White House defends US troop withdrawal, but acknowledges intelligence failure

They were long overdue. Classified documents relating to the withdrawal of American forces of Afghanistan were sent to Congress by US President Joe Biden on Thursday 6 April. The White House took the opportunity to justify this decision which ended, in August 2021, the longest war in the United States. She admitted an intelligence misfire, but broadly defended the decision.

“At the end of the day, after more than 20 years, spending more than $2 trillion, and organizing an Afghan army of 300,000, the speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of the Afghanistan suggest that there was no other scenario that could have changed the trajectory, except for a permanent and significantly reinforced American military presence”reads a document summarizing how this withdrawal was designed and executed.

As the Taliban regained power before the last American soldier had even left, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, admitted that the White House had not anticipated this lightning victory, nor the mass disaffection of the Afghan army and authorities. “It is clear that we were wrong” in terms of intelligence, he said during a briefing, adding that Washington also had no “got the full measure of the degree of corruption among the officers” Afghans.