Former Vice President Mike Pence has spilled the beans on the Trump Administration’s plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and exactly how it differed from Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on August 17th, Mike Pence revealed that Joe Biden had disregarded the cease-fire deal with the Taliban negotiated by Donald Trump in February of 2020.
According to reporting from DJHJ Media, “The key points of the agreement included the US removing all combat forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, the Taliban denying safe harbor to terror groups, the exchange of 5,000 Taliban prisoners for 1,000 Afghan security forces held prisoner by the Taliban, and the start of comprehensive peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government.”
That agreement is one of the main reasons why the U.S. has not suffered a single combat casualty in Afghanistan in eighteen months.
In his op-ed, Mike Pence stated that Biden ignoring the deal set the stage for “a foreign-policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.”
By the time Donald Trump left office, “the Afghan government and the Taliban each controlled their respective territories, neither was mounting major offensives, and America had only 2,500 U.S. troops in the country — the smallest military presence since the war began in 2001,” Pence wrote.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s failure, all of the plans and deals went right out the window. Biden broke Trump’s agreement almost immediately after taking office, announcing that U.S. forces would be staying in Afghanistan past the May 1st deadline.
According to Mike Pence, Biden made this announcement “without a clear reason for doing so.”
Further, Biden threw out Trump’s plan without even coming up with a strategy of his own to replace it.
“There was no plan to transport the billions of dollars worth of American equipment recently captured by the Taliban, or evacuate the thousands of Americans now scrambling to escape Kabul, or facilitate the regional resettlement of the thousands of Afghan refugees who will now be seeking asylum in the U.S. with little or no vetting,” Pence said, adding, “Rather, it seems that the president simply didn’t want to appear to be abiding by the terms of a deal negotiated by his predecessor.”
The former vice president also noted that, soon after Biden violated the Trump administration’s deal, the Taliban launched their offensive because “they knew there was no credible threat of force under this president.”
“Weakness arouses evil and the magnitude of evil now rising in Afghanistan speaks volumes about the weaknesses of Mr. Biden,” Pence added.
“After 20 years, more than 2,400 American deaths, 20,000 Americans wounded, and over $2 trillion spent, the American people are ready to bring our troops home,” the former vice president concluded. “But the manner in which Mr. Biden has executed this withdrawal is a disgrace, unworthy of the courageous American servicemen and women whose blood still stains the soil of Afghanistan.”