In an exclusive interview with Fox News last week, former President Donald Trump said his administration would have maintained control of the Parwan Detention Facility, a military prison at the Bagram Air Base.
Following President Joe Biden's "embarrassing" withdrawal from Afghanistan, thousands of ISIS-K prisoners were freed after the Taliban seized the South Asian country, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. One of the prisoners included the ISIS suicide bomber responsible for murdering 13 U.S. troops and at least 169 Afghan nationals on August 26 at the Kabul airport during the chaotic extraction.
Interestingly, both President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have denied any responsibility for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the lives lost in the process – and instead have blamed Trump.
That's a 'false narrative,' says military vet
Speaking directly to the issue of the Parwan Detention Facility and the release of thousands of terrorists in Afghanistan, global strategist Col. Dan Steiner (USAF-Ret.) tells American Family News that the "excuse" that Trump set this into motion and that the Biden administration "had to inherit his failures is such a false narrative."
"The second that President Biden was sworn in, anything that Trump had agreed to could have been written off," Steiner argues.
For example, the peace deal between the United States and the Taliban was merely an agreement put in place between a previous administration and the Taliban, Steiner explains, and wasn't binding like a treaty. After all, he points out, Biden hasn't hesitated to undo practically everything else implemented by the previous administration.
However, Steiner offers "a sticking point" on the issue of the Parwan Detention Facility, as it relates to the handling of prisoners housed at Bagram Air Base.
"In the interview with Fox, Trump mentions that on his watch, the U.S. would have never turned over the facility to the Taliban," he says. But Biden and his administration did.
"[I don't understand] the process where the Biden administration – which was responsible for the actual act of retreating from Afghanistan – would have gone through a decision-making process to abandon Bagram Air Base prior to extracting individuals from the detention facility who would come back to haunt the U.S. later down the road," Steiner states.
"[But] the process of determining what to do with the Parwan Detention Facility as the U.S. abandoned Bagram Air Field was solely on the Biden administration."
And determining the threat of releasing terrorists from the facility was Biden's responsibility as well, Steiner argues.
The Associated Press reported that "the U.S. left Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base's new Afghan commander who discovered the Americans' departure more than two hours after they left."
Steiner argues that if, indeed, the U.S. truly left Bagram that quickly – "and a good indicator is how upset the Afghans were with how we left," he interjects – then the process of determining what to do with the individuals at the detention facility was probably not facilitated by the Biden administration.
The retired Air Force veteran concludes that the deaths of 13 Americans and the return of Afghanistan as a terror haven is "blood on the hands" of the Biden administration – not former President Trump.
