{"id":1963291,"date":"2023-07-03T13:32:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-03T17:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pence-says-trump-would-have-kept-us-troops-in-afghanistan-rejects-blame-for-chaotic-withdrawal\/"},"modified":"2023-07-03T13:33:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-03T17:33:02","slug":"pence-says-trump-would-have-kept-us-troops-in-afghanistan-rejects-blame-for-chaotic-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pence-says-trump-would-have-kept-us-troops-in-afghanistan-rejects-blame-for-chaotic-withdrawal\/","title":{"rendered":"Pence: Trump Would&#8217;ve Kept Troops in Afghanistan, Denies Fault for Chaotic Withdrawal."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpence-says-trump-would-have-kept-us-troops-in-afghanistan-rejects-blame-for-chaotic-withdrawal%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1963291&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"post_content\">\n<h2>Former President Donald Trump&#8217;s Plan for Afghanistan<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>In February 2020, the Trump Administration reached a deal (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/02.29.20-US-Afghanistan-Joint-Declaration.pdf\">pdf<\/a>) 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.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/02.29.20-US-Afghanistan-Joint-Declaration.pdf\">interview<\/a> with CBS News\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan noted a new assessment (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/State-AAR-AFG.pdf\">pdf<\/a>) by the U.S. State Department under President Joe Biden\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe 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,\u201d Pence replied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>Keeping Troops in Afghanistan<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cAre you saying there that you would have kept the troops beyond the 2020 deal? Is that what you\u2019re saying?\u201d Brennan asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook, 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,\u201d Pence said.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/live-impeachment-updates-house-reconvenes-to-debate-trump-impeachment\/\" title=\"Live impeachment updates: House reconvenes to debate Trump impeachment\">final days<\/a> in office, official U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan fell to about 2,500. Under Trump\u2019s original timeline, the total U.S. troop withdrawal could have concluded by May 2021, but in April, Biden pushed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pence-says-trump-would-have-kept-us-troops-in-afghanistan-rejects-blame-for-chaotic-withdrawal\/\" title=\"Pence: Trump Would've Kept Troops in Afghanistan, Denies Fault for Chaotic Withdrawal.\">final withdrawal date back<\/a> to Sept. 11, 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Pence suggested that if the Trump administration had remained in office, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan might have played out similarly to Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust as the former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/update-washington-d-c-mayor-muriel-bowser-was-warned-but-refused-any-additional-help-before-january-6th-vote-on-stolen-election\/\" title=\"UPDATE: Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Was Warned but Refused Any Additional Help Before January 6th Vote on Stolen Election\">president announced<\/a> we were pulling troops out of Syria, you remember, I was sent to Turkey to negotiate a ceasefire and ultimately there\u2019s still American forces in Syria today. I think we would have landed in that place,\u201d Pence said Sunday. \u201cI will tell you with deep conviction that that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been avoided if we were still in charge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Vice President Mike Pence claims that former President Donald Trump would have maintained a few thousand American troops in Afghanistan, contradicting their 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban. The agreement, signed in February 2020, aimed to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 14 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1759,"featured_media":1963292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1963291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1759"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1963292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}