Former Ambassador to Afghanistan, Appointed by GWB, Blames Trump for ‘Demoralizing’ and ‘Delegitimizing’ Afghan Government

Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he blames former President Donald Trump for the deteriorating situation there.

Crocker, now retired, was a career ambassador, originally appointed to that post by former President George W. Bush. He also served as Ambassador to Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Lebanon at different times.

Thursday evening, Crocker appeared on AC360 and Cooper asked him for his perspective on the latest reports that the U.S. was sending in 3,000 troops to help evacuate our embassy in Kabul.

“You had reopened the embassy in Kabul,” said Cooper. “This has got to be obviously difficult to imagine.”

Crocker said that President Joe Biden’s administration was doing the “right thing” by moving in the troops. However, he continued, it was “very sad to hear” that the American envoys to the Taliban were “now pleading with them not to shoot at us as we retreat.”

He stated that he definitely viewed this as an “evacuation,” and he was concerned because he didn’t know how they were going to manage to safely evacuate the Afghan embassy staff, and especially the “interpreters and others who risked their lives to help us.”

Cooper asked Crocker what he thought was the cause for the “speed of the collapse of the Afghan army…what do you account for their failure on the battlefield and the Taliban’s success?”

“Anderson, in my view, we bear a major responsibility for this,” Crocker replied, describing “a year and a half worth of demoralization” beginning during the Trump administration:

It began under President Trump when he authorized negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban without the Afghan government in the room. That was a key Taliban demand. We acceded to it, and it was a huge demoralizing factor for the Afghan government and its security forces. We pressed them to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Eventually they did it and watched them go back into the fight against the people who released them.

After all that, “this abrupt withdrawal on our part” solidifies the demoralization, said Crocker. “It’s like any complex phenomenon. There are a number of reasons for the collapse, I think, of the Afghan forces, but we cannot ignore we had a central role in delegitimizing them and their government.”

“We were a major backer, of course, of the state and of the security forces,” Crocker added. “Symbolism counts. And the symbol of the U.S. military affecting a complete and final withdrawal was devastating and again, it didn’t happen overnight. This demoralization process, if you will, began the first day we sat down with the Taliban and excluded the Afghan government.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.