Washington: Former US President Donald Trump told his supporters in Cullman, Alabama, that the recent developments in Afghanistan are a major failure of the current US administration’s foreign policy and a great military defeat that demonstrates Washington’s incompetence.
Trump said at the Saturday Save America rally in Cullman that the world is now looking at Washington thinking “What the hell happened so quickly to the United States of America?”
The former president said the situation in Afghanistan will go down as “one of the greatest embarrassments” and the “greatest foreign policy humiliation” in the history of the US.
Trump accused US President Joe Biden of surrendering the US military bases in Afghanistan, stressing that US troops are leaving $83 billion of dollars worth of military equipment behind.
“This will go down as one of the great military defeats of all time,” Trump said, calling the troop withdrawal a “total surrender” and a “gross incompetence by a nation’s leader.” Trump emphasized that under his presidency, this would never have happened.
Trump suggested that Washington should have analyzed the experience of Russian forces in Afghanistan before taking any drastic steps. He called Biden’s plan on troop withdrawal from Afghanistan a “horrific decision” and said that the US should be prepared to send troops back into Afghanistan in order to help thousands of American citizens who remain there.
Trump said Biden’s faulty approach to Afghanistan will result in “The Taliban flag flying over our [US] embassy” in Afghanistan on September 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Violence had been on the rise in Afghanistan amid the withdrawal of international troops from the country. The United States began pulling its forces out of Afghanistan in May with the outlook to finish on September 11.
On August 15, the Taliban (a terrorist group, banned in Russia) entered the Afghan capital of Kabul. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani resigned and fled the country to prevent what he described as bloodshed that would occur if the militants had to fight for the city. Most countries have reduced or evacuated their diplomatic missions in Kabul.
The chief of the political office of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar, will likely make a decision concerning the structure of the future Afghan government over the next two weeks, a source in the Taliban told Sputnik on Saturday.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said earlier this week that the United States must withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11.
