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The document drafted by the National Security Council, with the contribution of President Biden, points out the mistakes that were made in the US exit from Afghanistan and compiles what decisions of the Trump government prevented a better planned and less deadly withdrawal . The report was released two days after Trump’s speech at Mar-A-Lago, in which he criticized Biden’s handling of the troop withdrawal from Kabul.
It was one of the first actions for which the president of the United States, Joe Biden, was harshly criticized. The total withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan on August 30 marked the end of Washington’s presence in one of the longest wars in the Western country.
In a document of barely 12 pagesthis Thursday, April 6, the Biden Administration released to public opinion a new perspective on what happened, in a summary extracted from top-secret reviews of the State Department and the Pentagon.
In the text, the government of Donald Trump (2016-2019) is directly blamed for not having planned the withdrawal that had been agreed with the Taliban group and excuses Biden for seeing himself “severely limited” to have made a better decision at that time. , due to the “choices made” by the former president in the past.
“President Biden’s options on how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely limited by the conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House summary read.
In addition, he assures that when Biden took office, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position they had been in since 2001, controlling or disputing almost half of the country.”
The text – which was not drafted by an independent entity but by the National Security Council and with the influence of Biden himself – was criticized by the legislative opposition. As noted by the chairman of the United States House Oversight Committee, Republican James Comer, they consider it as “an excuse document” to justify the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan”.
For his part, Trump published on his social network that the report is about “a new game of disinformation” by the president and that the only person responsible is Biden himself.
“These morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our country (…) have a new disinformation game they are playing: blaming ‘TRUMP’ for his grossly incompetent surrender in Afghanistan,” said the former president.
“Biden is responsible, no one else!” Trump concluded on Truth Social.
Deadly evacuations at Kabul airport
The images of the chaos at the Kabul International Airport went around the world. Videos and photos of some Afghans trying to get on moving planes and handing over children and babies to escape the country marked one of the most delicate and criticized moments of the US withdrawal.
And it is precisely this point that the Republicans in the US Congress criticize the most, along with the 13 deaths of their compatriots in service and the 100 Afghans who died after a suicide attack near the airport.
In the report, however, the decision of the US Army in the face of the suicide threat of the moment is praised, saying that the uniformed officers made “a possibly key decision” in the face of the crisis scenario.
“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the president repeatedly asked if the military required additional support to carry out its mission,” the report said.
“Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate the threats,” it adds.
The document also points to Trump’s actions, which ended up “destroying” all support for refugees and “halting” the migration visa process for thousands of Afghans seeking evacuation.
Learned lessons
“Clearly, we did not do it well,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby admitted Thursday, although he dodged questions from the press about whether Biden regrets the decisions surrounding the withdrawal.
“The purpose of this report is not accountability,” Kirby said. The official assured that it is, rather, to understand what happened in order to evaluate “future decisions”.
In addition, he classified the facts as a “first lesson learned”, referring to similar scenarios that may occur in the future.
The report itself also acknowledges that the Biden Administration learned from the mistakes of that time. In this sense, the White House referred to the situation that is now being experienced in Ukraine. He explained that the failures in Afghanistan have been taken into account in the management of this conflict.
According to the report, the government “has been recognized for supporting the defense” of the European country against the invasion of Russia and that they are now focusing their efforts on taking early action in the face of an increasingly deteriorating security situation.
With Reuters and AP
