student loans to hardworking taxpayers who did not,” Mann said. “Now is not the time to erase debt that student borrowers knowingly took on. Americans deserve a well-developed, long-term solution that addresses the high cost of education — not a short-term Band-Aid that buys votes and adds to our nation’s record high inflation.”
In 2022, Biden proposed a relief plan to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in debt held by students. The plan included an income-based repayment initiative to substantially reduce future monthly payments for lower- and middle-income borrowers.
Marshall said Biden’s program on college debt amounted to a “kickback to his far-left political base.”
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