Washington, D.C. – Republicans have expressed outrage after President Joe Biden’s administration largely blamed his predecessor Donald Trump for the shortcomings of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A summary report released by the White House on Thursday justifies how the current administration handled the chaotic US exit from Afghanistan in 2021. It said Biden’s “choices for executing a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by circumstances created” by Trump.
That assessment led to a rebuke from Republicans in Congress, who accused the Biden administration of absolving itself of responsibility by pointing the finger at the former president.
Key Democrats in Congress have remained largely silent on the revision.
Congressman William Timmons called the report a “partisan absurdity”, citing an ISIL (ISIS) attack on an evacuation operation in Kabul during the US withdrawal that killed at least 175 people in 2021, including 13 US military personnel .
“Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted directly in the loss of 13 US servicemen, the deaths of thousands of Afghans, and billions of dollars in US military equipment left in the hands of the Taliban,” wrote Timmons, a South Carolina Republican. Twitter.
Biden can fend off anything he wants for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but under his watch:
❌ Americans were abandoned
❌13 soldiers died
❌Military equipment was left behind for the TalibanReal leaders take responsibility for their decisions. Biden refuses and he should be ashamed.
— Congressman Ben Cline (@RepBenCline) April 6, 2023
The internationally backed Afghan government collapsed in August 2021, when the Taliban took over the capital Kabul without major fighting amid the withdrawal of US troops.
US troops — confined to the area around the city’s airport until their final withdrawal at the end of that month — oversaw a massive two-week operation to get desperate Afghans out.
On Thursday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US government was “proud” to secure the airport and help more than 100,000 Afghan allies leave the country.
“Nobody says everything was perfect. But a lot went right,” he told reporters.
Kirby said no US agency had predicted that the government in Kabul would fall so quickly and that after 20 years of US support, the Afghan forces would “fail to fight for the country”.
“Another lesson we learned was the need to plan early and comprehensively for low-probability, high-risk scenarios,” Kirby said at a news conference.
Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Kirby’s comments “disgraceful and offensive.”
“President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even chose the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution,” McCaul said in a statement.
The Trump administration had negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in 2020 for Biden to honor.
The American people, and even the media, know that President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was one of the worst foreign policy disasters in America’s history.
Watch this reporter expose the admin for trying to bury the report the American people demanded…just before a holiday weekend. pic.twitter.com/UUnIxXxFJ8
— Representative Barry Loudermilk (@RepLoudermilk) April 6, 2023
But the review criticized the former Republican president for a lack of planning to execute the deal. It also accused Trump of not meaningfully involving the government of then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in talks with the Taliban.
Ghani eventually fled the country when Taliban fighters took Kabul in 2021.
“During the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration, the outgoing administration has not provided plans for executing the final withdrawal or evacuating Americans and Afghan allies,” the US said. report said Thursday.
Finally, on Thursday, the Biden administration defended the withdrawal, saying the US was mired in a war with “unclear objectives and no end in sight.”
Trump seemed livid at the review’s findings, calling White House and Biden officials “idiots” and accusing them of spreading “disinformation” to blame him for the pullout.
“I watched this disaster unfold, as did everyone else,” he said on his Truth Social website. “Biden is responsible, no one else!”
The report came as Trump — who is seeking the White House again in 2024 — returned to the headlines and was indicted in New York over hush money payments leading up to the 2016 election.
Opinion polls show that most Americans supported the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, but also disagreed with the way the withdrawal was handled.
On Thursday, Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned the timing of the report’s release ahead of Good Friday and Easter weekend, describing it as a “clear attempt to bury the news.”
Risch said the withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened Washington’s opponents, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, our partners in the Middle East’s aid to Beijing and Xi’s increasing threats to Taiwan are all related to and arising from this debacle,” the senator said in a statement.
Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in turn called the Biden administration’s assessment a “spineless piece of fiction.”
“President Biden has led this withdrawal and President Biden must accept responsibility for the tragedy that has occurred,” Rogers said in a statement.