Bolton Claims Afghanistan Withdrawal Would Have Looked the Same Under Trump
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton believes that the situation in Afghanistan would be no different if former President Donald Trump was reelected.
During an interview with NPR on Monday, Bolton was asked, “What kind of scenario was former President Trump striving for?”
“Well, I don’t think he thought coherently about it. I think if he’d been reelected, he would have done essentially the same thing Biden did,” Bolton said.
He responded, “In fact, Trump wanted out, he was going to get out, he didn’t care whether the conditions that were included in the peace deal were met. Had he been reelected, I think he would have done the same thing Biden did.”
Listen to the interview below:
“I think if he had been reelected, he would’ve done essentially the same thing Biden did.”
— Former Nat. Sec. Adviser John Bolton on Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/TilIgHwQC1
— The Recount (@therecount) August 16, 2021
Last year, Trump administration officials brokered an agreement with the Taliban aimed at ending 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
As NBC News reports, the deal stipulated that a full U.S. withdrawal from the country would “depend on the Taliban meeting commitments to prevent terrorism.”
President Joe Biden reportedly overruled concerns from military advisers that a full withdrawal from Afghanistan would lead to a new terrorist threat.
The New York Times notes that “a senior Biden administration official said the president had come to believe that a ‘conditions-based approach’ would mean that American troops would never leave the country.”
In a statement on Saturday, Biden placed blamed for the withdrawal on Trump as he said the peace deal required him to choose to either “follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our Forces and our allies’ Forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.”
Trump issued a statement calling on Biden to “resign in disgrace” as the Taliban stunned administration officials with the swiftness in which Afghanistan fell, as IJR reported.
Over the weekend, the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan, the nation’s capital. Meanwhile, the U.S. carried out a rushed evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies.
Biden has authorized the deployment of 7,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help facilitate a secure evacuation. The collapse of the Afghan government prompted thousands of people to flood to the Hamid Karzai International Airport to try to flee the country.
On Monday, images and videos surfaced of Afghan people clinging to the sides of U.S. military planes desperate to escape. Some videos showed people falling off the planes during take-off.
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