Trump has frequently attacked Biden and Harris for the 13 Americans killed at the Kabul airport during the exit from the Afghanistan. During the debate with Harris trump called it the most embarrassing moment in the history our country. He has frequently tried to gain points politically based on the death of those 13 Americans (1). The actual facts indicate that Trump has a significant responsibility for those deaths that he is trying to convert to fodder for political propaganda.
THE SURRENDER
The disaster is Afghanistan started in September 2019 when trump announced that he began negotiation with the Taliban while excluding the Afghan govt who were the US allies. . The peace agreement with the Taliban was signed in February 2020 in Doha, Qatar (2). This was essentially a surrender by the trump govt. The Taliban was given everything that they wanted. There are a couple important details in the agreement negotiated and signed by the Trump administration. Notice these details published in the agreement posted by the Trump state department (3): They agreed that the US would be out of Afghanistan in 14 months. That means the final withdrawal would be several months into the next presidential administration. Many people felt that meant that if trump was not reelected then he could blame any withdrawal problems on the next administration. The trump administration agreed that 5000 Taliban members will be released from prison.
POST AGREEMENT
The US had intelligence information that The Taliban did not intend to keep the agreement (4). The Afghan govt did not agree with the plan to free the 5000 Taliban prisoners but the Trump administration forced them to do it (8). The full 5000 prisoners were released in august
2020 (11). This included some ISIS and Al Qaeda. the Taliban was in the strongest military
position in 20 years (5). Even with reduced attention to US troops the Taliban continued
attacking Afghan forces (5,6,7). In October,2020 , just before the election, trump was promising to bring the troops home before Christmas (9). trump was promising to bring the Trump started reducing the number of US troops and after he lost the election in November 2020 he cut the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 2500. There was still no plan to get American civilians out. This was a dangerously low level with so many civilians and allies that needed to be evacuated. And trump did not negotiate any power sharing agreement between the Afghan govt and the Taliban. By essentially throwing the allies under the bus at the beginning this led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan govt (10). Many people felt like it was trumps upcoming election that was the motivation to get a peace agreement without actually getting Americans out of Afghanistan. There were 3 critical mistakes that prepared the way for disaster. (1) getting 5,000 terrorists out of prison before getting any American's out of Afghanistan. (2) Reducing the American Military down to 2500 before getting any American civilians out and no plan to get civilians out. (3) no detailed plan of how to get American military and civilians out of Afghanistan. The evacuation was a disaster with an ISIS suicide bomber setting off a bomb at the airport and reports of shooting also. There were 13 American Military killed plus 170 Afghans. ISIS took credit for the bombing. The suicide bomber was one of the prisoners that had been recently released from prison.
THE DENIAL
After the disaster at the Kabul airport trump denied that he got the 5000 terrorist released from prison before getting any Americans out of Afghanistan (12). There were several factchecks of Trumps denial (14,15). Those fact checks were unnecessary because the agreement to release 5000 Taliban from prison was written into the Doha agreement (3). The number of terrorist released from prison was double the number of US troop left in Afghanistan. Adding them to the other Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaida that were not in prison meant that the remaining 2500 US troops were outnumbered and the Taliban had already been controlling most of the country for almost a year before the exit at the Kabul airport.
THE POLITICS
Some former senior Trump officials now call that agreement fatally flawed, saying it did little more than provide cover for a pullout that Mr. Trump was impatient to begin before his re-election bid. “Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Mr. Trump’s second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said of Mr. Pompeo during a podcast interview with the journalist Bari Weiss on Wednesday. “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”
Nor did Trump officials place any public emphasis on the need to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. Asked about Mr. Trump’s statements, and whether he was aware of discussions about such evacuations, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton suggested there had been none. and in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that, while President Biden “owns” the ultimate outcome in Afghanistan, Mr. Trump had earlier “undermined” the agreement through his barely disguised impatience to exit the country with little apparent regard for the consequences. There is a long history of Americans being attacked in the middle east. But there is a pattern of distinctly different American responses depending on which party has the presidency. When Reagan lost the over 200 marines at the airport in Beirut Lebanon Americans were united in support of the American govt. When 4 people died from the attack in Benghazi republicans in congress had many investigations of Hillary. But it was Republicans in congress that voted to reduce the budget for security of embassies and consulates before and after Benghazi. Now Republicans in congress want to investigate Biden for the loss of 13 Americans at the Kabul airport suicide bombing. Most Americans are not going to forget that Trump got 5000 terrorists released from prison before getting any Americans out.
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