Political mudslinging over the apparent fall of Kabul to the Taliban escalated in Washington Sunday, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken claiming the Biden administration “inherited” the situation from the former Trump administration and had to go along with a rushed U.S. pullout to avoid restarting “a war that we need to end.”
Mr. Blinken’s comments came as Trump-era Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took to the airways himself to accuse President Biden of “pathetic blame-shifting” on Afghanistan, after Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump traded rhetorical blows in a swirl of statements a day earlier over the developments now unfolding in Kabul.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Pompeo said the Biden administration should be preparing to “go crush these Taliban that are surrounding Kabul.”
The nation woke Sunday morning to images of smoke rising in the air near the American embassy in the Afghan capital — reportedly from U.S. officials scrambling to incinerate sensitive documents before being evacuated as Taliban fighters rolled into the city with apparently no major military resistance from U.S.-trained Afghan military forces.
Mr. Blinken, who appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, claimed the developments were set in motion by the Trump administration and said the alternative to what is now unfolding in Afghanistan would have been to restart a major war with the Taliban, something the Biden administration is not willing to do.
“We inherited a deadline negotiated by the previous administration. That deadline was May 1st and the idea that we could have maintained the status quo beyond May 1st if the president had decided to stay, I think is a fiction,” the secretary of state said.
“If the president had decided to stay, all gloves would have been off,” Mr. Blinken said. “We would have been back at war, with the Taliban attacking our forces. The offensive you see throughout the country almost certainly would have proceeded. We would have had about 2,500 forces in country with air power. That would not have been sufficient to deal with the situation and I would be on your show right now explaining why we were sending tens of thousands of forces back into Afghanistan to restart a war that we need to end.”
U.S. forces began a full and rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan last year under a tentative cessation of violence deal struck with the Taliban after years of shakey negotiations with the hardline Islamist group that once gave safe-haven to al Qaeda leaders who plotted the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
As part of the talks with the militants, the Trump administration initiated the full American and NATO pullout, which was underway when Mr. BIden became president. The Biden administration subsequently accelerated the pullout.
The Associated Press reported that Taliban fighters had entered Kabul on Sunday and sought the unconditional surrender of the central government, as Afghans and foreigners alike raced for the exit, signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.
The beleaguered Afghan government, meanwhile, hoped for an interim administration, but increasingly had few cards to play. Civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings.
Helicopters buzzed overhead to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy, while smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.
In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.
Seth McLaughlin contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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