Biden administration blames TRUMP for disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal 

The White House released its congressionally-requested post-mortem of the Afghanistan withdrawal Thursday in a report that heavily blamed the Trump administration for the chaos. 

‘President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,’ the White House report read. 

It then went on to give other reasons for pulling out, including ‘America’s goal was never to nation-build’ and saying the U.S. presence there had ‘unclear objectives and no end in sight.’

The document notes that when Donald Trump took office in 2017 there were 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. 

‘President Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting with our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government at the negotiating table. In September 2019, President Trump embolded the Taliban by publicly considering inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11.’

The document said the Biden White House was carrying out a Trump White House order to withdraw troops by summer 2021 but claimed the Trump team left them with ‘no plans’ for how to conduct the withdrawal of the last 2,500 troops who remained. 

Trump had made an agreement to withdraw troops by May 2021 but Biden promised to have them out by September. The document said Biden had to carry out the withdrawal Trump had agreed to or the Taliban would begin attacks on U.S. forces. 

The document also blamed Trump for the backlog in special immigrant visa (SIV) processing, saying the previous administration’s ‘disregard and even hostility toward our commitment to Afghan allies’ led to some 18,000 waiting for their visas to be processed. It said Trump had ‘all but stopped’ SIV interviews despite making plans for withdrawal.