By Madiha Afzal
On April 6, the White House released a short report defending its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The 12-page summary was released on the cusp of Easter weekend — presumably to minimize attention to it — but the substance of the document and the accompanying press briefing with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby nevertheless generated immediate interest as well as criticism. The document’s bottom line was that the Biden administration inherited the problematic Doha deal from the Trump administration, which significantly limited its options, and did as well as it could have in terms of the withdrawal and the evacuation between August 14 and August 31, 2021.
The document comes across as defensive — perhaps unsurprising, given that the withdrawal is under scrutiny from a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. With the 2024 election looming, there aren’t any political incentives to admit fault, especially because the Afghanistan withdrawal is already seen as a foreign policy failure for the Biden administration. By Kirby’s own admission, the report’s purpose “is not accountability.” But in its current form, it makes for disingenuous reading and suggests that the…
