- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Ismat Amin
FORMER US president Donald Trump slammed the current White House administration led by Joe Biden saying the collapse of Kabul without any resistance to the Taliban will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history.
“What Joe Biden has done with Afghanistan is legendary. It will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history,” the former president said in a short statement hours after the Taliban occupied the presidential palace in Kabul and its elected leader Ashraf Ghani exited the country along with his senior officials reportedly to the neighbouring Tajikistan.
Trump, who lost to Biden in the presidential election last November, had withdrawn forces from northern Syria in 2019 end to invite a backlash.
There was no reaction from the White House on the developments in the Afghanistan capital. According to sources in the White House, Biden, who is spending his weekend in Camp David, held a secure video conference with his top national security advisors.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who had served when Trump was the president, called the situation in Afghanistan a failure of the Biden administration.
“It’s not always what you do, it’s how you do it. Begging the Taliban to let Americans out of Afghanistan is not how any combat veteran or military family thought this would end. Their sacrifices mattered. Now we all know more serious threats will follow,” she said.
“If I were still the secretary of state with a commander in chief like president Trump, the Taliban would have understood that there were real costs to pay if there were plots against America. Qasem Soleimani learned that lesson, and the Taliban would have learned it as well,” former secretary of state Mike Pompeo in an interview to Fox News.
On CNN, Pompeo’s successor and current secretary of state Antony Blinken said the US has not asked the Taliban for anything.
“We’ve told the Taliban that if they interfere with our personnel, with our operations, as we’re proceeding with this drawdown, there will be a swift and decisive response. That’s what we’ve told them,” he added.
Defending Biden’s Afghanistan policy, Blinken said, “A future Afghan government that upholds the basic rights of its people and that doesn’t harbour terrorists is a government we can work with and recognise. Conversely, a government that doesn’t do that – that doesn’t uphold the basic rights of its people, including women and girls; that harbours terrorist groups that have designs on the United States or allies and partners – certainly, that’s not going to happen.”
