On Thursday, the Biden administration publicly released a 12-page summary of their findings regarding the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which resulted in chaos and the death of 13 servicemembers.
The administration attributed blame for the situation to the previous administration, led by Donald Trump, claiming that Biden was limited by Trump’s decisions.
The report, which was prepared by the National Security Council with input from Biden, acknowledged that the evacuation process should have started earlier, but claimed that the Afghan government, military, and U.S. military and intelligence assessments caused delays.
It should be noted that more detailed reviews conducted by the State Department and Pentagon were classified and will not be publicly released.
Kirby on botched Afghanistan withdrawal: "For all this talk of chaos, I just didn't see it.”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 6, 2023
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report says. Adding, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”
“During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies,” the report says. “Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away.”
The Biden administration released the findings with no notice ahead of the holiday weekend.
