The Biden administration revealed the "opposite of accountability" with its report accusing former President Donald Trump of having created the circumstances that led to the deadly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, a former U.S. Army captain, told Newsmax.
"This is the opposite of leadership," Hunt told Tuesday's "National Report." "In the last two years of the Trump administration, we saw peace in Afghanistan. In the last 18 months of the Trump administration, not a single soldier was lost."
But that changed after President Joe Biden took office, and "we lost 13 brave men and women," Hunt said. "What we're seeing here is just a dereliction of duty. We're also seeing the insulting of the intelligence of the American people. We all watched what happened. We all watched the botched withdrawal. We all watched people falling from planes. We saw the chaos. You cannot act like those things didn't happen."
And, he said that at some point, "you can't blame President Trump for everything. You've got to take responsibility for your failures."
Hunt further pointed out Trump had ordered a "conditions-based withdrawal" meaning, if Afghanistan's Taliban leaders did not meet those conditions, then the United States was not leaving.
"The reason why that date was changing, we all know, it was that President Biden wanted to be out before 9/11 [which] some time ago got us into this war, and then wanted to be the president to say, I am the one on this historic date that got us out of Afghanistan," Hunt added.
"But speaking as somebody that's a former captain in the Army, a West Point graduate, that's not how you leave," he continued. "You don't leave based on a day or a date, you leave based on the conditions on the ground, [that you] could save the lives of the people on the ground and the citizens that are actually in that region."
Trump would not have left unless those conditions were met, Hunt said.
"That's why we still had peace in the final two years during the Trump administration, and that's why we didn't lose any soldiers in the last 18 months," the congressman said. "There is clearly one commander in chief at a time, and that was who was leading the country at the time of the withdrawal."
The withdrawal has also left the country at its weakest point since former President Jimmy Carter was in office, according to Hunt.
"Everyone knows that botched withdrawal was the beginning of the precipitous decline that we've seen in our standing all over the world," he said. "This is why we are now empowering Iran. We're now empowering Russia. We're now empowering China. We're seeing the decline of U.S. currency, all because of this fire that started in Afghanistan.
"It was the first sign of weakness from us."
The withdrawal all points to the need for a Republican president, according to Hunt, who believes Trump will be the winner in 2024.
"The American people want to be strong again on an international scale," he said. "We have two years to do it. I am not confident that this administration is going to do anything right. But the American people can speak up in the next two years."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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