The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan has been injected into the 2024 presidential campaign. The Trump campaign is using the issue to bash Vice President Harris as Trump seeks to reverse the shift in polling toward Harris. The issue has been a bludgeon that congressional Republicans have used against President Biden. Harris is merely inheriting the blame.
So, what’s this about? The United States began the war in Afghanistan in October 2001, nearly a month after a group of 19 terrorists affiliated with Obama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda killed 2,996 people by flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania that was likely intended for the U.S. Capitol. At the time, Afghanistan was controlled by the Taliban, radical Sunni Muslims who gave safe harbor to bin Laden since 1996. By mid-November, the capital of the country, Kabul, had fallen and the Taliban was deposed, although they would continue an insurgency that would last for nearly two decades.
After ten years of war, the United States began to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan under President Obama in 2011 and hand the security of the country over to its government. There were drawdowns of troops in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Some 8,400 troops were in Afghanistan when President Obama left office in January 2017. The peak troop level was 100,000 in August 2010.
Trump seemed obsessed with being responsible for ending the war in Afghanistan. Then-Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned in part because of Trump’s plan to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan by half. In February 2020, the Trump administration agreed to a peace deal with the Taliban, known as the Doha Accord, which included a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.
To be clear, the Taliban wasn’t in control of the Afghan government at the time. The Trump administration cut the Afghan government out of the negotiation. Within days, the Taliban began attacks on the Afghan Armed Forces, which the United States no longer supported because of the Doha Accord. The Trump administration, as part of the agreement, also sought to release 5,000 Taliban members incarcerated by the Afghan government. Those prisoners were eventually released. Most rejoined the Taliban.
By the end of the Trump administration in January 2021, only 2,500 American troops remained in Afghanistan. The nascent Biden administration reviewed the Doha Accord and delayed the withdrawal of the remaining American troops, initially until September 11, 2021, rather than May 2021. Obviously, that was a horrible look, considering that date marked 20 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Biden administration later announced that the remaining troops would leave Afghanistan by August 31, 2021.
The Taliban escalated its attacks against the Afghan government ahead of the withdrawal. By late June 2021, we had assessed that the Afghan government was in trouble and could fall within six months. That assessment was revised on August 10 to as much as 90 days. Kabul fell on August 15. By mid-August 2021, the Taliban had effectively taken over the country. The president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, went into exile in the United Arab Emirates. Near the end of August, a suicide bomber affiliated with ISIS-K killed 13 American soldiers who were protecting Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
There’s no question that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was a failure, and the Biden administration deserves blame for the execution of it. Perhaps, though, what happened was the inevitable result of 20 years of war that never had a clear exit strategy. But it was a failure 20 years in the making, and the blame for the conditions that led to the withdrawal falls at the feet of four presidents—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
Bush and Obama tried to convince us that democracy could be successful in Afghanistan. Trump cut out the Afghan government while negotiating with radical Islamists who were bent on control of the country. We deposed the Taliban only for the Taliban to take control of the country. Biden botched the exit.
We have a right to be angry about how the war in Afghanistan ended, considering the human and fiscal costs associated with the conflict, and to criticize how the withdrawal was executed. But to say the blame solely lies at the feet of Biden, and, by extension, Harris, is ignorant of the facts and only serves purely partisan ends.
Interesting. Sound like Vietnam all over again. The problem that you don't go into is the question of were the Afghans fighting the Taliban or not? Supposedly in Vietnam the US agreed to supply air support and the South Vietnamese would do the ground fighting, possibly with advisors. As the US troops left the S. Vietnamese would take over. From what I read this was happening.
I believe the same agreement was in place in Afghanistan. The Afghan government troops would do the ground fighting as the US withdrew but the US would continue to supply air support and possibly artillery.
The question is was that happening or not?