White House: Trump at fault on Afghanistan

A report issued by the Biden administration on Thursday largely blamed former president Donald Trump for the deadly 2021 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and took little responsibility for its own actions in the exodus that saw 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans die.

The 12-page summary by the National Security Council (NSC) of the government's findings about the withdrawal in August 2021 ending the nation's longest war asserted that Biden's choices for how to execute the withdrawal "were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor".

Trump responded to the report on his Truth Social, saying: "These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing – Blame ‘TRUMP' for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan. I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military FIRST, GIVE $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind. Biden is responsible, no one else!"

NSC spokesperson John Kirby spoke to reporters shortly after the Pentagon and State Department provided classified reviews of the decision-making process around the withdrawal. The administration said the reviews would be transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and wouldn't be released publicly.

At the same time, the White House released its own 12-page outline that largely pinned the blame for the challenges around the withdrawal on the Trump administration, while acknowledging there were lessons to be applied to future operations.

The summary document didn't pinpoint or give specific failures. It said the president has been "fully briefed" on both the Pentagon and State Department report, and "had input" on the NSC paper.

When the withdrawal was occurring, criticism of it was swift and bipartisan. Republicans were scathing about the White House's actions, and Democrats, while acknowledging that Biden was carrying out the policies of his predecessor, criticized the haphazard manner of the withdrawal.

But in taking questions from reporters about the summary, Kirby aggressively pushed back on the notion that the US withdrawal was chaotic or disorganized.

"For all this talk of chaos, I just didn't see it. Not from my perch," said Kirby, who was Pentagon press secretary at the time of the withdrawal. He denied that the withdrawal was haphazard.

"At one point during the evacuation, there was an aircraft taking off full of people, Americans and Afghans alike, every 48 minutes, and not one single mission was missed. So, I'm sorry, I just won't buy the whole argument of chaos. It was tough in the first few hours; you would expect it to be."

Kirby's response drew a strong rebuke from US Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,which is leading a probe into the withdrawal.

He called Kirby's comments "disgraceful and insulting. President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution," McCaul said in a statement.

The NSC summary was released before McCaul received the Pentagon's classified report.

The summary acknowledges that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner but blames the delays on the Afghan government and military, and on US military and intelligence community assessments.

Kirby admitted that certain pieces of intelligence "weren't accurate".

A Fox News reporter asked Kirby who from the administration would be fired over the failures and whether Biden could trust the intelligence information given to him in his future daily briefings.

Kirby responded: "The purpose of the document that we're putting out today is to sort of collate the chief reviews and findings of the agencies that did after action reviews. The purpose of it is not accountability. The purpose of it is to study lessons learned."

He also said that no one would lose their jobs because of the events during the evacuation.

The 13 US service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the deadliest day for the US military in Afghanistan since 2011.

Asked repeatedly if the president took responsibility for the withdrawal, Kirby said "he's the commander in chief, and he absolutely has responsibility for the operations our men and women conduct and the orders that they receive".

During the reporters' questioning of Kirby, CBS News White House Correspondent Ed O'Keefe criticized the timing of the report's release, saying: "I think I speak on behalf of my colleagues in this room when I want the record to reflect this was sent to us about 10 minutes before the briefing began with little notice. And it's the very definition of a modern major holiday news dump in releasing this at the beginning of the high holidays after months of requests by the Republicans and the broad public."

Agencies contributed to this story.