Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that he believes former President Donald Trump would have kept a few thousand troops in Afghanistan despite the administration’s agreement with the Taliban to leave.
Pence made the comments during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday while placing blame for the widely condemned U.S. troop withdrawal on President Joe Biden’s administration. The former vice president rejected the idea that the Trump-Pence administration was in any way responsible for how the war ended, telling the network that he and Trump would have stopped honoring the deal they reached with the Taliban once Taliban leadership started violating it.
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“Under our administration, I promise you, that while it was the intention of the president, the former president to pull our troops out, when the Taliban broke the deal and moved into Mazar-e Sharif and Joe Biden did nothing, that set into motion the catastrophe that became Afghanistan and the heartbreaking end to 20 years of conflict,” Pence said.
Asked if this meant he believed the United States would have kept troops in the region after the August 2021 pullout date, Pence responded affirmatively.
“Candidly, it was always my belief that it would be prudent to keep a couple of thousand American forces there to support our efforts against terrorist elements, both in Afghanistan and in the region, and I think we ultimately would have done that,” he said. “Just as the president announced, the former president announced, we were pulling troops out of Syria. … Ultimately, there’s still American forces in Syria today. I think we would have landed in that place.”
“I will tell you with deep conviction that that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan would never have happened under our administration because we would have held the Taliban to the deal,” he added.
A State Department report released this week found fault with the Biden administration’s crisis management and situational awareness before and during the collapse of the Afghan government. The 23-page, heavily redacted report, requested by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also apportions blame on Trump and the pandemic for the challenges encountered amid the end of the 20-year war, such as staff shortages overseas and COVID-19-restricted in-person crisis responses.
Although the Defense Department started planning for an evacuation from Kabul “some time” before August 2021, the State Department’s participation in those preparations “was hindered by the fact that it was unclear who in the Department had the lead,” according to the report. The report, too, found U.S. officials provided “insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios.”
Thirteen service members were killed in an ISIS-K terrorist attack near Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate during the withdrawal. Almost 200 Afghan civilians died in the incident as well.
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This spring, the United Nations found 20 years of progress for women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan had been undone since the Taliban’s takeover.
“I said al Qaeda would not be there. I said it wouldn’t be there. I said we would get help from the Taliban,” Biden told reporters Friday at the White House. “What is happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.”
Naomi Lim contributed to this report.
