Former President Trump is trying out a campaign strategy to attack Vice President Harris as a straw man for the failures surrounding the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, a chaotic and deadly event that cast a dark shadow over President Biden’s term in office but succeeded in ending America’s longest war.
Republicans and Democrats trade blame over which administration holds responsibility for failing to plan and execute the drawdown of the 20-year military operation in Afghanistan.
The end result was the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in the face of the Taliban’s takeover over two fraught weeks at the end of August 2021. The U.S. exit was marred by masses of people overwhelming the Kabul airport; a devastating terrorist attack that killed 13 U.S. soldiers, among others; and an evacuation crisis that put at risk thousands of Afghan allies and those vulnerable to violence from the Taliban.
The Trump campaign has sought to shift blame from Biden to Harris by bringing up an April 2021 interview the vice president gave to CNN, where she said she was the last person in the room with the president when he made the decision to exit Afghanistan and said she was comfortable with the choice.
“It’s a perfect political attack,” said Chris Tuttle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and who previously served as policy director of the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations under Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
“I think the campaign feels like it’s a good time to remind the general public of what happened and the chaos that ensued as a good line of attack.”
Democrats and Trump’s critics point to the former president’s decision to cut out the Afghan government and negotiate directly with the Taliban on withdrawing all U.S. troops on a specific timeline as the key factor that left Biden few good choices in crafting and executing a plan.
“It was a catastrophe, across the board, a civil, military, right down to tactical, catastrophe, and all Trump’s trying to do is to bathe in the blood of those 13 troops,” said a former senior officer who served in Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
Still, efforts to focus on the broad but nuanced picture often fail to animate the public in an election season, Tuttle pointed out.
“When it comes down to a political campaign, if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” he said.
“It’s hard for them [Biden and Harris] to come back from what actually occurred on the ground.”
And Trump and his supporters are working to frame the former president as a leader who deters violence through tough talk and action, and honors and respects American service members — even as Trump has a history of insulting and disparaging the military, wounded soldiers and those killed in action.
The Trump campaign held a call with family members of three U.S. service members killed in the Abbey Gate bombing on Monday, the terrorist attack’s third anniversary, while the former president joined other Gold Star families at a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
Republicans, and some families, have attacked Harris and Biden as failing to adequately acknowledge the sacrifice of those soldiers.
“With Trump, we knew our kids were safe,” said Cheryl Juels, whose niece Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee was killed in Kabul on Aug. 26, 2021.
“You know, he’s a New Yorker — he wasn’t going to deal with anybody hurting our men and women, or he would have, you know, made ’em pay for it, and they all knew that. And with this administration, look at the world right now. I mean, we’ll be lucky if we’re not in a world war three in the next six months.”
Mark Schmitz, father of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, who was killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, said Trump is “not perfect” but faulted the Biden-Harris administration as failing to take accountability.
“I think that this [Biden] administration has shown that they’ve treated the withdrawal from Afghanistan like the plague. You know, they have stayed as far away from this as they possibly can,” he said.
In contrast to Trump’s visit to Arlington, Biden and Harris released separate statements honoring the 13 soldiers killed and paying tribute to the 2,461 killed and the 20,744 wounded over 20 years of war.
When asked by a reporter why Harris or Biden did not host or attend any public events honoring the fallen soldiers, the White House said the administration was focused on its work behind the scenes.
“I would say there are many ways that we as a nation and our leaders can observe the third anniversary of Abbey Gate,” John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, said in a call with reporters on Monday.
“Another way is to continue to work, maybe not with a lot of fanfare, maybe not with a lot of public attention, maybe not with TV cameras, but to work with might and main every single day to make sure that the families of the fallen and of those who were injured and wounded, not just at Abbey Gate but over the course of the 20-some-odd years that we were in Afghanistan, have the support that they need.”
It’s not yet clear if Trump’s strategy to portray himself as a tough leader on the world stage resonates with undecided voters.
While there are a number of Trump’s former aides who argue against his reelection, even supporters are cautious over the pitfalls of the former president’s personal faults — that he’s easily manipulated, susceptible to flattery, and enamored with autocrats.
“He can make really sound decisions and disrupt things that need to be disrupted in terms of foreign policy and national security, but oftentimes struggles to hang on to those decisions and see them through,” Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” discussing his book about his time as Trump’s national security adviser.
“I write about it, at times, he finds it tough to stick with those decisions because people know kind of how to push his buttons, especially buttons associated with maintaining the complete support of his political base.”
And Harris is gaining ground in polls against Trump.
Foreign policy is generally an issue that falls behind the economy, immigration and reproductive rights, Americans factor in how they want the U.S. to show up in the world.
Among polling from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a majority of Americans want to strengthen or expand U.S. alliances abroad, and a majority view alliances as having a benefit for the U.S.
But Trump supporters are more likely to say that the U.S. should follow its own national interests even when allies strongly disagree, according to April polling by the Pew Research Center.
Allison Jaszlow, a veteran of the war in Iraq and who is CEO of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), did not put much weight behind Trump’s attacks on Harris over Biden’s pullout of Afghanistan.
“I have to think that the attack falls flat on many people. I just don’t think that you can fully shift blame onto another administration when you yourself share a portion of blame for how things were executed in Afghanistan,” she said.
“There’s some people who might be animated by that attack, but I have to think that most people who observed how things transpired in Afghanistan over time, know that it was his [Trump’s] administration that oversaw operations there as well.”
IAVA is a group that represents about 425,000 members and advocates for the post-9/11 community of veterans. The group put out statements of support for both Harris and Trump for choosing running mates with military records: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) is a retired U.S. Army National Guardsman and Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R) is a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq.
But IAVA is watching closely how candidates talk about their future policies, with the group advocating for a repeal or reform of the 2001 and 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force. It was Congress’s rubber stamp on America going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, used today for ongoing counter-terrorism operations.
“Administrations of both parties have exploited those AUMF’s to continue to deploy troops into harm’s way … and I think it would be a real sign of character if the next commander-in-chief was supportive of their war powers being reined in, as they should be,” she said.
IAVA is also advocating for more to be done to help Afghan allies left in limbo or left behind in Afghanistan that qualify for Special Immigrant Visas for the help alongside the U.S. throughout the war.
“We still owe it to our Afghan allies, the interpreters and other folks who helped us on the ground, to help them find safe harbor,” she said.
“If we fail to keep our promise to our Afghans allies that are still fearing for their lives since the withdrawal. I think that really complicates our ability to effectively wage war in the future, and it shouldn’t be seen as just a humanitarian issue, it’s a national security issue.”