Biden admin acknowledges flaws in Afghanistan pullout, says should have evacuated troops sooner
WASHINGTON —President Joe Biden's administration acknowledged Thursday that it should have anticipated Afghanistan's collapse and evacuated troops more quickly after the U.S. began its withdrawal of military forces.
Among the faulty assessments were how fast the Taliban were moving across the country and "constructing these deals in the hinterlands that kind of fell like dominoes," National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications spokesman John Kirby said.
At a White House briefing, where he argued that Biden was right to remove U.S. troops from the country and bring the 20-year war to an end, Kirby defended intelligence assessments in the lead up to the collapse.
But he also admitted that some of the information was off target, in part due to the fluid and fast-evolving situation, saying, “I've yet to see an intelligence assessment that ever was 110% certain about something. They get paid to do the best they can."
“They'll be the first ones if they were up here to tell you that they don't always get it right. And clearly, we didn't get things right here with Afghanistan."
The White House released a document Thursday that said as a result of the failures in Afghanistan, it is now prioritizing early evacuations in risky situations.
The document blamed the Trump administration for setting the stage for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan by lowering U.S. troop levels there and negotiating with the Taliban without consulting allies or the Afghan government. It was a part of a long-awaited review or "hotwash" of the chaotic withdrawal the administration had promised to provide to Congress.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the document says.
Congress expects to receive a classified version of the report Thursday, according to Capitol Hill aides familiar with the process but not authorized to speak publicly.
The Taliban bars Afghan girls from school.: Inside their secret classes with a teacher in the US.
Three major religious holidays are converging this week and Congress is in recess, potentially complicating lawmakers' ability to immediately review the classified documents. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair and Texas Rep. Michael McCaul is currently in Taiwan.
Kirby denied that the White House intentionally released the document when it was less likely to be immediately consumed by lawmakers and the public.
He said the administration has a process for sharing sensitive information that it followed. "That was the responsible thing to do, and what you're seeing today, is the result and a culmination," he said. "There’s no effort here trying to obfuscate or trying to bury something. It's an effort to try to be as open and transparent as we can be."
But at least one leading Republican lawmaker accused the administration of burying the report.
Sen. James Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the release was overdue, calling it "sad and untimely" in a statement.
"It is nearly 2 years later and a clear attempt to bury the news during a holiday weekend," Risch said.
Biden administration says Trump set the stage for Afghan collapse
Despite admitting mistakes, the Biden administration spent the first pages of its unclassified report arguing that it had been hemmed in by former President Donald Trump.
Singling out the former commander in chief by name, the report said Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban “without consulting with our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government at the negotiating table.”
In September 2019, it said, Trump emboldened the Taliban by publicly inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Five months later, in February 2020, it said, the Trump administration struck a deal with the Taliban – known as the Doha Agreement – committing the U.S. to withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021.
Trump further undermined the U.S. negotiating position by allowing the Taliban to participate in a peace process in which it would refrain from attacking U.S. troops and threatening Afghanistan’s major cities, “but only as long as the United States remained committed to withdraw by the agreement’s deadline,” the report said.
The White House report also blamed Trump for failing to coordinate a “detailed and effective transition” from his administration to Biden’s, which it said was an especially necessary process when it comes to complex military operations like the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
Republicans have sought to pin the blame on Biden
Republicans have condemned the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In a statement after the administration released the unclassified report, Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, said the Biden administration "abandoned allies and failed to act decisively, costing the lives of U.S. service members and many innocent civilians."
“In Afghanistan, the withdrawal allowed the Taliban to quickly takeover, and the country has once again become a haven for terrorists. The rights of women and girls have vanished, and too many Americans and our Afghan partners remain trapped there," Risch said.
Lisa Curtis, the senior director for south and central Asia at the National Security Council during the Trump administration, told USA TODAY there were failures in Afghanistan in both the current and the previous administration.
Trump's administration is responsible for negotiating "a terrible, terrible deal" with the Taliban and "demoralizing the Afghan security forces," Curtis said.
But she also said Biden had an opportunity to negotiate a better deal with the Taliban and chose not to.
"And in fact, during the transition process, that is what I advised the Biden administration, that they did not have to stick with the badly negotiated Doha deal," she said. "That was their choice."
A costly, decades-long war
The war in Afghanistan was enormously costly in terms of lives and resources.
The Pentagon spent more than $837 billion fighting the war from 2001 to 2021. In addition to the 2,461 U.S. troops killed, more than 20,000 were wounded. Afghan casualties were far worse. At least 66,000 Afghan troops and 48,000 Afghan civilians died during the fighting, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
The U.S. government also spent $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society, according to the inspector general.
Amid the chaotic withdrawal and evacuation in August of 2021, 13 U.S. troops in a suicide bomber attack.
Contributing: Rebecca Morin
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden administration acknowledges missteps on Afghanistan withdrawal
