The White House on Thursday released its review of President Biden's fumbled withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, dropping the long-awaited report days before the Easter holiday while former President Donald Trump's indictment dominates headlines.
In a 12-page outline, Biden officials defend the president's decision to withdraw, calling his decision to end the two decades-long war "the right thing for the country." The report does not appear to acknowledge any mistakes made by Biden. However, the document repeatedly criticizes the Trump administration for constraining the conditions of American evacuation, during which 13 American soldiers died in a suicide bombing while protecting the Kabul airport.
"As you all know, over these many months, departments and agencies key to the withdrawal conducted thorough internal after-action reviews, each of them examining their decision making processes, as well as how those decisions were executed," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
"Today, they are making those reviews available to relevant committees in the Senate and in the House, as previewed by Secretaries Blinken and Austin in testimony last month," he added.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan precipitated the disastrous collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban's takeover of Kabul on August 15, 2021. Biden oversaw evacuation efforts for U.S. allies, translators, and Afghan refugees considered at risk of retribution from the radical Islamist forces overtaking the country. Nearly 1,000 American citizens were left behind and later evacuated. Thousands of Afghan allies remain in the country.
The document released by the White House gives a broad overview of the administration's actions and recounts the details of the Afghanistan withdrawal from their perspective.
"President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor," the document states upfront. The White House accuses Trump of emboldening the Taliban by engaging in peace talks without consulting U.S. allies and partners in the region. The document emphasizes that at the same time, Trump was decreasing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan with a series of drawdowns throughout 2020.
"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 White House 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."
By the time Biden assumed office, the White House says, "the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country."
This is a developing story that will be updated.
