Last week, the Biden administration hid behind the long Easter weekend to release its report on lessons learned from the deadly and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Instead of providing accountability for Biden’s failures, the White House blamed President Trump and public servants.
The White House report seeks to rewrite history with a sanitized story and projects the withdrawal as an operational success. The report is full of misleading claims that carefully ignore the facts. There were many flimsy arguments — I’ve picked out just 10 to illustrate how the president is breaking his campaign pledge to take responsibility for his actions.
Claim 1: In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached the Doha Agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. The Taliban agreed to refrain from attacking U.S. troops — but only as long as the United States remained committed to withdraw by the agreement’s deadline.
Reality: The Doha Agreement imposed seven conditions on the Taliban for the U.S. to withdraw our troops. As Gen. Mark Milley testified to Congress in September 2021, the Taliban broke six of those conditions. It is entirely misleading to suggest we had to withdraw on an arbitrary timeline when the Taliban didn’t hold up its side of the bargain.
Claim 2: President Biden was facing President Trump’s near-term deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, or the Taliban would resume its attacks on U.S. and allied troops.
Reality:
