Afghanistan isn’t Biden’s first mistake
WASHINGTON – – The lesson of President Joe Biden’s Afghan debacle is clear: People who make epic mistakes tend to repeat them.
This is not the first catastrophic withdrawal of U.S. forces over which Biden has presided. In 2011, Biden was in charge of the disastrous American withdrawal from Iraq. Back then, he boasted that pulling troops out of Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration,” and was so proud of his role that he called President Barack Obama from Baghdad to thank him “for giving me the chance to end this goddamn war.”
But he did not end the war; he reignited it. Biden and Obama had inherited a pacified Iraq where, according to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, the Islamic State was “pretty much decimated” and had just “700-or-so adherents left.” But the U.S. withdrawal created a vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to regroup, reconstitute itself and build a caliphate the size of Britain. The terrorists enslaved and raped thousands of Yezidi girls and released videos of gruesome executions for the world to see – – people crucified, burned alive, drowned in cages. They beheaded American journalists, and exported their campaign of terror across the globe – – carrying out 143 attacks in 29 countries that killed more than 2,000 people, as of July 2016.
Yet as late as 2013, Biden was still in denial, declaring in an interview that he felt “happy” and “fulfilled” with the decision to withdraw. It took 2½ years before he and Obama finally sent U.S. forces back to Iraq to deal with the disaster they had created.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden finally admitted in a Wall Street Journal interview that the decision to withdraw all troops from Iraq “was a mistake” – – and claimed that he had wanted to leave a “residual force” to keep the Islamic State in check. He even criticized President Donald Trump for withdrawing the small contingent of U.S. forces from Syria, declaring, “when we leave a vacuum, like he’s leaving it, it creates significant opportunities for difficulty.”
So it was reasonable to hope that Biden had reflected on the fiasco in Iraq – – and that as president, he would not repeat the same mistakes in Afghanistan. One prominent former Army general told me that he expected Biden would listen to his military commanders and leave in place a small residual force in Afghanistan. After all, he reasoned, Biden’s national security team was largely made up of the same people who had presided over the decision to withdraw from Iraq. Perhaps Biden and his advisers had been so burned by their experiences in Iraq that they would steer a different course in Afghanistan.
Instead, they unleashed a cataclysm in Afghanistan that is even worse than the one they created in Iraq. At least in Iraq, they left behind a sovereign, stable representative government with whom they could partner to beat back the resurgent terrorists once they realized their mistake. In Afghanistan, they have allowed the terrorists to take over the entire country. Our defeat is total and complete. We are back at square one – – the same place we were on Sept. 11, 2001.
Just as he did in Iraq, Biden is blaming everyone else for his Afghan calamity. In Iraq, Biden blamed George W. Bush for signing a status of forces agreement that committed the United States to leave, and claimed his hands were tied. Similarly, in his address to the nation Monday, Biden claimed that his hands were tied by the deal Trump signed with the Taliban – – never mind that he has reversed dozens of Trump policies with which he disagreed. He also blamed the Afghan military for collapsing in the face of the Taliban offensive – – even though it had been trained to fight with U.S. air cover that Biden suddenly withdrew without warning. He even had the audacity to blame innocent Afghan civilians facing slaughter by the Taliban for putting themselves in danger by refusing to leave the country. His speech was a pathetic exercise in blame-shifting and victim-shaming.
Biden’s handling of Afghanistan reminds me, in many ways, of a husband who ruins his marriage and gets thrown out of the house. His wife decides to give him a second chance – – but he blows it by making the same stupid mistakes. And the reality sets in: He is a two-time loser for a reason. If he had been capable of the humility and introspection required not to repeat his mistakes, he probably would not have made them in the first place.
Like the husband who blew up his marriage, Biden is a two-time loser for a reason.
– – Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen.