The Biden administration doesn’t plan on taking the heat for the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan—instead issuing a report Thursday which pins the blame largely on former President Donald Trump and his administration.
The report—put together by the National Security Council (NSC) with guidance from the president himself—said Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump-era policies. The current administration takes little responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal, which included a bombing at Kabul International Airport that killed over 100 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops.
The report comes after Biden asserted that the February 2020 deal Trump agreed to with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, cornered the U.S. into leaving Afghanistan.
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Last month, U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews—who was injured in the explosion—told the House Foreign Affairs Committee the withdrawal was a “catastrophe.”
The administration conceded the withdrawal should have begun sooner, but cited delays within both the Afghan government and U.S. assessments of the evolving situation. The report states earlier evacuations from conflict zones will be a priority moving forward: “We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation.”
NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby, however, defended Biden’s execution of the withdrawal.
“They ended our nation’s longest war,” Kirby said to reporters Thursday. “That was never going to be an easy thing to do. And as the president himself has said, it was never going to be low grade or low risk or low cost.”
Just hours after it was released, Trump railed against the report as a “disinformation game” by the Biden White House.
“I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military FIRST, GIVE $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Biden is responsible, no one else!”
