Trump Aide Kash Patel Attacks Biden for Shifting Blame on Trump Administration for Afghanistan Debacle

Trump loyalist Kash Patel says President Biden’s claim that the situation following the U.S. troops’ withdrawal in Afghanistan was “inherited” from the previous administration is a “sad-sack attempt on blame-shifting.” In an op-ed in the New York Post, Patel says he made the observation as someone who is “intimately familiar with former President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan strategy.” Patel has served as chief of staff for the Department of Defense and as deputy assistant to the president for counterterrorism in the Trump administration.

In the op-ed, published on Aug. 19, the senior Trump official notes that after being appointed as chief of staff at the Pentagon in November 2020, one of his primary responsibilities was “to wind down the forever war in Afghanistan.” In that role, Patel writes that Trump instructed him “to arrange a conditions-based, methodical exit plan that would preserve the national interest.”

Explaining the plan further, Patel writes that the Afghan government and the Taliban “were both told they would face the full force of the U.S military if they caused any harm to Americans or American interests in Afghanistan.” This was followed by a negotiation by both parties to “create an interim-joint government, and both sides had to repudiate al Qaeda,” Patel wrote. In the final step, “a small special-operations force would be stationed in the country to take direct action against any terrorist threats that arose.” And “when all those conditions were met — along with other cascading conditions — then a withdrawal could, and did, begin.”

Nothing that “we successfully executed this plan until Jan. 20,” Patel writes that “everything changed with the Biden administration.” Before that “there were no U.S. casualties in Afghanistan” Patel claims. He also writes that “several rounds” of negotiations were held by the Taliban, sidelining al Qaeda. “The result was a successful drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 2,500, the lowest count since the dawn of the War on Terror.”

He states that “when we handed our entire plan to the incoming Biden administration during the lengthy transition, the new team simply wasn’t interested.” And “the new commander in chief declared that U.S/ forces would leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, pushing back the Trump administration’s timetable by four months.”

He observes in the New York Post story that “the Taliban sat back and waited for the date to draw near, then launched a countrywide offensive, knowing they had no reason to fear any reprisals from this administration. It would be an unconditional pullout with an arbitrary date based on pure symbolism — and set in stone.”

Patel calls out Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, for calming that “the security situation in Afghanistan unfolded at an unexpected speed.”

In the op-ed, Patel calls out Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, for calming that “the security situation in Afghanistan unfolded at an unexpected speed.” Calling in “a shocking statement “from one of our nation’s most senior national-security officials,” Patel writes: “No one should have been the slightest bit surprised that when relieved of any conditions or obligations, the Taliban could and would overrun the whole country in the absence of U.S. military power.”

Patel observes that “the ongoing chaos — not least the stranding of U.S. personnel and allies — “is the natural result of the Biden administration’s decision to eschew a conditions-based plan. With an unmovable withdrawal date in place, Team Biden showed no appreciation for ground-level intelligence reporting, which was largely rendered irrelevant. America and the world deserve much better from those privileged to serve in high office. We are witnessing the utter collapse of a government — and not just in Afghanistan.”

Patel was born and raised in Garden City, New York to parents with Gurajati roots who immigrated from East Africa — who came to the U.S. by way of Canada in 1970. He graduated from the University of Richmond in 2002 with a B.A. in history and criminal justice. He obtained an International Law Certificate from University College London Faculty of Laws in 2004, and his Juris Doctor from Pace University School of Law in 2005.

After his schooling in New York and college in Richmond, Virginia, and law school in New York, Kash Patel went to Florida where he was a state public defender for four years and then a federal public defender for another four years. From Florida, he moved to Washington, D.C. as a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Here he was an international terrorism prosecutor for about three and a half years, and worked on cases all over the world, in America in East Africa as well as in Uganda and Kenya.

While still employed by the Department of Justice, he went as a civilian to join Special Operations Command at the Department of Defense. At the Pentagon, he sat as the Department of Justice’s lawyer with Special Forces people and worked inter-agency collaborative targeting operations around the world. In 2014, Kash joined the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), National Security Division (NSD) – Counter-Terrorism Section as a Terrorism Prosecutor. In this important position, he ran a wide range of high-profile counterterrorism prosecutions.