Trump officials back away from 2020 Taliban peace deal after withdrawal chaos

 https://www.axios.com/2021/08/20/trump-taliban-agreement-doha-biden

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by Trump in November 2020, said he believed at the time the agreement was signed that it should have been "conditions-based," which is in part why he later objected to Trump's call for a Christmas homecoming for U.S. troops.

Esper told CNN that although Biden is responsible for the outcome in Afghanistan, Trump "undermined" the agreement and weakened U.S. leverage in negotiations by impatiently calling for troop reductions in the country.

"Our secretary of state [Mike Pompeo] signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban," McMaster said on Bari Weiss' podcast. "This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves."