The White House on Thursday blamed former Republican President Donald Trump and secret service failures for the traumatic withdrawal from Afghanistan but globally defended the way it was carried out, the only possible “scenario”.
The classified documents were sent to Congress, where Republicans in the House of Representatives are investigating this withdrawal, which took place in August 2021 and which they consider a failure of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The last U.S. troops staged a desperate evacuation from Kabul airport after the Taliban defeated Western-trained Afghan forces in a matter of weeks.
Thirteen U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghans were killed in a suicide bombing on the crowded perimeter of the airport, where an unprecedented military airlift operation managed to get more than 120,000 people out of the country in a few days.
Presenting a declassified summary, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that mistakes had been made.
“Ending a war, any war, is not an easy task, certainly not after 20 years” but “it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing,” Kirby told reporters.
The White House largely blamed Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, for creating the conditions that led to the defeat.
But it also acknowledged that U.S. intelligence failed to grasp the strength of the Taliban and the weakness of Afghan government forces.
“We clearly didn’t get things right” in intelligence, Kirby said.
“After more than 20 years, more than $2 trillion and backing an Afghan army of 300,000 troops, the speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan suggests that there was no scenario – except a permanent and significantly expanded U.S. military presence – that could have changed the trajectory,” the paper states.
Nothing “would have changed the trajectory” of the withdrawal and “in the end President Biden refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended for the United States long ago,” the summary reads.
Before U.S. troops could secure the entire airport, the world witnessed panicked scenes of terrified Afghan civilians trying to board planes, including some who died trying.
– “Withdrawal date” –
In the summary, the White House largely blamed the agreement reached in February 2020 between the Trump administration and the Taliban, saying it made things very complicated for the Biden administration.
“The outgoing Trump administration left the Biden administration with a date for withdrawal, but no plan to carry it out. And after four years of neglect, and in some cases deliberate degradation, crucial systems, offices, and agency functions, which would be necessary for a safe and orderly exit, were abandoned,” the paper notes.
It also insists that Trump, during his last 11 months in office, reduced the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan to just 2,500 troops when Biden took office in January 2021.
“As a result (…) the Taliban were in the strongest military position” since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan for a mission initially targeting those responsible for planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Kirby acknowledged that the U.S. government failed to predict “how fast” the Taliban were making progress in the country or “how fast the Afghan national security forces would withdraw.”
“I don’t think we fully understood the degree of corruption that was going on in the officer ranks in the military,” he added.
On Aug. 30, 2021, one minute before midnight, the last U.S. soldier left the Afghan capital’s airport 24 hours before the deadline set by the U.S. president for the withdrawal of troops from the country.