“We received scorched earth” (from Trump). This is precisely the spirit of the exhibition, of the White House for the disastrous withdrawal of the US from its former “stronghold” in central Asia, Afghanistan.

The White House on Thursday released the report requested by Congress, directly blaming the previous Trump administration for the mess in Afghanistan. “President Biden’s Choices for How to Execute an Afghanistan Withdrawal were severely limited from the conditions created by his predecessor,” the Biden administration report said.

He then goes on to give other reasons for the withdrawal, such as “America’s goal was never nation-building” and that the US presence there had “unclear goals with no end in sight.”

The document notes that when Donald Trump took office in 2017 there were 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan. “President Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government to sit at the negotiating table. In September 2019, President Trump emboldened the Taliban by publicly considering inviting them to Camp David for the anniversary of 9/11,” the report noted.

The document says the Biden White House was carrying out a Trump order to withdraw troops by the summer of 2021, but claims Trump’s team left them with “no plan” on how to pull out the 2,500 troops they had remains.

Trump had struck a deal to withdraw US forces by May 2021, but Biden promised to pull them out by September. The document said Biden needed to carry out the withdrawal agreed to by Trump or the Taliban would begin attacks on US forces.