Thread by @81stinfbde

1/21 You people are STILL trying to blame President Biden for the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco, and you can do ALL the investigations you want, wrap them up in a box with a pretty ribbon, but the fact REMAINS prior investigations by REPUBLICAN Senators and military Generals on

https://twitter.com/SeanParnellASW/status/2044926109058544091

2/21 the ground put the majority of the withdrawal SQUARELY on the shoulders of Donald Trump, one of the most INEPT, INCOMPETENT "Commander in Chief" in U.S. history. He PURPOSELY set Joe Biden up for FAILURE. A Top US general investigating the withdrawal stated the Afghan

3/21 collapse could be traced DIRECTLY to the Trump-Taliban deal that the Trump Administration struck with the Taliban BEHIND the backs of the Afghan government. The Doha agreement, signed in February 2020, set a date for the US to fully withdraw troops by May 2021. The collapse

4/21 of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to that 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, cited senior Pentagon officials in a hearing with Congressional committee members at the time

5/21 after a THOROUGH investigation. Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House armed services committee that due to the fact the Trump administration had removed all but 2500 troops by the time he left office in January, 2021 it left the Biden administration

6/21 with only 2500 troops to withdraw the entire regiment of U.S citizens who were working in the Green Zone of Afghanistan, soldiers and their extended families, and Afghan translators and others who helped the U.S. as well as having to provide security. It left a DAUNTING task

7/21 for the Biden administration to fly them out of the country. President Joe Biden could see that he would not be able to honor the May deadline, and military advisors informed him it would not be possible until September to accomplish the withdrawal due to the small number of

8/21 troops Trump left Biden with. After this realization the unraveling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated. “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military, psychological more than anything else,

9/21 but we set a date certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said. He was referring to a 29 February, 2020 agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the US promised to

10/21 fully withdraw its troops by May 2021 and the Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic

11/21 effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January, 2021, due to the fact that the Trump Administration made the agreement with the Taliban BEHIND the Afghan governments back, not even informing them of the deal they had made with the Taliban until after the

12/21 deal was finished. He also had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse and that “the military would follow”.

13/21 He stated "president" Trump was informed of this, but he chose to ignore the warning, and because of HIS stupidity, President Biden paid the price, which was Trump's goal in the first place. He WANTED Biden to fail, which is why he only left him with such a small

14/21 number of troops. He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Donald Trump was “the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army,

15/21 “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units”. As well, President Biden was forced to close the Bagram airfield, due to not enough people to secure it. Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with McKenzie's

16/21 analysis. He added that the Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on

17/21 a weekly basis”. The Congressional hearing was politically charged, with Republicans seeking to cast Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointing to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years. Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs

18/21 of staff, had said a day earlier in a similar hearing in the Senate that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “strategic failure”, LARGELY due in part to the agreement Trump made with the Taliban instead of including the Afghan government. The U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal

19/21 was a ‘logistical success but strategic failure’, Milley stated. General Milley also told the Senate committee that it had been his personal opinion that a much larger number of U.S. troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the Kabul government and a return to

20/21 Taliban rule. Donald Trump and the others who helped set up the agreement with the Taliban, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, defied US intelligence assessments, and the Afghan government and its U.S. trained army collapsed in mid-August, allowing the Taliban,

21/21 which had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, to capture Kabul with just a couple of hundred men on motorcycles, without a shot being fired, as General Milley described it. So CUT THE CRAP! Donald Trump is COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE for the fucked up Afghanistan withdrawal!

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