How much does Biden’s vow of support mean now?
I’d like to know what the president of Ukraine really thinks.
Here he was, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sitting aside President Joe Biden, listening to Biden talk about how the U.S. would stand behind Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.
Zelenskyy met with Biden the day after Biden defended his precipitous and botched evacuation of Kabul, leaving hundreds of Americans behind, as well thousands of Afghan allies.
Zelenskyy was sitting in the same chair that only weeks earlier was occupied by former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani.
It was at that June 25 meeting that Biden told Ghani and the world that the U.S. had his back, despite plans for U.S. withdrawal.
“Our troops may be leaving, but our support for Afghanistan is not ending,” Biden said. “But we’re going to stick with you. And we’re going to do our best to see to it you have the tools you need.”
The world knows what happened next. Without informing Ghani, let alone our NATO allies, Biden ordered his ill-conceived withdrawal that led to the humiliating disaster at Kabul. That decision led to the unnecessary deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers and held America up to international ridicule.
So Zelenskyy, the first foreign leader to meet with Biden following Biden’s Tuesday night address where he blamed everybody else but himself for the Afghanistan disaster, listened to Biden repeat some of what he said to Ghani.
It was clear that Biden, coming under withering criticism from European leaders and NATO members for his abysmal withdrawal plan, was out to refurbish his alleged foreign relation expertise.
Biden said, “The United States remains firmly committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression and for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations.”
A normal person would take this to mean that Biden has Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s’ back. But with Biden, you just don’t know.
But if Zelenskyy had any doubts, he did not express them. A former television actor, Zelenskyy knows how to keep a straight face. He was happy just to be there, having tried to arrange a White House meeting since 2019 when he was first elected.
And Biden committed another $60 million in new military aid to Ukraine in the form of anti-tank Javelin missiles. While important, the $60 million amounts to mere walking around money compared to the $85 billion in military equipment the U.S. left behind in Afghanistan.
Zelenskyy, you will recall, was on the other end of a phone call from then-President Donald Trump in which Trump supposedly asked Zelenskyy to investigate the Ukraine business dealings of Hunter Biden when Joe Biden, his father, was vice president.
Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the drive in the House to impeach Trump over the matter. Trump was impeached but acquitted in the Senate.
Ghani was also a recipient of a presidential phone call. This time it was from Biden who on July 23 told Ghani that he was concerned over reports that the war against the Taliban was not going well.
Biden made those remarks, according to a Reuters transcript of the call, at the same time that Biden was falsely telling the American people — and Americans still in Afghanistan — that they had time to evacuate. The Afghan National Army was holding it own, he said, and that there would be no Saigon-like evacuation of Kabul.
The reality was different and Biden knew it.
But Biden told Ghani, “There is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
Ghani, an old fox, told Biden that his forces needed U.S. air power support, which Biden was shutting down. He also added that he needed more money from the U.S. for pay raises for his army.
“Military pay is (has) not increased for over a decade. We need some gestures to rally everybody together,” Ghani said.
Then the roof fell in. As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, Ghani flew out of the country, taking millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars with him.
Two U.S presidents: Trump and Biden, phoning presidents of other countries.
Although Trump was impeached for his — unlike Biden and Afghanistan — no U.S. troops were killed and no Americans were left behind.