Amid criticism, one veterans' organization calls Biden administration 'least culpable' on Afghanistan
Many veterans of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are frustrated with the execution of President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, Politico reports. For some, it has reportedly led to an increase in PTSD symptoms.
"I haven't talked to anybody who isn't angry or disappointed in how this was carried out," Tom Porter, the executive vice president of government affairs with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (which consists of more than 425,000 members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan), told Politico. "Nobody thinks there was a plan."
But Jon Soltz, an Iraq veteran and the chair of the Democrat-aligned advocacy group VoteVets, thinks Biden doesn't deserve the brunt of the criticism about the U.S. departure. "Let's investigate," he told Politico. "Right, let's talk about the Trump deal with the Taliban that was only a deal between the United States and not a deal with the Afghan government. If we want to do investigations on Afghanistan, there's 19 years of administrations to look at, and there's about three months of [the Biden] administration. So let's open this thing up and let's talk about it, because the person who is least culpable is this administration." Read more at Politico.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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