Mike Pompeo takes his own arrows over the Afghanistan collapse
“Trying to extricate yourself from this withdrawal is I think difficult if not impossible to do, especially to rewrite history about what actually happened,” said former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, a prominent critic of his former boss’ Afghanistan policy. “I think that’s a prescription for Democratic attack ads that would be fatal to someone’s credibility.”
Pompeo has been coy about his own ambitions for 2024, but the former congressman from Kansas, CIA Director, and Secretary of State has been popping up at high profile fundraisers for midterm candidates and rubbing elbows with influential conservatives in critical early states like Iowa. His appeal to voters is due, in part, to the feet he has had in its two most prominent, recent movements: the Tea Party and Trumpism.
But that experience now carries some potential baggage. Pompeo met with the Taliban in February 2020 at the signing of a withdrawal agreement with the U.S. in Doha. A picture of him from that moment, standing alongside Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, has circulated widely online in the last week. It’s the type of image that could dot and complicate future election bids, should he choose to make one.
Pompeo has tried to distance the Trump administration from the current situation in Afghanistan by claiming Biden failed to ensure the Taliban met conditions of the agreement before pulling troops out.
“We always knew that conditions had to be right,” Pompeo said on Fox News. “This administration just willy-nilly whipped the military out of there, leaving civilians, equipment, all of those things behind.”
The negotiations Pompeo helped conduct as secretary of state resulted in a four-part withdrawal deal with the Taliban that committed the U.S. to a phased, conditions-based removal of all troops in a 14-month period. The U.S. called on the Taliban to cut ties with the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and refrain from any threats to the U.S. or allies, but it also made concessions, like the release of 5,000 combat and political Taliban prisoners and a review of sanctions against the organization. The Afghan government was not involved in the negotiations, a move that critics say undermined the country’s leadership and legitimacy.
Those close to Pompeo say he recognized early on that a withdrawal deal could be a political quagmire but that he followed President Donald Trump’s order to get American troops out of Afghanistan immediately.
“He alluded to the fact that he understood he could potentially pay a political price in the future for doing this but in his mind, this is what the president ordered him to do, so he had to get the best deal possible and have the most caveats to keep people there if we need to,” said a former Trump State Department official.
But Pompeo’s involvement in the deal has now drawn criticism from Republicans and has given a preview of how…
Read More: Mike Pompeo takes his own arrows over the Afghanistan collapse