Former President Donald Trump blamed many ongoing global troubles on President Joe Biden’s weaknesses stemming from the way the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan
Trump was quick to criticize Biden’s foreign policy during Thursday’s debate but rarely offered specifics on how a potential second Trump administration would be different. Biden meanwhile sought to defend his administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and continued military support for Ukraine and Israel, which Trump frequently referenced over the course of the debate.
Both Trump and Biden wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, and the former agreed to a deal with the Taliban back in 2020, but the actual final days were mired in controversy. Thirteen U.S. troops were killed and dozens of others were injured in a massive suicide bombing attack that killed about 170 people, all of whom were outside the Kabul airport where U.S. troops were conducting emergency evacuations for at-risk people.
The U.S. military also carried out an errant airstrike three days later, believing it was targeting a terrorist who posed an imminent threat to U.S. forces, but it turns out the individual was an aid worker. He and several members of his family were killed in the strike.
“I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we’re getting out with dignity, with strength, with power. He got out. It was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life,” Trump said.
The former president brought up Afghanistan on multiple occasions during the debate and he argued that Biden “should have fired every military man that was involved with that Afghan — the Afghanistan horror show.”
Biden inaccurately claimed no U.S. service member has been killed during his administration. At least five U.S. troops have been killed overseas in 2024, in Jordan and in the Arabian Sea, in addition to the 13 killed in Afghanistan.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Examiner, “Biden was fine on substance but not compelling as a national leader.”
Afghanistan paved way for Putin aggression
Trump went on to argue that the way the withdrawal played out demonstrated weakness to foreign adversaries, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in addition to actors in the Middle East. North Korea and China are aiding Russia’s war efforts.
“When Putin saw” the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, “he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take” Ukraine, Trump said.
The former president said Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine had he still been in office, and he claimed he would end the war.
“He knew not to do it. Not going to play games with me. He knew that I got along with him very well, but he knew not to play games,” he argued. “That’s a war that should have never started. It would have never started.”
Russia has not had the success in Ukraine it or many Western countries expected. Initial predictions were that Russia would topple Kyiv in a matter of weeks, but the war has gone on for more than two years now, and Russia has altered its war aims and is no longer actively pursuing Kyiv after facing much stiffer Ukrainian resistance.
Trump, responding to a question from the moderators, acknowledged that Putin’s terms for ending the war are not “acceptable,” which may be notable given his repeated claims that he could end the war immediately. He has not elaborated how he’d end the war.
Trump claims he would have prevented Hamas attack
Trump also claimed that Israel would not be in a war against Hamas if he had been president. The Biden administration has said Hamas likely carried out the attack to stop Israeli-Saudi normalization efforts, which stem from the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, which were a set of normalization deals between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.
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Biden, in defending his record, also mentioned the United States’s participation in Israel’s defense against a historic Iranian attack in April. Tehran launched roughly 300 rockets and missiles and only a handful were not intercepted by the combined support.
The Biden administration has provided Ukraine and Israel with billions of dollars of aid to defend themselves without putting U.S. troops in either war zone.
