Federal Watchdog Finds the Trump-Taliban Withdrawal Deal Caused Afghanistan to Fall

A federal watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has found that the deal negotiated between Donald Trump and the Taliban undermined the morale and support of the Afghan government, which led to its rapid fall during the post-deal Taliban offensive. The United States had led an international coalition, working with the recognized Afghan government, to overthrow the Taliban, who controlled most of Afghanistan, after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks by the Islamist al-Qaeda terrorist harbored by the Taliban. The U.S. and its allies supported the Afghan government that replaced the Taliban. The coalition had maintained a small contingent of a few thousand troops that provided training, equipment maintenance and other support, after their combat mission had ended in 2014, only occasionally responding to attacks in self-defense. The U.S. also conducted drone strikes against terrorists on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. But because the isolationist Trump wanted to withdraw the troops, he legitimized the Taliban by negotiating with them, leaving out the Afghan government, and struck a deal to withdraw American troops, in exchange for a promise by the Taliban not to harbor terrorists again. The Taliban, who are intertwined with Islamist terrorists, were backed by al-Qaeda during their offensive to retake Afghanistan. The Trump deal removed the troops and equipment maintenance and stopped U.S. airstrikes, while leaving our Afghan allies feeling abandoned and uncertain. It also provided political cover for a weak successor as Commander in Chief, such as Joe Biden, to withdraw the small American contingent for domestic political reasons, even though American involvement in combat was minimal, other than drone strikes against terrorists, which now can no longer be done. Trump and his supporters have tried to blame Biden for the Afghan disaster, but the federal watchdog’s report proves that the responsibility for the disaster cannot be attributed to Biden without including Trump. It also confirms what I have been posting that the Trump-Biden withdrawal was disastrous because of the Trump deal that Biden carried out, which Biden should have torn up and substituted with a strategy of defeating the Taliban. Trump and his supporters also blame the withdrawal from Afghanistan for emboldening Russian Federation tyrant Vladimir Putin, an ex-Soviet intelligence officer who is trying to reestablish the Soviet Union, to commit aggression against Ukraine, but Putin did not need to be emboldened after over 20 years of relative weakness in the West in response to his machinations, including Trump’s withholding of defensive weapons to Ukraine and other pro-Putin policies. Biden had said and done the right things to try to deter Russia, such as signing the bipartisan defense bill that increased spending and aid to Ukraine and sharing intelligence about Putin’s troop buildup, but Putin calculated that he could nevertheless defeat Ukrainian forces easily and withstand the sanctions imposed after his invasion and that the sanctions would, as usual, be limited because of Western self-interest and political risk from inflation or recession. Those on the isolationist right who supported the Trump-Taliban withdrawal deal cannot credibly argue that Putin was emboldened only by Biden’s poor handling of carrying out the withdrawal, as it was the withdrawal itself that confirmed what Putin already thought of Western weakness, let alone to argue that Trump would have deterred Putin. Putin had only to wait for Trump, whom he had backed in the 2016 Republican primary and general election and again in 2020, to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to have a free hand in Ukraine. Only those of us true conservatives who believe in a strong defense and a principled, consistent foreign policy have maintained credibility on American security.