The White House Thursday laid the blame for the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan primarily on former President Donald Trump, saying President Joe Biden was "severely constrained" by the decisions of his predecessor.
The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the so-called "hotwash" of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation's longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions during some of the darkest moments of Biden's presidency.
The administration said most of the after-action reviews, which were transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and would not be released publicly.
"President Biden's choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor," the White House summary states, noting that when Biden entered office, "the Taliban were in the strongest military position they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country."
The review led by the National Security Council does fault overly optimistic intelligence community assessments about the Afghan army's willingness to fight and says Biden followed military commanders' recommendations for the pacing of the drawdown of U.S. forces.
The White House asserts the mistakes of Afghanistan informed its handling of Ukraine, where the Biden administration has been credited for supporting Kyiv's defense against Russia's invasion.
"America is on a stronger strategic footing more capable to support Ukraine and to meet our security commitments around the world, as well as the competition with China, because it is not fighting a ground war in Afghanistan," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday.
"Transitions matter," Kirby said, and Biden was left with a stark choice – withdraw all U.S. forces, or resume fighting with the Taliban.
The Taliban overran Afghanistan in August 2021 as the former Western-backed government in Kabul collapsed with surprising speed and the last U.S. troops withdrew. Under Biden's Republican predecessor Trump, the U.S. made a deal with the Taliban to withdraw all American forces.
The White House says it simulated worst-case scenarios prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and moved to release intelligence about Moscow's intentions months beforehand.
"We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation," the White House said.
In an apparent attempt to defend its national security decision making, the Biden administration also notes that it released pre-war warnings over "strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government."
Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal, focusing on the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul's airport.
Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was badly wounded in the explosion, told a congressional hearing last month that the withdrawal "was a catastrophe" and "there was an inexcusable lack of accountability."
Kirby credited U.S. forces for their actions in running the largest airborne evacuation of noncombatants in history during the chaos of Kabul's fall.
"They ended our nation's longest war," he told reporters. "That was never going to be an easy thing to do. And as the president himself has said, it was never going to be low grade or low risk or low cost."
Since the U.S. withdrawal, Biden has blamed the February 2020 agreement Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying it boxed the U.S. into leaving the country.
The agreement gave the Taliban significant legitimacy and has been blamed by analysts for undercutting the U.S.-backed government, which would collapse so quickly a year later.
But the agreement also gave the U.S. the right to withdraw from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed – which they did.
The agreement required the U.S. to remove all forces by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed a full withdrawal to September but declined to delay further, saying it would prolong a war that had long needed to end.
