Three main officials from former President Donald Trump's administration are attempting to rewrite history on their role in Afghanistan, wrote CNN fact-checkers Sunday.
While there has been a lot of criticism directed at President Joe Biden for the way in which he withdrew American troops from Afghanistan, Daniel Dale explained that Trump's allies are playing fast and loose with the truth.
"In public statements this past week, former Vice President Mike Pence, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller have all slammed Biden in one way or another for the chaos that has unfolded in Afghanistan this month," the fact-check explained. "While some of that criticism has been accurate, much of it has inaccurately tried to rewrite the Trump administration's own history on Afghanistan -- denouncing Biden while also misleadingly omitting the actions taken by Trump and his administration."
Dale noted that Mike Pence's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that Trump's peace agreement with the Taliban "immediately brought to Afghanistan a stability unseen in decades."
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox Business News this week that while in office, Trump's work "kept the country stable."
There's "no legitimate argument" that Trump's Taliban deal created anything resembling "stability," the fact-check explained. Fewer troops were certainly killed in combat after the deal, but that doesn't mean Afghan troops and civilians weren't killed. In fact, the United Nations reported "there was a drop in the number of civilian casualties documented in the first nine months" of 2020, "in stark contrast, the last three months of the year marked an uncharacteristic rise in civilian casualties -- a critical indicator of the nature of the conflict. The year ended with increased focus on levels of violence and diminishing hopes for lasting peace."
In a March report from the Defense Department's inspector general, "the Taliban escalated violence further" in the aftermath of "signing of the agreement."
However, some former Trump administration officials agree the former president is also culpable for the events of the last week.
May 1 was the date Trump and the Taliban agreed the U.S. would leave. However, former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller told DefenseOne last week that the agreement on the May 1 deadline was a "play."
According to Miller, "many Trump administration officials expected that the United States would be able to broker a new shared government in Afghanistan composed primarily of Taliban officials. The new government would then permit U.S. forces to remain in country to support the Afghan military and fight terrorist elements." Trump then lost the 2020 election, none of that happened.
Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also said that Trump "undermined the agreement." During the final months of his work in the administration, Esper said he warned Trump that without a slower withdrawal "we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways." Trump announced that he would bring home all Afghan soldiers by Christmas 2020. That never happened.
On Friday, Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security adviser to Mike Pence, said that Stephen Miller and other anti-immigrant "racists" in the Trump administration intentionally worked to block special visas for Afghan allies, translators and their families, who were promised that they would be given a safe exit.
