Republicans assail Kabul pullout they supported under Trump
Joint U-turn reflects their eagerness to attack Joe Biden
Early last year, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, praised former President Donald Trump’s deal to pull US troops out of Afghanistan as “a positive step.” As secretary of state, Mike Pompeo helped negotiate that agreement with the Taliban. Sen. Josh Hawley pressed last November for a withdrawal as soon as possible.
Now, the three are among dozens of prominent Republicans who, with President Joe Biden seeing the pullout through, have sharply reversed themselves — assailing Biden even as he keeps a promise that Trump had made.
The collective U-turn reflects Republicans’ eagerness to attack Biden and ensure that he pays a political price for the way he ended the war.
“You can’t be going out there and saying, ‘This war was worthless and we need to bring the troops home’ in May, and now hitting Biden for doing just that,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who broke with Trump after the January 6 Capitol riot and has long favoured maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan. “There’s no shame anymore.”
Trump came into office having reversed his party’s long-held position on foreign interventions and called for an immediate removal of US troops stationed overseas. In
February 2020, he announced a peace treaty with the Taliban, negotiated by Pompeo, that called for ending the US presence by May 1, 2021.
Clinging to ‘America first’
After his defeat last November, Republicans clung to Trump’s “America First” line. They urged Biden to stick to the May 1 deadline and publicly groused when Biden extended the date for a withdrawal until August 31. “That kind of thinking has kept us in Afghanistan nearly 20 years,” Rep. Andy Biggs, complained at the time. But as the Americans’ final days in Afghanistan devolved last month into a frantic race to get more than 125,000 people out, Republican lawmakers and candidates who had embraced Trump’s agreement with the Taliban abruptly changed their tune.
They savaged Biden for negotiating with the Taliban and denounced his avowed eagerness to wind down the US presence in Afghanistan before September 11, calling it a sign of weakness.
Trump came into office having reversed his party’s long-held position on foreign interventions and called for an immediate removal of US troops stationed overseas.