Afghanistan: Biden blamed despite Trump video boasting, taking credit

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Former President Donald Trump addresses a crowd gathered at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio on June 26, 2021. | Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty

A viral video confirming that former President Donald Trump not only ordered a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but was also proud to do so, contrasts sharply with the revisionist story provided by right-wing trolls in a spurious narrative intended to blame President Joe Biden for what has become a debacle.

On Monday morning, the Taliban militant group of Islamic extremists had taken control of all parts of the Middle Eastern country, including the capital Kabul, from where the president had fled a few days earlier.

This was all a response to the accelerated withdrawal of US military troops, a decision that had not only been taken by Trump before Biden took office, but also a decision that had been negotiated with the Taliban by the former president in Camp David, everywhere, says Biden.

“When I came to power, I inherited an agreement concluded by my predecessor which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of September 11, 2019 which left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on US forces, ”Biden reminded people in a statement Saturday.

Biden said that because Trump had already minimized the number of troops in Afghanistan, he “was faced with a choice to follow up on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and allies out safely. , or step up our presence and send more US troops to fight again in another country’s civil conflict.

He said he chose the former because he refused to “hand this war over to a fifth” US president, referring to President George W. Bush’s costly decision to occupy Afghanistan which has spread. to Biden’s own administration four presidents later.

But that still hasn’t stopped a Republicans-led effort to blame Biden for the collapse of Afghan political and security forces, even – and most importantly – if those same Republicans also called for a troop withdrawal.

Trump himself had the audacity to call on Biden “to resign ashamed of what he allowed to happen in Afghanistan.”

This sentiment was shared by other right-wing extremists and trolls seeking to deflect the blame from Trump, who less than two months ago boasted that the decision to speed up the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was his and hers alone.

In it from the White House, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (on screen) hold a video conference with the National Security Team to discuss ongoing efforts to reduce the civilian footprint in Afghanistan on August 16, 2021, at Camp David. in Frederick County, Maryland. | Source: The White House / Getty

I started the process, ”Trump said at a rally in Ohio in late June, his first since losing the presidency. “All the troops are going home. They couldn’t stop the process. 21 years are enough. Don’t we think? 21 years old. [The Biden administration] could not stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very difficult to stop the process.

Watch the video that went viral.

Never mind the video proof of Trump’s hypocrisy. The single-term president on Saturday attempted to sow the familiar seeds of division by expressing artificial and fictitious outrage at his prediction of “when the Taliban will raise their flag over the Embassy of the Americas in Kabul.”

In an example of how the Trump cult shamelessly dictates the Republican Party’s agenda, Newsweek drew attention to the GOP by conveniently removing a page from its website praising the peace agreement ” history ”of Trump with the Taliban that the 45th President negotiated last year.

It should be noted that former President Barack Obama, whom Trump has repeatedly targeted with racist attacks, was – like Biden – also in favor of slowing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Admittedly, the optics are not good for Biden.

The ACLU was among the critics calling for Biden’s response to Afghanistan.

The international fiasco unfolding in Afghanistan comes as the delta variant of COVID-19 causes an exponential number of infections across the country and concerns grow over climate change, voting rights and police reform, among other pressing issues, the Biden administration said it would prioritize.

Whether deserved or not, all of the above have become polarizing political questions designed in part to delegitimize Biden’s presidency.

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