As Trump attacks, Harris says Biden was right to withdraw from Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris said that she stands behind President Joe Biden's decision to leave Afghanistan, as the Democratic nominee came under attack from Donald Trump on the third anniversary of the botched U.S. withdrawal.

In a statement on Monday, Harris referred to "our Administration" and emphasized her support, despite the chaotic pullout, which included the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021.

"As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war," Harris said. "Over the past three years, our Administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and ISIS, without troops deployed into combat zones. I will never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people and the homeland."

Trump has hit Harris repeatedly over Afghanistan since she became her party's nominee.

"Three years ago, Kamala's and Biden's incompetence left 13 dead warriors, hundreds of civilians killed and grievously wounded, and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment on the planet abandoned to the Taliban," Trump said Monday on Truth Social. (The Taliban took possession of an estimated $7 billion in military hardware provided to the Afghan National Army.)

Harris has described herself as being the last person in the room when Biden decided to move forward with plans that began under Trump to leave Afghanistan. A photo of Biden holding a secure video call on the withdrawal at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, during the debacle showed Harris as a participant.

When the president delivered an address on the withdrawal, Harris was one of four senior U.S. officials who stood behind him on camera.

Trump and his campaign in a flurry of statements on Monday across multiple platforms said it "ranks among the worst foreign policy debacles in American history," and argued that there had been no accountability for it ? or the swift Taliban takeover that followed.

In a video released to his Truth Social platform, the former president called it the "most embarrassing moment in the history" of the country and hit Harris for her past comments. "She repeatedly praised the decisions," he said.

Trump participated in a wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday as Biden vacationed in Delaware and Harris met with her advisers.

Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, hosted a press call on Monday alongside family members of the soldiers who died in the bombing in which he criticized the Biden-Harris administration for not holding officials accountable.

"Nobody expects perfection from our government, but we do expect accountability," Vance said. "The fact that Kamala Harris can't even bring herself today to offer any real answer for what happened or for what she's going to do over the next six months to get to the bottom of what happened is, I think, insulting to the families who gave their loved ones in service of this country."

The administration admitted last April that it should have evacuated troops faster, once the withdrawal had begun, and that an intelligence assessment of the situation was wrong. But it blamed Trump's administration, too, saying it negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban without consulting U.S. allies or the Afghan government.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the document says.

In a statement on Monday, Biden remembered the thirteen Americans who perished and underscored his position that the U.S. can successfully fight terrorism from afar ? without explicitly revisiting the events that preceded their deaths.

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"They embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless. And we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay, but will never cease working to fulfill," Biden said.

The vice president's office declined to comment on Trump's attacks and referred an inquiry to her campaign.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said "there are many ways" for leaders to observe the third anniversary, Trump's wreath-laying among them.

"Another way is to continue to work, maybe not with a lot of fanfare, maybe not with a lot of public attention, maybe not with TV cameras, but to work with might and main every single day to make sure that the families of those, of the fallen and of those who were injured and wounded — not just at Abbey Gate, but over the course of the 20 some odd years that we were in Afghanistan — have the support that they need," he said, referring to the scene of the airport bombing.

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The withdrawal from Afghanistan led to a marked drop in support for Biden nationally. His favorability rating never bounced back, and Trump made a point of raising the issue in his opening statement at their June debate.

Harris and Trump are scheduled to debate on Sept. 10, and Trump is sure to bring it up, said Thomas Alan Schwartz, a professor of history at Vanderbilt College.

"She's taking a risk," Schwartz said of Harris' identifying herself with the issue. "It is not something that most Americans feel good about."

Harris has been under pressure to share a detailed policy agenda and identify areas in which she differs with Biden. While she mentioned Israel's war in Gaza during her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last week, Harris hasn't delivered a foreign policy speech since taking over the ticket.

While her advisers have said Harris doesn't feel hemmed in to sharing Biden's positions on every issue, Peter Feaver, who served under multiple presidents on the National Security Council, said it's "probably politically safer for her to stick with the administration on this one, given that it would otherwise create quite a significant breach of daylight between her and President Biden."

"She wouldn't gain anything politically from it, and instead, she'd be inviting a maelstrom of media attention," he said.

Contributing: Karissa Waddick, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As Trump attacks, Harris defends Afghanistan pullout