Former Vice President Dick Cheney was integral in kicking off the war in Afghanistan in 2001. After the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers, President George W. Bush responded to the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in World War II. VP Their stated goal was to purge the Taliban from the country and send Osama bin Laden to an early grave. Donald Trump left President Joe Biden a huge delayed bomb when he checked out of the White House in 2021.
Over the 20 years we were at war in Afghanistan, the Taliban regrouped and fought back. The U.S. assassinated Bin Laden in 2011. And the fighting continued. Trump negotiated a weak treaty with the Taliban and withdrawal date this spring, several months after President Biden took office. There was no way the sitting president could meet that goal. He negotiated a September 11 withdrawal, and that was still a stretch.
Cheney was as much of a hawk as her father, according to The Town and Country magazine:
‘Much of Cheney’s rise through the GOP ranks—as well as her famously hawkish stance on foreign policy—mirrors that of her father Dick, who served as George Bush’s VP from 2001 to 2009 and is considered to have been the most powerful veep in American history…when his daughter earned that title in 2019, he sat smiling in the front row.’
Cheney added:
‘The notion in the Trump administration, they said we’re going to invite the Taliban to Camp David. This disaster certainly began — this notion that we’re going to end endless wars, that campaign slogan, what we’re watching right now in Afghanistan is what happens when America withdraws from the world.’
Cheney appeared on ABC’s This Week’s, host Jonathan Karl noted the withdrawal was scheduled earlier. She responded:
‘So, everybody who is saying America needs to withdraw, America needs to retreat — we’re getting a catastrophic real-time lesson in what that means.’
She continued speaking about the wrong-headed idea that the Taliban could be “a partner for peace:”
‘This disaster, the catastrophe that we’re watching unfold right now across Afghanistan did not have to happen…’They walked down this path of legitimizing the Taliban, of perpetuating this fantasy, telling the American people that the Taliban were a partner for peace.’
The Politico wrote about Trump and his administration’s failure:
‘President Trump told us that the Taliban was going to fight terror. Secretary Pompeo told us that the Taliban was going to renounce Al Qaeda. None of that has happened. None of it has happened.’
Representative Cheney tweeted a reminder of what happened in 2019, when Trump was still in office, that she knew the Taliban was not “a partner in peace.” Yet, the ex-president attempted to do just that. Then, as the American troops began their withdrawal as per Trump’s agreement, she gave Trump the blame for starting the withdrawal. She tweeted that it “began with the Trump administration negotiating with terrorists and pretending they were partners for peace:”
‘The Trump/Biden calamity unfolding in Afghanistan began with the Trump administration negotiating with terrorists and pretending they were partners for peace, and is ending with American surrender as Biden abandons the country to our terrorist enemies.’
‘The Taliban continues to support, harbor and fight alongside al Qaeda. They are not a partner for peace. Any deal that fails to prevent America’s enemies from establishing safe-havens on Afghan soil is a phony deal that threatens our security and risks another 9/11.’
She added:
‘It’s inexcusable.’
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