One of many US missteps
US President Joe Biden is under a tremendous amount of pressure from his own Democratic Party and the liberal media establishment for daring to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and allowing the country to fall back into the hands of the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
Biden, in a statement on August 14, said, "One more year, or five more years, of US military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country."
Just two days later, after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, fled and the Taliban stormed into the capital, Biden in a speech from the White House defiantly maintained that "there was never a good time to withdraw US forces," but was forced to admit that the Taliban resumed control of Afghanistan "more quickly than we had anticipated."
Republicans predictably jumped on this demonstrable foreign-policy failure, neglecting to mention that it was Biden's predecessor Donald Trump who laid the groundwork for the withdrawal of US troops and worked with the Taliban to do so.
US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expostulated, "This debacle was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen," as if Trump would have done any better as a second-term president.
Trump's former secretary of state Mike Pompeo in an interview on Fox News with Chris Wallace chimed in, saying, "It looks like the Biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan," even though of course the Democratic president was in essence carrying out Trump's plan.
The Republican National Committee has now deleted a page on its website that had celebrated Trump's dealings with the Taliban, perhaps hoping no one would notice.
The corporate media were equally unforgiving of Biden. The Washington Post's editorial board issued a scathing opinion blaming Biden for any future deaths, saying that the US "assumed at least partial responsibility for all Afghans. Leaving them now means walking away from that responsibility."
The Post also worried about America's global prestige, saying, "At risk is the United States' reputation as a partner, as would-be allies around the world watch and calculate the value of an American commitment."
In a similar vein, The New York Times' Bret Stephens demanded to know, "What on earth was Joe Biden thinking - if, that is, he was thinking?" Like the Post, Stephens was deeply concerned about the nation's reputation, asking, "What kind of ally is the United States?"
Such criticisms miss several glaring points. First, if a foreign military occupation made no progress toward democracy and human rights in 20 years, it is unlikely to do so in 20 more. Second, they are more concerned about the United States' reputation as a global superpower (which is what the term "ally" really implies) than human lives.
And third, although a majority of Americans once supported the Afghanistan war and occupation, today most Americans want the occupation to end.
Moreover, most
critics
of
Biden's botched exit from Afghanistan appear to have missed the fact that the entirety of the occupation has been flawed and led to the debacle of the Taliban's resurgence.
Biden's missteps were apropos of the entire occupation. Every step of the way, the United States made the wrong choice, regardless of which president, Republican or Democrat, was in power, from George W Bush's decision to work with corrupt and violent warlords, to Barack Obama's choice to validate the Taliban by being the first to engage in peace talks with the ostensible enemy forces.
Biden's fellow Democrats also joined in the criticism against him but got much closer to the questions that really need to be asked about the disastrous turn of events in Afghanistan.
Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "I am disappointed that the Biden administration clearly did not accurately assess the implications of a rapid US withdrawal."