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Trump censures Biden, says US ‘surrendered in defeat’ in Afghanistan

The file photo, taken on July 11, 2021, shows former US President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas. (By AFP)

Donald Trump has denounced US President Joe Biden’s hasty withdrawal of America’s military assets from Afghanistan, censuring the ‘ineptitude’ of the current administration in Washington that has “surrendered in defeat.”

In a video message at the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the former president of the United States said there has “never been a greater embarrassment” to the country than the Biden administration’s “rushed” withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“They should have never taken the military out first — you take the military out last, after all of the people are out.”

“There has never been anything like this. It looks like we fled.”

Trump also lamented the circumstances following the pullout of US forces from the war-torn country.

“We will struggle to recover from the embarrassment this incompetence has caused.”

In October 2001, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan. The proclaimed rationale was “war on terror.” The Taliban’s rule in the country ended as a result, but now not only the Americans have withdrawn in defeat, the Taliban are back in power, too.

Trump, whose administration brokered a deal with the Taliban in Qatar in 2020, claimed what America sees now “never would have happened” during his tenure.

Under the deal, Washington was obliged to pull out all of its forces from Afghanistan by the end of May 2021.

Biden missed the deadline. All US military forces were pulled out from Afghanistan on August 31, two weeks after the country fell to the Taliban.

Trump said he “wanted to get out by May 1, and when they [the Taliban] violated conditions, we bombed and did a lot of things.”

“They knew that if they did, they would be bombed into hell.”

The former president blamed “bad planning, incredible weakness and leaders who truly didn't understand what was happening.”

He said the Biden administration “created this big open wound, a void, and the Taliban just came in and filled it, and within 24 hours, they controlled the whole country.”

Biden defends his administration’s handling of the withdrawal.

A group of representatives, however, has asked Congress to press the Pentagon to testify on the way Washington ended the country’s longest war, which cost the US tax-payers $2.3 trillion in two decades.

The war has also resulted in the death of 2,324 US military personnel, 4,007 US contractors and 46,319 Afghan civilians, according to the Cost of War Project at Brown University.


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