Afghanistan Times
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Kabul: Republicans have expressed outrage after the Biden administration largely blamed Donald Trump for the shortcomings of the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A summary report released by the White House on Thursday justified how the current administration carried out the chaotic US exit from Afghanistan in 2021. It said Biden’s “choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created” by Trump.
That assessment sparked a rebuke from Republicans in Congress, who accused the Biden administration of absolving itself of responsibility by pointing the finger at the former president.
Key Democrats in Congress have stayed mostly mum about the review.
Congressman William Timmons called the report a “partisan absurdity”, invoking an ISIL (ISIS) attack on an evacuation operation in Kabul during the US withdrawal that killed at least 175 people, including 13 American service members, in 2021.
“Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan directly resulted in the loss of 13 US service members, the deaths of thousands of Afghans, and billions of dollars of US military equipment left in the hands of the Taliban,” Timmons, a South Carolina Republican, wrote on Twitter.
Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution.”
