In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, former US Vice President Mike Pence lashes out at current President Joe Biden and how his administration has handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Biden has dishonoured the memory of heroic Americans.”
“The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Biden administration is an unprecedented humiliation of our foreign policy,” Pence told Biden. The former vice president denounced Biden’s July statements that it is “implausible that the Taliban can take over the whole country”. Today, that unlikely scenario has become a “terrible reality.”
According to the letter, the Biden administration has now violated a deal with the Taliban that the Republican Trump administration had signed. If the Taliban adhered to certain agreements, American troops gradually returned home, Pence writes. To do this, the Taliban had to cease their attacks on American targets, provide no shelter for terrorists, and negotiate with Afghan leaders to establish a new government.
The withdrawal is said to have been completed by May 1 this year under President Donald Trump. The fact that Biden subsequently decided to keep the troops in the country longer, according to Pence, led to the offensive with which the Taliban seized power.
“This situation has embarrassed America on the global stage, made allies question our trustworthiness and encouraged enemies to test our resolve,” Pence writes. “And worst of all, he has dishonoured the memory of the heroic Americans who helped hold the terrorists to account after 9/11 and all those who served in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.”
Former President Trump himself expressed his displeasure with the American presence in Afghanistan in an interview with Fox News earlier this week. The US should never have intervened there twenty years ago, Trump said.