DEADLY KABUL ATTACK SHAKES BIDEN’S AFGHAN EXIT STRATEGY

Joe Biden’s bid to complete an already messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan was rocked this week after a pair of bombings in Kabul killed dozens of people, marking the most trying day yet of his presidency.

The sheer scale of the tragedy – which saw at least 13 US service members and 60 Afghans killed – renewed criticism from lawmakers and allies over the precipitous American withdrawal and the failure to forecast the Afghan government’s rapid fall at the hands of the Taliban.

The attacks also undercut the president’s repeated arguments since taking office that he would offer a steady hand on foreign policy. And the scenes of chaos unleashed by a pair of suicide bombers drowned out efforts to cast the evacuation of more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan as a humanitarian success story.

In a sombre address to the nation on Thursday evening, Biden said he took responsibility for “all that’s happened of late” in Afghanistan but stood firm on his plans to withdraw US forces by August 31. Blaming an offshoot of Islamic State for the deadly attacks, he also said he would go after those responsible.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this – we will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said.

It was a speech the president never wanted to give, but which he and his advisers long feared was inevitable.

The atrocity in Kabul – which saw at least 18 other US service members wounded and scores more Afghans seeking to flee their nation killed – quickly overshadowed progress in getting people out. Since August 14 , about 5,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies have been evacuated.

Biden is now left trying to restore some balance to the high-wire act he’s been attempting since the Taliban swept into Kabul, forced into an impossible choice between maintaining evacuation efforts for Americans stranded in the country and the knowledge that every minute on the ground means increasing danger for US service members.

General Kenneth Mckenzie, the head of US Central Command, said Thursday that terrorist attacks had been expected and that more were likely in the days ahead. But evacuation efforts continued, with buses of evacuees arriving at Kabul’s

airport in the hours after the attacks.

“Here’s what you need to know: These ISIS terrorists will not win,” Biden said. “We will rescue the Americans, we will get our Afghan allies and our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated.” For a president who campaigned on his decades of foreign policy experience, and who said his message to the world after taking office was “America is back,” the scenes of chaos playing out in recent days have been devastating.

Administration officials had hoped that the quickly assembled airlift effort, combined with the winding down of America’s longest war, would push Afghanistan out of voters’ minds in the months and years ahead. Polls show the withdrawal was popular, but the images out of Kabul over the past 10 days have been shocking, even for the president’s allies.

And they have given Biden’s political enemies a powerful cudgel.

Republicans looked to seize upon the moment to pin two decades of failures in Afghanistan on Biden, with Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee calling for his resignation. But concern was evident even among Democrats, with Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginia Democrat who has served as the linchpin of Biden’s domestic legislative agenda, saying in a statement that the United States had found itself “in deep despair.”

House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, a California Republican, called for Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the withdrawal of troops until every US citizen was evacuated from Afghanistan. Of the approximately 1,000 Americans believed to be remaining in Afghanistan, US officials say they believe about two-thirds want to leave.

Biden was defiant in his remarks at the White House, maintaining that his drawdown was the correct course of action and saying former president Donald Trump – who brokered a withdrawal deal with the Taliban last year – had left him little choice.

Had he rejected the Trump administration’s agreement after taking office, Biden said his only real option would have been to “pour more troops” back into Afghanistan, something he’s opposed going back to his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice-president.

“I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan, a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country,” Biden said.