Trump administration officials highlight one specific 'failure' in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal plan

Former Trump administration national security officials are pointing to one aspect of President Joe Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal as the linchpin behind the Taliban's near-completed takeover of Afghanistan.

Those officials argue that though withdrawing from Afghanistan was the right decision, the Biden administration failed to secure commitments adequately from Taliban leaders in the lead-up to the drawdown, directly leading to Kabul's fall.

Former National Security Council chief of staff Keith Kellogg, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Chad Wolf told the Washington Examiner that those commitments, including additional peace accords between the Taliban and the Democratic Afghan government, would have been "critical" to preventing the chaos that took the country over the weekend.

BIDEN ADMIN DRAWS CRITICISM OVER AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL

"The Trump administration developed a conditions-based withdrawal. According to this plan, no final withdrawal would have occurred until final successful peace negotiations took place between the Taliban and the Ghani government," the trio said in a statement issued on behalf of the America First Policy Institute's Center for American Security. "President Trump personally engaged with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who led the Taliban delegation, and clearly laid out what would happen in the event of any Taliban intransigence."

The Trump officials claimed that Taliban leaders "understood and respected this approach because we had established credible deterrence in the preceding years, which is why no U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in the final 11 months we were in office."

John Ullyot, a former Trump NSC spokesman, added, "President Trump would have signaled to the Taliban that they were not to take any action in any of the provinces while we were executing an orderly withdrawal."

Commander Guy Snodgrass, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's top communications official at the Pentagon, told the Washington Examiner that the speed at which the Taliban retook the country is the most surprising development.

"What it really tells us is that we shouldn’t have gone in like this in the first place. We ignored the Powell/Weinberger doctrines," he said in a written statement. "Lessons learned, or as we said in naval aviation, 'lessons learned in blood.'"

Former President Donald Trump previously criticized Biden for originally setting Sept. 11, 2021, as the final Afghanistan withdrawal date back in April.

"We can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long," Trump, who had planned to pull out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 2021, said in a statement at the time. "I made early withdraw possible by already pulling much of our billions of dollars of equipment out and, more importantly, reducing our military presence to less than 2,000 troops from the 16,000 level that was there."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Biden returned the Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon after spending the weekend at Camp David and is scheduled to deliver remarks on the subject.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Afghanistan, White House, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, War in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, National Security

Original Author: Christian Datoc

Original Location: Trump administration officials highlight one specific 'failure' in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal plan