Leon Panetta Calls U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan a ‘Terrible Mistake’
Leon Panetta, the former U.S. defence secretary, has called Washington’s decision to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan in 2021 “a terrible mistake,” saying the move had serious security consequences and left the Afghan people in a difficult position.
In an interview with Sky News, he said the full withdrawal of American forces was not only the end of a military mission, but also meant abandoning commitments the United States had made to the Afghan people, security institutions and support structures it had helped create.
According to Panetta, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was not limited to military operations and also included training security forces, building intelligence institutions, counterterrorism efforts, educating women, supporting businesses and trying to improve people’s living conditions.
He stressed that the length of the war alone could not have been a sufficient reason to leave Afghanistan, and that Washington should have maintained a limited but effective presence instead of a full withdrawal.
Panetta said in part of the interview: “When we suddenly pulled all our troops out of Afghanistan and handed the country back to the Taliban, we essentially betrayed many of the people we had been fighting for.” He added that the United States had a moral and political responsibility toward the Afghan people.
Criticism of Joe Biden’s administration’s decision to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has repeatedly been voiced in recent years by a number of former American officials. The decision remains one of the most controversial foreign policy cases of the past two decades for the United States.
