Donald Trump has lambasted President Biden’s handling of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying it’s “humiliating.” He urged his successor to resign in disgrace.
Putting aside Trump’s signature bombast and hyperbole, he’s far from alone in criticizing the way the Biden administration has handled the war’s end. Biden’s approval rating has dropped below 50% for the first time as images of America’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan dominate the news cycle.
But Trump is uniquely unfit to point an accusatory finger at anyone on the topic of Afghanistan. The Trump administration negotiated – and bragged about – an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from the county by May 1, 2021. Trump’s defense secretary at the time, Mark Esper, told CNN that Trump ‘undermined’ that deal by pushing for US forces to leave Afghanistan without the Taliban meeting the underlying conditions.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he was concerned that then-President Donald Trump "undermined" the US' 2020 agreement with the Taliban by pushing for US forces to leave Afghanistan without the Taliban meeting the conditions of the deal. https://t.co/nKXaH3YXO4
— CNN (@CNN) August 17, 2021
The Trump deal and his desire to see American troops return home as quickly as possible gave the Taliban a sense of leverage.
UK’s defense minister Ben Wallace, a member of the Conservative Party, recently told the BBC, “The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation. President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won.”
“So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we’re seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was [effectively] rushed, that wasn’t done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly,” Wallace added.
Biden echoed these sentiment on Saturday, saying, “When I became President, I faced a choice — follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.”
Biden ultimately decided that he wouldn’t pass America’s longest war onto a fifth president.
Two months ago, Trump gloated about the tough spot in which he placed Biden (watch above). He told a crowd of supporters, “I started the process. All the troops are coming home. They couldn’t stop the process. … They couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.”
Worth remembering that some Trump-aligned Republicans argued last fall that Biden was the candidate who’d continue wars in the Middle East and Trump was the withdrawal candidate. pic.twitter.com/LPvR8DAbzZ
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 15, 2021
Trump has also accused Biden of being too soft on the Taliban. But in a February 2020 press conference, Trump expressed optimism – and perhaps naivety – about the Taliban, saying that after the U.S. left Afghanistan, the Taliban “will be killing terrorists. They will be killing some very bad people. They will keep that fight going.”