The White House mounted a vehement defense last week of President Biden's decision-making in Afghanistan, seeking to put a shine on the calamitous withdrawal in August 2021 as the Pentagon and State Department sent classified reports to Congress...
Administration officials placed heavy blame on President Trump for setting the withdrawal into motion and on Afghanistan itself. They said the nation’s military wasn’t trained, its government wasn’t competent and its people were too ready to capitulate.
“When the president made the decision to leave Afghanistan, some worried that doing so could weaken our alliances or put the United States at a disadvantage on the global stage. The opposite has happened,” the White House said. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the White House’s shifting of blame was “disgraceful and insulting.”
The report details decisions by the Trump administration, including a series of drawdowns, negotiations with the Taliban and public pronouncements that the U.S. would withdraw, which left the U.S. weakened in Afghanistan. In July 2021, 23 staffers stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul sent a cable via the State Department’s dissent channel warning of the Taliban’s rapid advance and potential collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces. The cable called for the Biden administration to increase evacuation efforts to get as many people as possible out of the country.
The balance Mr. Biden struck was to deliver what officials called “unprecedentedly extensive” phone calls to Americans and Afghan “partners” alerting them to the risk of a total collapse. They figured that they could urge people toward the exit without igniting the full-scale airlift.Twenty months later, 175 American citizens looking to leave are still stuck in Afghanistan. Some are being held captive by the Taliban.
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