毫不奇怪，前总统唐纳德·特朗普和他的前国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥谴责了乔·拜登总统从阿富汗的混乱撤军——毕竟，从喀布尔的混乱撤军是致命的，也非常不受欢迎——但事实是，拜登完成了特朗普在任最后一年试图做的事情。
唯一真正的区别是，特朗普希望更快地撤军，而不太考虑与美国合作的阿富汗公民。
事实上，尽管特朗普和蓬佩奥对拜登进行了抨击，但特朗普用来实施其撤军计划的一些关键人物实际上是在称赞拜登完成了他们所说的特朗普开始的工作。
“事实是，这是特朗普和拜登的撤军，”威廉·鲁格说，他在2020年9月被特朗普选为美国驻阿富汗大使。
挑选鲁格是特朗普在任最后几个月采取的几项人事举措之一，目的是组建一个团队，致力于他的最高政策目标之一:美国军队完全撤出。当五角大楼在拜登8月31日的最后期限前宣布最后一支美军已经撤离时，鲁格在推特上发了一句话回应:“终于。”
2020年4月，特朗普邀请退役上校道格拉斯·麦格雷戈(Douglas MacGregor)入主白宫，因为他看到这位前美国驻福克斯新闻频道陆军军官提出美国应该撤出阿富汗——也应该撤出伊拉克和叙利亚。
“我并不批评拜登总统的决定。如果你听他的演讲，他会说，‘我结束了战争。’太棒了。干得好!滚出去!这是对时间、金钱、资源和鲜血的巨大浪费，”麦格雷戈在拜登周二演讲后告诉美国广播公司新闻。“所以总统是百分之百正确的。”
去年11月，特朗普任命麦格雷戈为国防部长的高级顾问，下达逐客令，推动军事领导人将美军全部撤出阿富汗。
麦格雷戈告诉美国广播公司新闻，“他非常明确地告诉我，他同意我的观点。“他说，‘我得把你弄进来。因为我同意你。我们需要离开这些地方。没有理由在任何一个里面。"
在他被任命的那天，麦格雷戈收到了总统人事主任约翰尼·麦克恩特的一张纸，上面详细说明了他在五角大楼的任务。由于特朗普的直言不讳，这篇论文只包含了四个要点。第一张写着:“让我们离开阿富汗。”
上任的第一天，麦格雷戈起草了一份长达一页的总统令，要求在2021年1月12日之前完成所有穿制服的美国军事人员的撤离——这比拜登最终的时间表要快得多。特朗普于2020年11月11日签署了该命令。
“唐纳德·特朗普想要退出，”麦格雷戈说。“这不是什么秘密计划。没有误导性的议程。他想退出。”
撤军令包括参谋长联席会议主席马克·米利将军和中央司令部司令肯尼斯·麦肯齐将军在内的最高军事领导人感到震惊。
两人几周前刚刚签署了一份由最近被罢免的国防部长马克·埃斯珀撰写的备忘录，警告说美军的撤离将导致阿富汗的混乱和美国恐怖威胁的加剧
最终，特朗普同意了一个稍微慢一点的撤军时间表，到他离任时，驻阿富汗美军人数将降至2500人。
“我完全按照他想要我做的去做，然后他就屈服了，”麦格雷戈这样评价特朗普。
在他任职的最后一年，特朗普希望从阿富汗完全撤出美国军队的愿望成了一种困扰。
他认为他自己的国家安全高级官员挫败了他离开阿富汗的愿望，他开始清除那些他认为阻止他因结束美国最长的战争而获得荣誉的人。
清洗行动由麦克恩特带头，他在2020年2月被特朗普任命为人事主管。特朗普最终在五角大楼做出了重大改变，包括罢免了反对撤军的国防部长斯珀。
但是摆脱那些反对这项政策的人的困扰并不仅限于五角大楼。
2020年春夏，麦克恩特的办公室对特朗普各部门的高层官员进行了一系列采访，以衡量他们对特朗普的真实忠诚程度。
一个经常被问到的问题是:“你支持总统从阿富汗撤出所有美军的计划吗?”
在报道我即将出版的书《背叛:特朗普秀的最后一章》时，我发现这个问题是问那些从事与阿富汗政策无关的工作的官员，包括住房和城市发展部的一名官员和环境保护局的另一名官员。
因此，当特朗普在8月22日的一份声明中告诉支持者，拜登总统给了“全世界的敌人一个伟大而持久的胜利，当时他在消灭我们的美国公民和盟友之前，出人意料地、莫名其妙地从阿富汗撤走了我们伟大的士兵，并放弃了数十亿美元的最高级军事装备，”他没有计划做任何不同的事情。
早在4月份，他对拜登最大的批评是，他没有采取更快的行动，没有遵守特朗普与塔利班谈判的5月1日最后期限。
此外，虽然拜登的撤离包括了10多万易受塔利班袭击的阿富汗人或在20年战争中帮助过美国的阿富汗人，但特朗普没有真正的计划来帮助那些与美国军队并肩作战的阿富汗人。
特朗普政府大幅减少了向阿富汗盟友发放的特殊移民签证数量，就在最近，特朗普将拜登大规模撤离阿富汗人描述为将“恐怖分子”空运到“世界各地的社区”的一种手段
麦格雷戈认为，按照特朗普的时间表撤军不会那么危险，因为在阿富汗的战斗季节不会这样做。
他还认为，在特朗普执政期间，塔利班不会那么咄咄逼人，担心他会有什么反应。但他并没有将撤军的混乱归咎于拜登。
“我很高兴拜登总统做出了这个决定。他不对撤军的细节负责，”麦格雷戈说。“这主要是国防部长的工作——麦肯齐将军和米莉将军当然应该参与进来。”
而且，正如麦格雷戈指出的那样，负有责任的三人中有两人——米莉和麦肯齐——是由唐纳德·特朗普任命的。
Former Trump officials praise Biden for carrying out 'Trump-Biden withdrawal' from Afghanistan: ANALYSIS
It's no surprise that former President Donald Trump and his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have condemned President Joe Biden's messy withdrawal from Afghanistan -- after all, the chaotic exit from Kabul has been deadly and deeply unpopular -- but the truth is that Biden accomplished exactly what Trump had tried to do in his final year in office.
