The president did it right in Afghanistan, he insists.

Another speech by the president

So the buck stops with the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, all service chiefs, the president’s military advisers, and the commanders in the field. That might be hard to carve into a desk sign.

President Joe Biden has a case to make before the American people about his decision to bug out of Afghanistan. He sometimes wraps up a few persuasive paragraphs in a row. According to polls, the American people want out. He’s not going to pass off a “forever war” to another president. It was a campaign promise, after all.

But he hasn’t been helping his case by . . . making his case. When he appeared before the cameras on Tuesday afternoon, he thundered like an angry dad chewing out his kids for scratching the car. Complete with raising, then lowering, his voice to make points, repeating himself, and shaking his finger for emphasis.

This was a man who was mad about the PR of the situation, but who wouldn’t admit any mistakes on his own behalf.

He implied, or we inferred, that he thought the evacuation would have devolved into chaos no matter when it happened, so it might as well have happened now. And you kids don’t know how good you’ve got it.

We wouldn’t have been surprised if he had growled, “How dare you lower my approval rating?”

The Americans who are still there, well, apparently that’s their fault.

The Afghan defense forces folded much earlier than anybody expected, but the White House was prepared for everything, including that.

The evacuation from Kabul was “an extraordinary success.”

“As Gen. [Kenneth F.] McKenzie said, this is the way the mission was designed. It was designed to operate under severe stress and attack, and that’s what it did.”

“The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisers. The secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all the service chiefs and the commanders in the field.”

But he takes responsibility for the decision.

We got the feeling Tuesday afternoon that the president was trying to make us think that he’d do everything exactly the same way, given a second chance. We understand that in American politics today, nobody admits mistakes, for fear the issue becomes a “loss” that the other team brags about.

But to double down on such a disaster for American credibility and administrative know-how makes the president look clueless. And that doesn’t help in other parts of the world.

Which he mentioned. He again noted that China and Russia should be the real focus of our attention. Them, and terrorists scattered all around the world. If he can repeat talking points, then allow us to repeat this one: Who was talking about Afghanistan before Joe Biden announced surrender earlier this year? The United States only had a few thousand troops there, mostly as advisers, and weren’t taking casualties. Any more than we’re taking casualties in Korea today. But little girls were going to school in Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad.

The president also said the Taliban has “made public commitments” for safe passage for anybody wanting to leave. But: “We don’t take them by their word alone, but by their actions.” So here are their actions:

The BBC and other news outlets reported last week that Taliban fighters are searching for and allegedly killing people that worked with the Americans. Only allegedly, because most journalists have fled the country. And word about what’s really going on, when it comes, only trickles out.

The president continued: “To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask: What is the vital national interest? In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.

“Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place? Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida on Sept. 11, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan. We delivered justice to Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Over a decade ago. Al-Qaida was decimated.”

Yes, it was.

Many of us remember very well why we went to Afghanistan. “To make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland,” as the president notes. But can that be so sure today?

Reports say that the astonishingly bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which the president of the United States won’t acknowledge, has given hope to terrorists of every stripe in the world. But these couple of paragraphs, from British newspaper The Guardian, made our hair stand on end last week:

The Defence Secretary of the United Kingdom, Ben Wallace, told Sky News that he was worried that al-Qaida would make a comeback in Afghanistan now. And:

“Wallace was right to worry about failed states—the 9/11 attacks of 2001 were planned and prepared by al-Qaida in Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban—but wrong about the group making some kind of return. Al-Qaida is already there.

“Just last month, the UN published an assessment based on intelligence received from member states stating that al-Qaida ‘is present in at least 15 Afghan provinces,’ and al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, an affiliate of the group, ‘operates under Taliban protection from Kandahar, Helmand and Nimruz provinces.’ Al-Qaida’s media celebrate its fighters’ apparently frequent operations in Afghanistan.”

Strength. And eternal vigilance.