U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) issued the following statement regarding Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday:
Young
The crisis in Afghanistan has highlighted both the best and worst of America.
The best, in that American heroes, including Indiana’s Marine Corporal Humberto Sanchez, valiantly laid down their lives so that American citizens and innocent Afghans could escape the brutal Taliban regime. Today, in Logansport, I was humbled to help celebrate Corporal Sanchez’s life and service to our country. We must honor his legacy, and the 12 other service members killed in Kabul, who embody the best in America.
This crisis has also revealed to the world the disastrous foreign policy decision making process that squandered 20 years of investment and sacrifice by the United States and our allies. As we witnessed in Secretary Blinken’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there is bipartisan outrage over the events in Kabul. The days ahead demand a deep examination of how this happened and those responsible must be held accountable.
As I have been advocating through my bipartisan work on war powers reform, the events in Afghanistan illustrate why Congress must be closely involved in foreign policy decisions. I will be working with my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee to push for a robust oversight agenda to understand the failures of the past 20 years in Afghanistan while also looking forward to ensure that our nation’s counterterrorism strategy matches the new threats that are developing in Afghanistan as a result of this disaster. As we just marked the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, we must be diligent in never allowing Al Qaeda or other groups to again threaten our country.