No understanding

Omri Nahmias (“Two years of international turmoil,” January 27) cites supposed experts lauding President Biden’s foreign policy with barely a nod to Biden’s responsibility for the turmoil.

It is suggested that the mistakes in execution of a necessary withdrawal from Afghanistan were temporary, and that the Biden administration “has learned many lessons about effective statecraft.”

Biden’s unconditional surrender to a bunch of barbaric Afghan terrorists cost hundreds of lives, and was massively destructive to America’s authority in the world. The incomprehensible decision to close the secure Bagram Airfield (releasing 5000 terrorists from prison and ceding to China a state-of-the-art intelligence gathering facility) and premature drawdown of military assets before evacuating all civilians led inexorably to this needless carnage.

Biden later asserted that there was nothing that could have been done differently, a statement that one commentator described as “breathtakingly arrogant and disturbingly delusional.” Biden has displayed no understanding of the grievous harm done to America’s credibility and deterrence. The senior advisers responsible for the debacle remain in place.

The article compliments Biden’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but the war did not have to happen at all. There is a direct line from Biden’s servile capitulation to the Taliban to the Russian invasion just five months later. Biden qualified the threat of US sanctions, saying that the US response to a Russian attack would depend on whether it was just a “minor incursion.”

Putin reasonably interpreted this as a green light to act. It is no coincidence that Russia invaded Ukraine twice during the Obama/Biden administration and again with Biden as president, but took no such action during the Trump presidency.

Biden’s reaction to China is especially troubling. Secretary of State Blinken demonstrated the weakness that was to characterize the Biden administration at the first

US-China summit. In response to the Chinese tirade against the US, Blinken conceded that the US “acknowledges our imperfections, acknowledges that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we have reversals, we take steps back.”

Biden has steadfastly refused to confront President Xi Jinping regarding the source of COVID that has killed over one million Americans. His climate envoy John Kerry extols China’s cooperation while China is the world’s leading polluter and opens new coal-fired power plants at an astounding rate.

The Justice Department canceled the “China Initiative,” meant to counter Beijing’s theft of American intellectual property. All this while China ramps up its threats and provocative actions toward Taiwan.

Had any of these scenarios played out during the previous administration, Democrats would be demanding the president’s immediate resignation while preparing a third impeachment.

EFRAIM COHEN Zichron Ya’acov