Former US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 led to Russian President Vladimir Putin gaining a “little more ambition”.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said: “I think it was the most embarrassing period, the way we withdrew — not the fact that we withdrew — the way we withdrew from Afghanistan. And I think Putin actually saw that and he probably got a little more ambition, frankly.”
Trump also said the US missed the chance to pull out of Afghanistan with “dignity and strength”, and suggested that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley “should be court-martialed” over the withdrawal.
“When I was gone, they did the withdrawal. Milley should be court-martialed. They did a withdrawal … where the soldiers came out first. If you asked a five-year-old child [for] strategy, the soldiers come out last,” Trump said.
The US withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took over the White House from Trump. However, the withdrawal proved disastrous and has led to widespread criticism over Washington’s handling of the process.
Two weeks ago, the Biden administration released a summary of classified reports that mostly blamed the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan on Trump.
The Democratic administration’s summary, drawn from top-secret State Department and Pentagon reviews sent to Congress, ignited angry reactions from Republican lawmakers who have demanded the documents for their own investigation of the pullout.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” said the summary of the reviews. “The outgoing administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans or Afghan allies.”
The document acknowledged that the administration learned lessons from the withdrawal, and now errs on the side of “aggressive communication” about risks in a destabilized security environment.
The US-backed Kabul government collapsed on Aug. 15, 2021 as the Taliban were entering the city.
The disorganization and chaos as the US left raised questions about Biden’s leadership, the quality of US intelligence and America’s commitment to human rights and thousands of Afghan citizens it had relied on.
