After the US military abandoned Bagram Air Base during the Biden administration’s “surrender” of Afghanistan this summer, former President Donald Trump warned that China could take it over.
The 45th president accused the Biden White House of seeking to wash the war-torn country’s disastrous retreat under the rug.
They don’t discuss it any longer. They don’t talk about it on purpose,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News published on Sunday. “It was so awful that he was dying from it.” They ceased mentioning it two or three days after it ended.”
What they did with the so-called retreat, which was really a surrender, was the most humiliating, horrific thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m not sure we’ll ever recover psychologically,” he said.
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Trump negotiated a deal with the Taliban in 2020 for the US military to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending America’s 20-year involvement in the conflict and reducing troop numbers in the country.
“Don’t forget, I was the one who reduced the force to 2,500 men,” he stated. “I would have gone out as well, but we would have gone out in force.” We would have emerged victorious.”
Even with the planned withdrawal he arranged for May 1, 2021, the former president said he would have kept control of the military jail at the air base that housed ISIS-K detainees.
Taliban rebels unleashed thousands of ISIS-K terrorists from the prison when the US evacuated the air base in July, including the suicide bomber who killed 13 US military members outside the Kabul airport in August.
Because Bagram is so close to China, we would have preserved it,” Trump stated. “It’s also an hour distant from their nuclear facility, which we gave up as well.”
“And now, in my opinion, China is going to take over Bagram,” he added.
Trump went on to accuse the Biden administration of making a blunder by withdrawing US forces before evacuating American people and Afghan allies.
The Taliban marched into Kabul, the Afghan capital, and ousted the government in the absence of an American presence on the ground.
“We would have gotten all of the people out, brought all of our equipment out, we wouldn’t have had dead soldiers, we wouldn’t have had soldiers losing limbs and legs – because people don’t even talk about it – we lost 13, but we had many badly wounded,” Trump stated. “None of it would have occurred otherwise.”
“It was time to get out,” Trump continued, “but the way he went out was such a disaster.”
He also called the generals who managed the withdrawal and counseled President Biden “responsible,” saying they “should never have permitted that to happen.”
“They must’ve been able to reason with [Biden],” Trump claimed. “However, you must hold them accountable for enabling that to happen.”
