The Biden administration scrapped strategically designed Afghan withdrawal plans, according to a former Trump national security official.
“I don’t even know that anyone could have made this awful scenario up,” former National Security Council Senior Director Kash Patel told Just the News. “It’s literally worse than you could possibly conjure.”
Patel was in charge of the Pentagon transition to Biden’s team as chief of staff to Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.
“There’s no plan to secure our weaponry or machinery, we’re just giving it over to terrorists,” Patel said. “And there’s no plan to secure Kabul International Airport so that at least flights can get in and out.”
Patel said the Trump administration laid out strategic plans for an Afghanistan withdrawal that they offered to Biden’s team.
The plan included a conditions-based withdrawal, where the U.S. military would leave the country in increments if the Taliban met certain conditions. The Taliban were required to reject and repudiate Al Qaeda, and would have to negotiate in good faith. Additionally, the U.S. would keep a special operations contingent in place and would hold the capacity to launch air strikes under specific circumstances.
“We would not have ever relinquished control of Bagram Airfield, because that is our command and control node for the entire region,” Patel added. “And that’s where we would fly in and out securely.”
Bagram was also home to a prison where the U.S. held terrorists that were set to be prosecuted. Upon their siege, the Taliban released thousands of prisoners considered to be a serious threat to Western nations.
The U.S., however, never planned for a simple release.
“We were working with allies and partners to prosecute them either in America or prosecute them in their home countries of origin as we successfully did under President Trump,” Patel said. “We had a plan in place and we were doing it. Releasing terrorists is never an option. It was never an option under President Trump.”
“The only way you are surprised by this sort of situation is if you don’t plan for it, if you don’t prepare for it,” he said. “We lost not one American casualty under President Trump’s conditions-based withdrawal. Look at the chaos and death that is occurring now under Biden’s [so-called] plan for Afghanistan.”
