Trump and Biden to blame in Afghanistan

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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke with Anderson Cooper on Sunday 60 Minutes, where he described being physically ill after seeing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.

It was really hard. For a few days there, I really didn’t feel very well. And I realized it was because of what was happening in Kabul. And I was so low on how it ended, Gates said. The other feeling I had was that it probably didn’t have to be that way.

When it comes to who is to blame for the chaos surrounding the pullout, Gates said there was a lot of blame to blame, including the current and former presidents.

Certainly, the military considers withdrawal to be the most dangerous part of an operation. But they really had a lot of time to plan. Starting with the deal that President Trump made with the Taliban. So that was February 2020, Gates said. Once President Biden reaffirmed that there would be a firm deadline, that’s when I think they should have started taking these people out.

Gates, who oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2006 to 2011, partly blames himself for not having properly built the Afghan army over the years, making things too sophisticated and logistical, similar to the US military. but very different from the Taliban. But he said that in the end, mismanaging the schedule and not anticipating the fallout were the biggest mistakes.

One would have to be naive enough not to assume that things would turn sour once that withdrawal is over, Gates said, adding that he absolutely believed that Trump and Biden shared the blame.

While Gates, who has always considered himself a Republican, has been on the same wavelength with Biden over the years when it comes to relations with other foreign powers like Russia and China, he has said they had never agreed on Afghanistan. When Cooper asked him point blank if he thought Biden had made a mistake in Afghanistan, Gates said yes.

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60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7:00 p.m. on CBS.

Watch what the former Deputy Director of the FBI had to say about his legal settlement with the DOJ:

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