Republicans blame Biden for chaotic US pullout, but ignore how Trump deal with Taliban sparked disaster

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Senatorial Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite, dossier

A number of GOP lawmakers have criticized Biden’s handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

McConnell said Biden was to blame for the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

The deal to withdraw US troops from the country was negotiated under Trump.

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A number of Congressional Republicans criticize President Joe Biden’s handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan amid desperate scenes of Afghans scrambling to catch a flight out of the country.

Yet the decision to leave the country was originally negotiated under President Donald Trump and allowed the Taliban to strengthen their position against the US-backed government – a circumstance that most Republicans have bypassed in their minds. reviews.

After Taliban forces took control of Kabul, the Afghan capital, over the weekend, GOP lawmakers effectively said the Biden administration was solely responsible for the collapse of the Afghan government.

“The botched exit of the Biden administration from Afghanistan, including the frantic evacuation of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul, is a shameful failure of American leadership,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Sunday. communicated.

While the highest-ranked Republican senator pointed out that the Republican and Democratic administrations over the past several years had overseen foreign policy failures in Afghanistan, he put the weight of the current situation on Biden.

“I have never hesitated to speak frankly when leaders of either party threatened to put politics before reality on the ground,” said McConnell. “But as the monumental collapse that our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long opposed a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, also blamed Biden for the crisis in the country.

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“It is only a matter of time before Al Qaeda reappears in Afghanistan and poses a threat to the American homeland and the Western world,” Graham said in a tweet. “President Biden seems oblivious to the terrorist threats that will come from a Taliban ruled Afghanistan”

Likewise, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned the president and said he failed to implement Trump’s strategy.

“President Biden owns this mess – the blood is on his hands,” Inhofe said in a statement Sunday. “President Biden did not inherit President Trump’s current withdrawal – in fact, he strayed from the previous administration’s plan and charted his own disastrous course.”

He added: “Biden must admit that he made a strategic error resulting in tragic consequences for the national security of the United States and the people of Afghanistan.”

President Joe Biden August 12. Associated Press / Evan Vucci

Some GOP lawmakers also criticized Biden, who was on vacation scheduled for presidential retirement from Camp David, for remaining silent on the issue as the Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday.

“The American people deserve to immediately hear from their Commander-in-Chief and know who is in charge,” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on Twitter.

As the backlash mounted, Biden defended his decision to step down to the White House on Monday afternoon.

A blame game

While the Biden administration executed the US withdrawal, it was the Trump administration that negotiated a deal with the Taliban to withdraw US troops. The agreement, signed in February 2020, stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months. The deal has been widely criticized for granting the Taliban’s demand not to include the Afghan government. At the time, the Taliban already controlled almost half of the country.

Biden largely confirmed the Trump-era deal, although he didn’t follow that exact timeline. Many observers said the United States’ tentative departure agreement cost it the leverage it could have used to coerce the Taliban to adhere to the peace agreement and cessation of hostilities. .

After the negotiations, Trump began to reduce the presence of the United States. As of mid-January, there were only about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. To put that into perspective, there were more US troops deployed in Washington, DC, following the January 6 insurgency than the number deployed in Afghanistan.

An Afghan special forces officer told the Washington Post that Trump’s withdrawal agreement demoralized Afghan troops and made them feel that a Taliban takeover was inevitable.

“The day the deal was signed, we saw the change. Everyone was just paying attention to themselves,” the officer said.

Trump criticized Biden on Sunday for pulling out of Afghanistan, saying the president had failed to follow through on his plan. But outside of the initial timeline, in which US troops would have withdrawn completely in May, Biden has hardly deviated from Trump’s peace deal.

Biden in a statement on Saturday blamed Trump for the chaos in Afghanistan, saying he inherited a deal that “left the Taliban in the strongest military position since 2001.”

From Bush to Biden, US presidents have failed in Afghanistan

There is ample evidence that the US withdrawal was rushed and botched, especially when it comes to helping vulnerable Afghans who assisted the United States during the conflict. But the ultimate US failure in Afghanistan cannot be blamed on one president or one administration.

The war in Afghanistan was chaotic from start to finish, with US troops often unsure of their mission as several administrations – both Republican and Democratic – misled the public about the state of the conflict.

Over the years, Americans have been told repeatedly that the United States is turning a corner in Afghanistan, but there was rarely any evidence to back it up. The United States has invested $ 83 billion in training and equipping Afghan forces, with little result. The Afghan military has consistently struggled with endemic issues of corruption and discipline, showing little sign that it could defeat the Taliban without US help.

Every president who oversaw this war made decisions that exacerbated the conflict in various ways.

President George W. Bush speaks during his first press conference after his re-election on November 4, 2004, at the White House. Alex Wong / Getty Images

The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001 under President George W. Bush, who in the first month of the conflict rejected an offer by the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden in return for stopping the bombing by the United States. United. In May 2003, the Bush administration declared that the “great fight” was over in Afghanistan. As time would show, this was exceptionally premature.

President Barack Obama dramatically increased the presence of US troops in Afghanistan in 2009 – a move Biden opposed as vice president. In 2014, Obama shared a schedule to bring US troops home by 2016. He declared the end of the US combat mission in the country in December 2014, but the war was far from over – and US troops remained in Afghanistan when Obama left office.

While Trump has vowed to end “Eternal Wars,” he relaxed the rules of engagement for air strikes in Afghanistan in 2017, and under his leadership civilian casualties in the county have increased 330% from 2016.

Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April. The Taliban continued to make gains across the country throughout the spring and summer, raising fears of a possible takeover. Last month, Biden rejected the idea that it was “inevitable” for the Taliban to regain power and expressed confidence in the Afghan military. Within weeks, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that Biden and his advisers were wrong about what would happen in Afghanistan, but recent events are the product of years of poor decision-making by the United States. Like other empires before it, the United States has learned the hard way that no amount of military power and money can fundamentally change a complex country like Afghanistan.

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