Biden and Trump's Afghanistan Deal

Was Biden forced to abide by President Trump's Afghanistan deal?

No. Biden is lying. President Trump's agreement was based on conditions that had to be met before U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan. NOTHING in the agreement required Biden to pull out troops, causing the deadly debacle. NOTHING.

From AP:

As President Donald Trump’s administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he optimistically proclaimed that “we think we’ll be successful in the end.” His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asserted that the administration was “seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation.”

Eighteen months later, President Joe Biden is pointing to the agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, as he tries to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan in a blitz. He says it bound him to withdraw U.S. troops, setting the stage for the chaos engulfing the country.

But Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. It had an escape clause: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.

...U.S. officials made clear at the time that the agreement was conditions-based and the failure of intra-Afghan peace talks to reach a negotiated settlement would have nullified the requirement to withdraw.

One day before the Doha deal, a top aide to chief U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said the agreement was not irreversible, and “there is no obligation for the United States to withdraw troops if the Afghan parties are unable to reach agreement or if the Taliban show bad faith” during negotiations.

Those negotiations were intended to begin within a month of the deal being signed but were delayed amid disputes between the Taliban and the Afghan government over prisoner releases. Amid fits and starts, the negotiations had not produced any outcome by the time Biden announced his withdrawal decision in April. Nor have they done so since.

In sum, Biden dismissed the conditions of President Trump's peace agreement. The escape clause allowed the U.S. to withdraw from the deal, but Biden chose to stay in it and create this unforgivable and deadly foreign policy disaster.

Biden is lying about being powerless to do anything but follow President Trump's agreement. He wasn't bound by it. In fact, the conditions-based agreement became nullified when the Afghan parties failed to reach a settlement.

Biden is a liar. President Trump and the Doha deal cannot be blamed for the disaster. Biden and his regime are responsible for every aspect of their shocking incompetence in withdrawing from Afghanistan.