The Biden administration admits to having made some mistakes — some — in its withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the admission doesn’t come close to acknowledging the catastrophe that occurred during the August 2021 retreat. Ex-President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is in full-force denial over his role in that catastrophe. Both are to blame, and to a certain extent, so are Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush for the abysmal deployment, training and ambivalent nation-building decisions that contributed to the Taliban takeover after 20 years of U.S. occupation.
Trump, still smarting from his arrest and arraignment last week in New York, seized upon a Pentagon report to Congress that listed what went right and wrong during the withdrawal. The report blamed the Trump administration for the way it negotiated the U.S. withdrawal and for refusing to share crucial pullout-planning details during the change of administrations. Biden’s spokesman, John Kirby, conceded, “Clearly, we didn’t get things right here with Afghanistan with how fast the Taliban was moving across the country.”
With characteristic subtlety and presidential humility, Trump exploded on his Truth Social website: “These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing — Blame ‘TRUMP’ for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan.”
