Former Trump official says US 'pulled the rug out from under the Afghans'
CNN
A former Trump administration official said Thursday evening that the Biden administration's decision to stick with the US' 2020 agreement with the Taliban is "why we are where we are now" and that the US has "literally pulled the rug out from under the Afghans."
"The Biden administration had an opportunity to withdraw from the agreement. They could have reevaluated it and renegotiated it and taken a different path on Afghanistan," Lisa Curtis, the former deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump and the former senior director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council, told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "Cuomo Prime Time." "But the Biden administration chose to stick with it. So, yeah. This is why we are where we are now. Now, it is also true that the pullout was extremely abrupt. We pulled out 16,000 contractors all at once. These are contractors that helped maintain the equipment for the Afghans. They helped keep air assets in the air. So, we literally pulled the rug out from under the Afghans. And we sort of played into the Taliban strategy," she continued.
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