Biden blames Trump administration for troubled US troop withdrawal

United States President Joe Biden has blamed Donald Trump’s administration for troubled US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, according to a document released by the White House. In a 12-page document, the Biden administration said, “President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.” John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said that Biden inherited a depleted operation in Afghanistan from Trump that crippled the US response. “Transitions matter. That’s the first lesson learned here. And the incoming administration wasn’t afforded much of one,” Kirby told reporters. Biden was left with a stark choice: withdraw all US forces or resume fighting with the Taliban. “Clearly we didn’t get it right,” Kirby said, but he sidestepped questions about whether Biden has any regrets for his decisions and actions leading up to the withdrawal. The document recalled the year 2017 when Trump took the office, at that time there were more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan but eighteen months later, after introducing more than 3,000 additional troops to just maintain the stalemate, President Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting with any of the allies or the partners. “In September 2019, President Trump emboldened the Taliban by publicly considering inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached a deal, known as the Doha Agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In return, theTaliban agreed to participate in a peace process and refrain from attacking US troops and threatening Afghanistan’s major cities–but only as long as the United States remained committed to withdrawing by the agreement’s deadline,” the statement read.