Unsurprisingly and again, former President Donald Trump is being blamed for another chaotic failure of President Joe Biden. In a brief statement to reporters on April 6, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby supported the August 2021 U.S troop withdrawal from Afghanistan but blamed Trump for the chaos that occurred during the withdrawal! Clearly, it is the continuous blame game.
In a completely misleading approach, Kirby pointed out that the disarray surrounding the withdrawal was a result of the 2020, U.S-Taliban agreement. But indeed, the successor of any president has the authority to withdraw from any agreements that his predecessor had signed in the past if the new president sees it as a threat to the nation or U.S personnel. Therefore, Biden was not obligated to honor Trump’s agreement with the Taliban.
The Biden Administration’s contradictory statements can be noticed clearly. However, in defense of the troop withdrawal, Biden said, “It is time to end the war in Afghanistan.” This means he had actually agreed with Trump and continued to take the agreement forward. But the biggest irony occurred when a reporter asked Kirby if President Biden takes the responsibility for what happened in Afghanistan, meaning the chaos and the casualties. Kirby responded, “You got to look at when he [Biden] came into office what he was walking into…he didn’t negotiate with the Taliban.”
Blaming Trump for the agreement with the Taliban and U.S troop withdrawal, and in defense of Biden’s chaos in Afghanistan, Kirby continued, “He [Biden] had no ability to change.” Clearly, as the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States has the ability to change plans or withdraw from any agreement.
The 2021 U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan was beyond Trump’s agreement with the Taliban. Despite President Biden’s ultimate failure and inability to lead, the situation in Afghanistan was going against the U.S’s wishes. The former government of Afghanistan led by Ashraf Ghani was at a dead end to serve the interests of the U.S. in the region.
Obviously, the twenty-year U.S efforts in training the Afghan military turned out to be futile as in a matter of days the Taliban took control of most of the country and quickly everything collapsed. However, blaming Trump for the 2021 disorganized withdrawal from Afghanistan is only a drama and an excuse to cover up the change of the U.S direction and its policy to abandon Afghanistan and end the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship.
The complex U.S. operations and foreign policy will not be transparent for most Americans to see through it. Being from Iraq and since I was still living there in 1991, I have experienced a similar situation as Afghanistan’s, which was when the U.S. abandoned the Iraqis that led to similar chaos. But for the sake of honesty, I am compelled to note that the U.S. later returned and established a No-Fly zone to prevent the former Iraqi regime’s jets from bombing the Kurds in the North and the Shiia in the South. However, this ambiguity has always been a part of the government’s policies, which can be used to distract and mislead the public. For example, the Afghan military collapse in 2021 should not have been a surprise for the Pentagon’s top officer, Gen. Mark Milley, when he claimed that he did not foresee the Afghan army collapse in 11 days.
But to look back and reanalyze Gen. Milley’s press brief indicates that the Biden administration had already planned for Afghanistan’s collapse. Gen. Milley said, “The timeframe of rapid collapse was widely estimated and ranged from weeks to months and even years following our departure.” (source: New York Post) This means the collapse was expected but not in 11 days.
After the collapse and disarray that led to the tragic deaths of 13 U.S service members, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), said he will investigate and, “…ask tough but necessary questions about why we weren’t better prepared….” Warner added “We owe those answers to the American people and to all those who served and sacrificed so much.” (source: The Hill)
As a typical politician, Sen. Warner is not distinguished from the rest of the elite politicians. He still has no answer to Americans nor to “those who served and sacrificed.”
Sadly, the result of the government’s review of the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan was released recently and blames everyone but Biden. Kirby has already said that the purpose of this review “…is not accountability.” This means the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan was approved by the government when both the Legislative and Executive Branches were still controlled by Democrats. However, Americans ought to realize that the Democrats are using Trump as a scapegoat to conceal their unethical acts.
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Serwan Zangana supported Operation Iraqi Freedom as a U.S Army translator before coming to the U.S from Kurdistan, Iraq in 1997 to seek political asylum. He was granted asylum status and years later proudly became a U.S citizen. He currently serves as a correction officer in Roanoke.