Biden White House faults Trump in troubled Afghanistan withdrawal

WASHINGTON — The White House released a report Thursday about the decisions made regarding the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, including the bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members.

The 12-page report by the National Security Council summarizes the administration’s assessment of the withdrawal and largely blames former President Donald Trump’s administration for the chaos that unfolded as U.S. troops were leaving and as Americans and Afghans evacuated from the country. The Taliban took over the government and have remained in power.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the report said.

Similar reports on the withdrawal — prepared by the Defense Department and the State Department with classified material — are being shared with lawmakers on Capitol Hill following requests from congressional committees, officials said Thursday.

When Trump took office in 2017, more than 10,000 U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan, the report said, and he continued to order drawdowns over his final year in office, bringing the total down to about 2,500.

But the Trump administration “provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies,” the White House said. “President Biden had committed to ending the war in Afghanistan, but when he came into office he was confronted with difficult realities left to him by the Trump Administration.”

The White House said the lack of communication from the Trump administration underscores why effective coordination for the transition process is critical, “especially when it comes to complex military operations,” the summary says. Fueled by Trump’s false claims that he had been denied re-election by rampant fraud, his administration largely refused to conduct traditional transition communications ahead of Biden’s taking office.

Biden and his team were “well aware of the challenges posed by withdrawing from a warzone” after 20 years, the White House said, and while the Trump administration left a target date to leave Afghanistan, it provided “no plan for executing it.”

Trump responded in a post on Truth Social, saying the Biden administration is trying to blame him “for their grossly incompetent…