A US National Security Council-led review of the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan largely places the blame on former President Trump, saying President Biden was severely constrained by his predecessor’s decisions.

The White House publicly released a 12-page summary on Thursday of the results of the so-called hotwash of US policy around the end of the country’s longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions during some of the darkest moments of the war. Biden’s presidency.

The administration said most of the post-action assessments, which were passed privately to Congress on Thursday, were top secret and would not be made public.

President Biden’s choices for executing a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by the circumstances created by his predecessor, the White House summary states, noting that when Biden took office, the Taliban was in the strongest military position where they have been since 2001. control or contest almost half of the country.

The report criticizes the intelligence community’s overly optimistic assessments of the Afghan military’s readiness to fight and says Biden followed military commanders’ recommendations for the pace of US troop withdrawal.

The White House claims that Afghanistan’s mistakes were the basis of its treatment of Ukraine, where the Biden administration is credited with supporting Kiev’s defense against Russian invasion. The White House says it simulated worst-case scenarios ahead of the February 2022 invasion and released information about Moscow’s intentions months in advance.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan, one year later

We are now prioritizing earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation, the White House said.

In an apparent attempt to defend its decision-making on national security, the Biden administration also notes that it has issued pre-war warnings over strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government.

Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the withdrawal from Afghanistan, highlighting the death of 13 military personnel in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport.

Former Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was badly injured in the explosion, told a congressional hearing last month that the withdrawal was a catastrophe and that there was an unforgivable lack of accountability.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby credited U.S. forces for acting in the largest airborne evacuation of non-combatants in history during the chaos of the fall of Kabul.

They ended our country’s longest war,” he told reporters. That was never going to be easy. And as the president himself has said, it would never be low value, low risk or low cost.

Since the US withdrawal, Biden has blamed the February 2020 deal Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying it prompted the US to leave the country. The deal gave the Taliban considerable legitimacy and has been accused by analysts of undermining the US-backed government, which would so quickly collapse a year later.

But the agreement also gave the US the right to withdraw from the accord if the Afghan peace talks failed, which they did.

The agreement required the US to remove all troops by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed for a full withdrawal until September, but refused to delay any further, saying it would prolong a war that is long overdue.