The only real difference is that Trump wanted to withdraw more quickly and with less regard for the Afghan citizens who worked with the United States.
In fact, while Trump and Pompeo have taken their shots at Biden, some of the key players Trump tapped to carry out his planned withdrawal are actually praising Biden for finishing a job they say Trump started.
"The fact is this was the Trump-Biden withdrawal," said William Ruger, tapped by Trump to be U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in September 2020.
Picking Ruger was one of several personnel moves Trump made during his final months in office to put in place a team committed to one of his top policy goals: a complete U.S. military withdrawal. When the Pentagon announced the last U.S. troops had departed just before Biden's Aug. 31 deadline, Ruger tweeted a one-word response: "Finally."
In April 2020, Trump invited retired Col. Douglas MacGregor to the White House because he had seen the former U.S. Army officer on Fox News making the case that America should get out of Afghanistan – and out of Iraq and Syria, too.
"I am not critical of President Biden's decision. And if you listen to his speech, he said, 'I ended the war.' Bravo! Well done! Get out! This has been an enormous waste of time, money, resources and blood," MacGregor told ABC News after Biden's speech on Tuesday. "So the president is 100 percent correct."
Last November, Trump installed MacGregor as a senior adviser to the secretary of defense, with marching orders to push military leaders to get all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.
"He made very clear to me that he shared my views," MacGregor told ABC News. "And he said, 'I've got to get you in here. Because I agree with you. We need to get out of these places. There's no reason to be in any of them.'"
On the day he was appointed, MacGregor was handed a sheet of paper from Director of Presidential Personnel Johnny McEntee spelling out his mission at the Pentagon. With Trumpian bluntness, the paper included just four bullet points. The first one read: "Get out us out of Afghanistan."
On his first day on the job, MacGregor drafted a one-page presidential order to complete the withdrawal of all uniformed U.S. military personnel by Jan. 12, 2021 -- a considerably faster timeline than Biden's ended up being. Trump signed the order on Nov. 11, 2020.
"Donald Trump wanted out," MacGregor said. "It was no secret plan. No misleading agenda. He wanted out."
The withdrawal order horrified top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie.
Both men had just weeks earlier signed off on a memo written by recently ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper warning that the withdrawal of U.S. troops would result in chaos in Afghanistan and a heightened terror threat in the U.S.
Ultimately, Trump agreed to a slightly slower withdrawal timeline that would bring the number of U.S. troops to Afghanistan down to 2,500 by the time he left office.
"I did exactly what he wanted me to do and then he buckled," MacGregor said of Trump.
During his final year in office, Trump's desire to completely withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan became something of an obsession.
He believed his own top national security officials had thwarted his desire to get out of Afghanistan and he set out to purge those he thought were keeping him from getting credit for ending America's longest war.
The purge was spearheaded by McEntee, who Trump made personnel director in February 2020. Trump ultimately made major changes at the Pentagon, including the ouster of a secretary of defense, Esper, who opposed withdrawal.
But the obsession with getting rid of those opposed to the policy was not limited to the Pentagon.
Over the spring and summer of 2020, McEntee's office conducted a series of interviews with top Trump officials across all departments to gauge their true level of loyalty to Trump.
One frequent question asked was this: "Do you support the president's plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan?"
In reporting for my upcoming book, "Betrayal: The Final Chapter of the Trump Show," I discovered that this question was asked of officials who held jobs that had nothing to do with Afghanistan policy, including an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and another at the Environmental Protection Agency.
So, when Trump told supporters in an Aug. 22 statement that President Biden gave "enemies all around the world a great and lasting victory when he unexpectedly and inexplicably removed our great soldiers from Afghanistan before taking out our U.S. citizens and allies, along with abandoning many billions of dollars of highest-grade Military equipment," he had had no plan to do anything differently.
Back in April, his biggest criticism of Biden was that he wasn't acting faster and sticking with the May 1 deadline Trump had negotiated with the Taliban.
And, while Biden's evacuation included over 100,000 Afghans vulnerable to the Taliban or who had assisted the U.S. during the 20-year war, Trump had no real plan to help those Afghan who had worked alongside U.S. forces.
The Trump administration had drastically reduced the number of Special Immigrant Visas issued to Afghan allies, and just recently, Trump described Biden's mass evacuation of Afghans as a means to airlifting "terrorists" into "neighborhoods around the world."
MacGregor believes a withdrawal on Trump's timetable would have been less dangerous because it would not have been done during the fighting season in Afghanistan.
He also believes the Taliban would have been much less aggressive with Trump in office, fearing how he would react. But he does not blame Biden for the chaos of the withdrawal.
"I'm glad President Biden made the decision. He is not responsible for the details of the withdrawal," MacGregor said. "That is the job primarily of the secretary of defense -- and General McKenzie and General Milley certainly should have been involved."
And, as MacGregor pointed out, two of the three people responsible -- Milley and McKenzie -- were appointed by Donald Trump.
