Biden administration failed to foresee Afghanistan mayhem, review finds By Michael Birnbaum and Dan Lamothe Updated June 30, 2023 at 6:51 p.m. EDT|Published June 30, 2023 at 2:15 p.m. EDT
Thousands of Afghans and their families, desperate to flee the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, gather at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021. (Lance Cpl. Nicholas Guevara/AP)
A State Department report released Friday faults the agency’s crisis management and awareness before and during the fall of Afghanistan, findings certain to be trumpeted by Republicans and other critics who have charged that bureaucratic lethargy played a significant role in the chaos and violence that unfolded nearly two years ago during one of the Biden administration’s darkest moments.
The report says that President Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, each failed to appreciate how a U.S. military pullout would affect the Afghan government’s stability, and that standard summer diplomatic rotations in the weeks ahead of Kabul’s collapse left the U.S. evacuation in the hands of personnel who in some cases had been in the country for only a few days or weeks. Critical missteps identified in the report present fresh evidence of the mayhem that left Afghanistan’s future in the hands of the oppressive Taliban regime, cost the lives of scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, and sent Biden’s approval ratings tumbling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ghanistan-withdrawal-state-department-report/
Thousands of Afghans and their families, desperate to flee the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, gather at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021. (Lance Cpl. Nicholas Guevara/AP)
A State Department report released Friday faults the agency’s crisis management and awareness before and during the fall of Afghanistan, findings certain to be trumpeted by Republicans and other critics who have charged that bureaucratic lethargy played a significant role in the chaos and violence that unfolded nearly two years ago during one of the Biden administration’s darkest moments.
The report says that President Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, each failed to appreciate how a U.S. military pullout would affect the Afghan government’s stability, and that standard summer diplomatic rotations in the weeks ahead of Kabul’s collapse left the U.S. evacuation in the hands of personnel who in some cases had been in the country for only a few days or weeks. Critical missteps identified in the report present fresh evidence of the mayhem that left Afghanistan’s future in the hands of the oppressive Taliban regime, cost the lives of scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, and sent Biden’s approval ratings tumbling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ghanistan-withdrawal-state-department-report/