Pence: Trump Would’ve Kept Troops in Afghanistan, Denies Fault for Chaotic Withdrawal.

Former President Donald Trump’s Plan for Afghanistan

Former President Donald Trump would have kept at least a couple thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan despite his 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban, according to former Vice President Mike Pence.

In February 2020, the Trump Administration reached a deal (pdf) with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 14 months, so long as the Taliban kept its commitment not to attack the United States or its allies.

In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan noted a new assessment (pdf) by the U.S. State Department under President Joe Biden’s administration, which assigned blame to both Biden and Trump for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Citing the State Department report, Brennan asked Pence to assess whether the Trump administration should accept some of the blame. Pence suggested the Trump administration would have kept troops in the country and altered course if they were still in charge during the final months of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“The blame for what happened here falls squarely on the current commander-in-chief, and under our administration I promise you that while it was the intention of the president, the former president, to pull our troops out, when the Taliban broke the deal and moved into Mazar-i-Sharif and Joe Biden did nothing, that set into motion the catastrophe that became Afghanistan,” Pence replied.

Keeping Troops in Afghanistan

“Are you saying there that you would have kept the troops beyond the 2020 deal? Is that what you’re saying?” Brennan asked.

“Look, 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, and I think we ultimately would have done that,” Pence said.

The United States had less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan at the time the Trump administration struck the peace deal with the Taliban. By Trump’s final days in office, official U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan fell to about 2,500. Under Trump’s original timeline, the total U.S. troop withdrawal could have concluded by May 2021, but in April, Biden pushed the final withdrawal date back to Sept. 11, 2021.

Pence suggested that if the Trump administration had remained in office, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan might have played out similarly to Trump’s 2019 effort to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. As Trump attempted to wind down the U.S. military mission in Syria, fighting broke out between U.S.-allied Kurds and Turkey, which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. Pence helped broker a ceasefire between the Turkish and Kurdish forces and retained some U.S. troops in the country rather than completing a full withdrawal.

“Just as the former president announced we were pulling troops out of Syria, you remember, I was sent to Turkey to negotiate a ceasefire and ultimately there’s still American forces in Syria today. I think we would have landed in that place,” Pence said Sunday. “I will tell you with deep conviction that that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been avoided if we were still in charge.”