Retired military leaders defend Harris while placing blame on Trump for Afghanistan withdrawal in letter

(CNN) — Several retired military officials issued a letter in support of Vice President Kamala Harris as Republicans attempt to tie her to the chaotic 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Vice President Kamala Harris is the best – and only – presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief. She has demonstrated her ability to take on the most difficult national security challenges in the Situation Room and on the international stage,” the group wrote in a National Security Leaders for America letter.

The letter cited Harris “rallying our allies against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine to standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the Indo-Pacific against China’s provocative actions, to advancing U.S. leadership on space and artificial intelligence.”

The letter comes after House Republicans and Democrats issued dueling documents casting blame for mistakes made in the US exit from Afghanistan. The Republican report cites Harris as having worked “in lockstep with President Biden behind the scenes to withdraw all US troops.” It also aims to implicate Harris in its accusations by referring to the current government as “the Biden-Harris administration.”

The group of retired generals placed blame on former President Donald Trump for “putting service members in harm’s way” while he was in office, and argued he didn’t leave the Biden administration in a position to execute a withdrawal efficiently.

“Without involving the Afghan government, he and his Administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban that freed 5,000 Taliban fighters and allowed them to return to the battlefield,” the letter claimed.

“Then, he left President Biden and Vice President Harris with no plans to execute a withdrawal, and with little time to do so. This chaotic approach severely hindered the Biden-Harris Administration’s ability to execute the most orderly withdrawal possible and put our service members and our allies at risk.”

The exit of American troops from Afghanistan had always been a critical goal for Biden. During his time as vice president, Biden repeatedly pushed then-President Barack Obama to draw down troop numbers – advice which Obama ignored, ordering a troop surge before beginning a drawdown.

Trump also worked toward a withdrawal during his time as president. His administration entered into an agreement with the Taliban for a May 1, 2021, deadline for troops to exit the country; Biden as president said that timeline wasn’t feasible, and pushed it back several months to the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Biden hoped to avoid any optics during the drawdown that would draw comparisons to the chaotic withdraw of US military troops from Vietnam in 1975, which was immortalized by pictures of Americans hurriedly rushing to a helicopter from the roof of the US embassy during the fall of Saigon. Discussing his plan in July 2021, Biden vowed there would be “no circumstance in which you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”

The reality, though, was more complicated. The bloody and chaotic withdrawal included a suicide bombing that killed 13 American troops and about 170 Afghans outside Kabul’s airport.

Inside, some Afghans fell to their deaths after clinging to the underside of American military planes in a last-ditch and futile effort to escape Taliban rule – exactly the type of imagery Biden had hoped to avoid, and which presented the first major foreign policy issue for Biden’s presidency. It would later be overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Hamas attack against Israel last October.

Since then, Democrats and Republicans have traded blame for the chaotic withdrawal. Republicans accused Biden of demanding a withdrawal no matter the costs while Democrats blamed Trump for striking the Taliban deal that set the withdrawal in motion in the first place. Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, has argued Trump deserves some of the blame for the chaos.

Even three years later, the politics of the withdrawal continue to trail the campaign. During a visit to Arlington National Cemetery last month to commemorate the Kabul airport bombing, staffers for Trump’s campaign reportedly brushed aside a cemetery worker who tried preventing the campaign from taking photos or video in the section of the cemetery containing the remains of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump’s campaign insisted there were no violations of the law and attacked the worker involved in the confrontation.

Harris responded to the controversy by saying Trump “is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself.”

This story has been updated with additional report.

The-CNN-Wire
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