WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - National Security Matters: From Withdrawal to War

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

This episode, Malia Thibado breaks down the Biden-era withdrawal from Afghanistan that some experts say led to the global perception of an American decline in strength, commitment, and leadership. 

And welcome to National Security Matters, the show where we discuss anything and everything related to U.S. international relations and defense policy. I'm your host, Malia Tibodeau. Today, let's take a step back from current events and do a case study of how one show of American weakness at the beginning of the Biden administration may have incentivized a lot of the violence we see in the world today. Let's talk about the disastrous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. To set the scene, there was bipartisan support for a withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country where American troops had fought and been stationed for over 20 years. Then, in his first term, President Trump decided to put these desires into action and sign the Doha Agreement. This, rather controversially, was an agreement between the U.S. government and the Taliban.

The agreement said the U.S. would completely withdraw its troops if the Taliban met a list of provisions which include one cutting off ties with other terrorist organizations two stopping attacks on u.s troops three stopping attacks on the afghani government and four not attacking any of the larger cities in afghanistan the trump administration can be blamed for a lot of the negative aspects of the agreement they kept the negotiator who was repeatedly obfuscating information from the u.s and he was not iterating conditions the americans place on the agreement to the Taliban, and he completely excluded the U.S.-backed Afghani government from the deal. One thing I do want to clarify, the withdrawal did begin under the Trump administration,

but by late 2020, withdrawal started to slow. Why? Because multiple foreign service officers in Afghanistan warned that the Taliban wasn't honoring the agreement and was, in fact, ramping up its domestic offense and advancing, on the capital at rapid pace. The last of the tiered withdrawal under the Trump administration left 2,500 troops in the region. Then, of course, we had the transition of power to Joe Biden in early 2021. His administration conducted an interagency review of the agreement, then decided to continue with the withdrawal, regardless of the prior warnings about the Taliban's non-adherence. A congressional after-action report in 2023 cited.

Trump's Doha agreement as the primary cause of the Bessi withdrawal. It claimed that Trump's quickly approaching deadline of March 2021 meant the administration had little choices in its actions. Of course, we know that isn't necessarily true. You have to adhere to a deal to have it be recognized as valid. As Colonel Seth Cymrich, the chief of staff for Special Operations Command, so calm put it, the president decided we're going to leave and he's not listening. to anyone. Leading up to the complete withdrawal date on August 30th, 2021, we already see problems. Instead of diminishing the civilian diplomatic presence in parallel with the military one,

they actually expanded the Afghanistan embassy size until it was one of the largest active embassies in the world. They closed Bagram Air Base completely, not the military base and country, thus diminishing readiness in months leading up. to retrenchment and made it hard to monitor Taliban movement. By August 6th, the embassy hadn't even conducted evacuation drills, and by August 14th, embassy staff still wasn't sure who qualified for emergency evacuation or which routes they would take. Evacuations began on the 16th and airliffs began on the 19th, and a forward attack on the Abbey Gate happened on August 26th.

During that, 183 civilians and 13 U.S. servicemen died in something that was preventable. In addition, these negligences led to around 1,000 Americans and 90% of the Afghanis who helped the U.S. government and qualified for special immigration status to be left behind. This show of American incompetence and withdrawal set the stage for future international conflicts, such as the Ukraine-Russia war, to commence without the threat of significant U.S. interference. This has been Malia Tibito with National Security Matters on WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.