Sunday 24 / November / 2024
Washington: The Biden administration has slammed a new report by the Republican Party assessing the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The memo, which came in response to the GOP report, has put the blame on former US President Trump for securing a 2020 deal with the Taliban to evacuate the US from the region by May 2021.
"This partisan report is riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information, and false claims. It advocates for endless war and for sending even more American troops to Afghanistan. And it ignores the impacts of the flawed deal that former President Trump struck with the Taliban," National Security Council (NSC) Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in the memo, the text of which was first reported by Axios and obtained by The Hill.
Watson said the United States does not need a permanent troop presence on the ground in harm's way to remain vigilant against terrorist threats or to remove the world's most wanted terrorist from the battlefield. "We just demonstrated unequivocally in the recent Zawahiri strike to take out the leader of Al Qaeda," she said.
The NSC official even went to blame former President Trump's 2020 agreement with the Taliban that she says "empowered the Taliban, weakened our partners in the Afghan government, and committed to withdrawing our troops a few months after President Biden's inauguration - with no clear plan for what should come next."
Earlier, the Republican report stated the Biden administration's failure to adequately plan for and execute the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It said the Biden administration did not accurately portray the nature of the events on the ground and failed to put a plan in place to prevent American-trained Afghan commandos from being recruited by America's adversaries.
"There are many sins, if you will. There was a complete lack of, and a failure to plan. There was no plan, and there was no plan executed...We had to rely on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of HKIA. That led to the chaos," said House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul on CBS after the release of the report last week.
"And it also led to the suicide bomber that killed 13 servicemembers, men and women, and injured hundreds of people. And it could have been avoided," he added.
The Biden administration announced in mid-April last year that Washington would withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The current administration held the previous government responsible for the deal that was brokered deal with the Taliban, which had a commitment to withdraw by May 1, 2021.
