Mark Esper, HR McMaster Blame Trump for Fall of Afghanistan
By: Joe DePaolo (Mediaite)
nothing but a small portion of the political espionage created by the former POS/POTUS.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
For days now, former President Donald Trump has tried to pin the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban squarely on his successor, President Joe Biden. But several top officials in his administration are calling out their former boss for trying to distance himself from a fire they believe he started.
Appearing on a podcast with Bari Weiss Wednesday, H.R. McMaster — Trump's former national security adviser — laid blame squarely at the feet of Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for signing what he deems an ill-fated deal with the Taliban in February 2020.
"Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban," McMaster said. "This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn't defeat us. We defeated ourselves."
Similarly, former Trump defense secretary Mark Esper — in a CNN International interview Tuesday — maintained that Trump's vocal impatience with wanting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan had a significant impact on the situation.
"My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement," Esper said. "Which is why in the fall, when he was calling for a return of U.S Forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him. A memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further, that we not reduce below 4,500 troops — unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban. Otherwise, we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways."
Trump has insisted, in recent days, that Biden owns Afghanistan — calling on him to "resign in disgrace" for his handling of the situation. Tuesday night on Hannity, Trump claimed that he would have stood up more to the Taliban if he were still in office.
"We had a great deal, we worked on it very hard," Trump said. "Mike Pompeo, a brilliant guy, and many others worked on it endlessly. Meetings with the Taliban, of course, you have to meet with the Taliban. They're the ones that you're negotiating with. I spoke on numerous occasions to the head of the Taliban, and we had a very strong conversation. I told him up front, I said, 'look, before we start, let me just tell you right now that if anything bad happens to Americans or anybody else or if you ever come over to our land, we will hit you with a force that no country has ever been hit with before.'"
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the world's greatest negotiator who knows more than the generals...
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[deleted] He didn't have a plan or a clue and ignored the intelligence and his generals
So his top advisors are saying that trmp is at least partially responsible for the fiasco
they're busy delegating lack of responsibility.
I think Pompeo is more responsible than anyone
More than the person who hired the known incompetent Pompeo?
It's equal
Okay, the Trump administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban. What was in the agreement? How was Trump planning to withdraw from Afghanistan?
If an agreement had been reached with the Taliban then Joe Biden can use that framework to hold the Taliban accountable. Or Joe Biden could have renegotiated a new agreement. Or Joe Biden could have tossed out the agreement and chosen a different course of action.
Wasn't Joe Biden elected to correct the 'disaster' of the Trump administration? If Trump did everything wrong then wasn't Joe Biden supposed to fix that? Wasn't Biden supposed to change course from Trump's policies and put the United States back on the right track?
If the Trump administrations' negotiations with the Taliban were unsatisfactory then Joe Biden has the authority change that. Apparently Biden's military and diplomatic advisors did not present a strong enough case to convince Joe Biden to do something different. Would H.R. McMaster and Mark Esper have convinced Biden to do something different?
Essentially H.R. McMaster and Mark Esper are accusing Joe Biden of doing what Trump was going to do. How does that help Joe Biden?
who is the new leader of afghanistan? who negotiated his release from prison 3 years ago? who negotiated the release of 5000 taliban fighters from prison?
Then Joe Biden could have pointed out that Trump had let terrorist out of prison as a way of delegitimizing anything Trump and Pompeo had negotiated. Biden could have blamed Trump's stupidity for needing to remain in Afghanistan longer. Biden could have claimed that Trump's stupidity required deploying more troops to Afghanistan because Trump set terrorists free.
Joe Biden had many opportunities to delegitimize Trump, bolster anti-Trump engagement in the Democrat's base, and use Afghanistan to show that Biden wasn't Trump. Biden could have used Afghanistan as justification for continuing to reverse Trump's policies.
But, no .......
Joe has been president only since January 20, 2021. Trmp was prez from Jan 20, 2017 to Jan 19, 2021. That's 4 years. How do you compare someone who has been in office less than a year to someone who was there for 4? That's an awful lot of messes to clean up and lots of repairs to be made.
Yeah, whatshisname did his best to turn the US into a shithole and tried to burn it all down before he waddled his big pig fat ass out of the White House because he LOST BIGLY.
[deleted] complete and utter incompetence is always someone else's fault.
[deleted]
Over the years I've heard this trite line bleated from one edge of the webisphere to the next, some originality please!
Joe Biden could have cited long standing policy that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists and delegitimized anything Trump and Pompeo had agreed to. That simple declaration would have delegitimized Trump and given Biden a free hand to do whatever he wanted in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden could have partitioned Afghanistan, established demilitarized zones, and planned for a decades long US presence in Afghanistan just as the United States has done in Korean. That would have ensured long term stability in Afghanistan just as it has in Korea. And Biden could have argued that historical precedence shows partitioning with long term US presence would be a better way than Trump's way of 'capitulation and surrender'.
Joe Biden could have chosen a more aggressive confrontation with the Taliban and the Taliban's regional supporters. Biden could have claimed that the threat of terrorist attacks against the United States are still a high risk without a US presence in Afghanistan. Biden could have escalated US efforts to defeat the terrorist threat. Biden could have cited long standing US leadership in the fight against terrorism and rejected Trump's policies to retreat into the borders of the United States.
Joe Biden had many opportunities to do something different in Afghanistan. Biden could have engaged in efforts to strengthen the coalition in Afghanistan as a show of US leadership in international cooperation. Biden could have led the world in humanitarian efforts and efforts to create a free, democratic Afghanistan. That would have been the opposite of Trump's foreign policy.
Now Biden has to rely on people like H.R. McMaster and Mark Esper convincing the public that Trump created the mess. But that would also mean Joe Biden was helpless to change anything. And the allies and enemies of the United States won't fail to notice Biden's helplessness.
Which one of those baker's dozen 'could haves' would have been accepted by his detractors?
Apparently H.R. McMaster and Mark Esper would have preferred any of those baker's dozen 'could haves'. Trump wanted to remove all remaining US forces and completely withdraw from Afghanistan. So, any action that maintained a military presence in Afghanistan would have satisfied those detractors.
Of course, the present detractors would have been replaced by different detractors if Biden had chosen to stay in Afghanistan.
Good thing someone around here is a mindreader.
I disagree. it would be the same people so willfully ignorant of what set this catastrophe in motion on day 1.
If anyone has been paying attention, Trump's cohorts are claiming that Biden did the right thing the wrong way. Trump and his supporters are not claiming that withdrawing from Afghanistan was a mistake; they are claiming the withdrawal was cocked up. Biden has legitimized Trump's plans to withdraw completely from Afghanistan.
In a political sense, Biden has vindicated Trump. Withdrawing from Afghanistan is not in question; the way the withdrawal was managed is the point of contention. And, now, Trump can claim he would've done the withdrawal better without needing any proof.
Those detractors excoriating Trump over planning to withdraw completely from Afghanistan will also be Biden's detractors for actually withdrawing from Afghanistan. The only thing those Trump (and now Biden) detractors need to say is 'I told ya so'. If Biden had chosen to remain in Afghanistan those detractors would have satisfied. But they would have been replaced by different detractors calling for a withdrawal as Trump had planned.
To be honest if I were a civilian over there I would have headed home before now. I probably would have been out of there with the coming of Covid. I wouldn't have wanted to locked down over there. But that is just me.
My daughter travelled throughout the Middle East on assignment, she always knew when to leave and it was well before the scramble.
Common sense kicking in... self preservation.
.... when you start to see the conservatives heading toward the exits.
I guess he’s not going by “Yesper” anymore?
he didn't get to spend as much time in the trump cash booth and still needs a steady income.