oe Biden’s administration has defended its decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and blamed former US President Donald Trump for creating conditions that “severely constrained” his successor and led to the chaotic withdrawal from the war-torn country in 2021.
The White House on Thursday released a 12-page document on the conditions that led to US’ exit from Afghanistan in 2021 and sent related classified documents to various Congressional committees. The report places much of the blame on the previous Trump administration, saying President Biden was “severely constrained” by former president Trump’s decisions.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report said. The Trump administration had negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that Biden pledged to honour. But Thursday’s report criticised the former Republican president for a lack of planning to carry out the deal.
According to the report, when Biden took office on January 20, 2021, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”
At the same time, the US had only 2,500 troops on the ground, the lowest since 2001, and President Biden was facing Trump’s near-term deadline to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, or the Taliban would resume its attacks on US and allied troops, it said.
It said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified on September 28, 2021, “The intelligence was clear that if we did not leave in accordance with that agreement, the Taliban would recommence attacks on our forces.”
The White House official said the evacuation planning started in the spring of 2021 and the president ordered additional military forces pre-positioned in the region by mid-summer in case they were ever needed.
Throughout, President Biden insisted that his team plan for worst-case scenarios such as the fall of Kabul, even though the intelligence community’s assessment when he was making the decision in early 2021, was that Taliban advances would accelerate only after the withdrawal of US forces, Kirby said. The president repeatedly requested assessments of the trajectory of the conflict from his military and his intelligence professionals, he said. The long-awaited report also cites intelligence failure in not predicting rapid Taliban victory Responding to a question on inaccurate intelligence assessment, Kirby said no agency predicted a Taliban takeover in nine days.
“No agency predicted the rapid fleeing of President Ghani who had indicated to us his intent to remain in Afghanistan up until he departed on the 15th of August,” he said.
The internationally backed Afghan government collapsed and then-President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in August 2021 as the Taliban took over the capital, Kabul, amid the withdrawal of US forces.During the evacuation, a suicide bombing by the Afghanistan branch of ISIS killed at least 175 people, including 13 US service members.
“Remember, they were ordered under President Bush to avenge the 9/11 attacks and to go specifically after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. And decimating and degrading al-Qaida’s capability in Afghanistan was a mission that we accomplished a long, long time ago,” he said.Trump rejected the findings of the report on Thursday.
“These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing – Blame ‘TRUMP’ for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan,” on his Truth Social platform.
“I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military first, give $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind. Biden is responsible, no one else!” he was quoted as saying by the New York Post.The Biden administration has faced mounting criticism, especially from Republicans, over its withdrawal from Afghanistan.