In a speech to Michigan National Guard soldiers on Monday, the former president said Donald Trump he is expected to promote his foreign policy and bind vice president Kamala Harris to one of the low points of the Biden administration: the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades of war.
The speech coincides with the third anniversary of the August 26, 2021, suicide attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, will appear at the 146th Annual General Conference of the National Guard Association of the United States at 2 p.m. Eastern Time & Exhibition in Detroit.
Since Biden ended his reelection bid, Trump has focused on Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, and her role in foreign policy decisions. He specifically highlights the vice president’s statements that she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision on Afghanistan.
“She bragged that she would be the last person in the room, and she was. She was the last person in the room with Biden when they decided to pull troops out of Afghanistan,” he said at a rally in North Carolina last week. “She had the final vote. She had the final say, and she was all for it.”
The relatives of some of the 13 American servicemen who died appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention last month, in which he said Biden had never publicly mentioned their loved ones. The display was an implicit response to accusations that Trump disrespects veterans and has described previously fallen World War II soldiers as losers and losers — accusations Trump has denied.
Under Trump, the United States is a peace agreement signed with the Taliban that was aimed at ending America’s longest war and bringing American troops home. Biden later pointed to that similarity when he tried to deflect blame for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, saying it forced him to withdraw his troops and formed the basis for the chaos that ravaged the country.
A Assessing the Biden Administration’s Withdrawal acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have begun earlier, but attributed the delays to the Afghan government and military, and to U.S. military and intelligence assessments.
The two top U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation said the administration had not adequately planned the withdrawal. The nation’s top military officer at the time, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers Earlier this year, he had urged Biden to retain a residual force of 2,500 troops as a backup. Instead, Biden decided to retain a much smaller force of 650 troops that would be limited to securing the U.S. embassy.