After nearly 20 years of deployment, the sacrifice of over 2,000 American lives, and $2 trillion dollars of taxpayer’s money being spent on the war in Afghanistan, so much is unknown about why the recent events in Afghanistan played out the way they did.
In efforts to gain more answers on this, Congressman Blake Moore introduced the Afghanistan Accountability Act as the first step in identifying how effective the intelligence provided overlayed with decisions made. The act also ensures sanctions are placed on Taliban members for any human rights violations to US citizens or allies.
“We need to be able to make sure that we don't have this enormous amount of overconfidence, that this couldn't happen," said Moore. "And we need to make sure that we understand the environment that we're in and other environments that we may get in, to be able to make to evaluate our intelligence."
Moore’s biggest concern and the reason he proposed this act is to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
“This is Congress's role," said Moore. "Regardless of what party we're in, regardless of who's in the White House, we need to make sure that we are in, we fulfill our role as a body that is separate from the executive branch that will be able to hold that accountable future presidents need to know that Congress will come together to be able to pull decision making accountable.”
Moore said that the legislation as it is may or may not pass in its current form but it should provide language and direction for the hearings that will take place from the situation.