After Afghanistan withdrawal, questions intensify over who got it wrong
CNN
With the US withdrawal from Afghanistan officially complete, the White House is set to begin the difficult process of reviewing the chaotic and deadly evacuation operation that lurched into high gear after Kabul fell to the Taliban, forcing Biden officials to confront how they got things wrong in Afghanistan and ramping up the blame game inside the administration.
The internal assessment, known as a "hotwash," will examine "everything that happened in this entire operation from start to finish and the areas of improvement, where we can do better, where we can find holes or weaknesses and plug them as we go forward," national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month. But administration officials and members of Congress are not waiting for that analysis to start pointing fingers. The White House has publicly blamed many external factors for the chaos, including former President Donald Trump's February 2020 deal with the Taliban and the Afghan security forces themselves, who President Joe Biden and his aides have said refused to fight for their own country.
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