Kash Patel, who worked for Trump’s Pentagon and was responsible for the initial Afghanistan withdrawal plan, strongly rebuked the Biden administration’s blaming the Trump presidency for the chaos in the currently Taliban-controlled country.
Kash Patel, who worked for Trump's Pentagon and was responsible for the initial Afghanistan withdrawal plan, strongly rebuked the Biden administration's blaming the Trump presidency for the chaos in the currently Taliban-controlled country.
"What a sad-sack attempt at blame-shifting," wrote Patel, who was the chief of staff for the Department of Defense and served as deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump for counterterrorism. Patel, penning an op-ed, goes on to state that "what proved catastrophic were Biden's changes to that plan."
Patel's article published by New York Post reads:
"I’m intimately familiar with former President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan strategy. In November 2020, I was named chief of staff at the Pentagon, where one of my primary responsibilities was to wind down the forever war in Afghanistan."
"Trump instructed me to arrange a conditions-based, methodical exit plan that would preserve the national interest. The plan ended up being fairly simple: The Afghan government and the Taliban were both told they would face the full force of the US military if they caused any harm to Americans or American interests in Afghanistan."
"We successfully executed this plan until Jan. 20, 2021. During this interval — when there were no US casualties in Afghanistan — President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban conducted multiple rounds of negotiations, and al Qaeda was sidelined."
"The result was a successful drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan to 2,500, the lowest count since the dawn of the War on Terror."
"We handed our entire plan to the incoming Biden administration during the lengthy transition. The new team simply wasn’t interested."
Prior to the recent withdrawals of troops, 18 months had passed in Afghanistan without a single American casualty.
Now, the Embassy has advised US citizens to shelter in place, as they are not able to securely reach the Kabul airport for evacuation.
The Embassy had also reportedly communicated with President Joe Biden directly in July 2021, warning him about the imminent danger of a Taliban takeover. It seems that no appropriate action was taken.
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