Pence says Trump administration would have kept U.S. troops in Afghanistan despite withdrawal deal with Taliban

Washington — Former Vice President Mike Pence said thousands of U.S. troops would have remained in Afghanistan, despite an agreement the Trump administration with the Taliban that had American forces leaving by May 2021. 

“Candidly, it was always my belief that it would be prudent to keep a couple of thousand American forces there to support our efforts against terrorist elements, both in Afghanistan and in the region,” Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, told “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. 

“I think we ultimately would have done that,” he said. “Just as the president announced — the former president announced — we were pulling troops out of Syria. … Ultimately there’s still American forces in Syria today. I think we would have landed in that place.” 

Under the terms of the Trump administration’s 2020 agreement with the Taliban, the U.S. agreed to a conditions-based withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan if the Taliban lived up to its own commitments. The former vice president argued that the Taliban had breached those terms, and thus the U.S. need not honor the deal.   

But when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in Aug. 2021, the chaotic evacuation turned deadly when a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans who were trying to flee the country ahead of the Taliban’s takeover. 

Both former President Donald Trump and Mr. Biden have blamed the calamitous outcome on other’s handling of the withdrawal. The Biden administration has said its predecessor’s drawdown of U.S. troops ahead of a full withdrawal left the Taliban in a strong position and its failure to include the Afghan government in negotiations was detrimental. Trump and his allies have criticized Mr. Biden’s handling of pullout, saying he botched the exit plan and the chaos would not have happened under Trump’s leadership. 

The State Department released an unclassified report Friday that faulted both the Trump and Biden administrations for “insufficient” planning leading up to the withdrawal, as well as a number of other missteps. 

“[D]uring both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” the report said. 

Pence said he does not believe the Trump administration bears some responsibility for the chaos. 

“I know what the deal was that was negotiated with the Taliban. It was made very clear. I was in the room when President Trump told the leader of the Taliban, said, ‘Look, you’re going to have to cooperate with the Afghan government. You don’t harbor terrorists. And you don’t harm any American soldiers,'” Pence said.  

“We went 18 months without a single American casualty to the day at that Kabul airport that we lost 13 brave American service members,” he said. “The blame for what happened here falls squarely on the current commander in chief.” 

Pence also criticized Mr. Biden for his handling of Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying he has failed to explain to Americans “what our national interest is there” and is too slow to provide weapons to Ukraine. 

“President Biden says, ‘We’re there as long as it takes.’ It shouldn’t take that long,” said Pence, who visited Ukraine last week and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

Pence also discussed the controversial Supreme Court decisions released last week. He said the ruling in favor of a Christian graphic artist from Colorado who does not want to design wedding website for same-sex couples was “a victory for the religious freedom of every American of every faith.” In response to the ruling on affirmative action, Pence said he doesn’t believe there is racial inequity in the education system in America. 

“There may have been a time when affirmative action was necessary simply to open the doors of all of our schools and universities, but I think that time has passed,” he said.