Biden shares Bliken's delusion
THOSE unfortunate souls who watched Tony Blinken’s two days of congressional testimony learned one clear thing: the secretary of state is a worldclass bureaucrat.
Like all bureaucrats, Blinken is impervious to criticism, his job secure because he did what he was told. Sure, mistakes were made, but not by him.
As their House colleagues did before them, Republican senators took turns calling the Afghanistan withdrawal shameful, a calamity, a disaster, but they might as well have been throwing water on a duck’s back. Blinken was unimpressed and unmoved.
Even when Idaho Sen. Jim Risch said “there’s not enough lipstick in the world to put on this pig to make” the withdrawal look any better, Blinken appeared more bored than angry.
His line was that the Biden administration inherited a mess from the Trump administration, and did the best it could in evacuating 120,000 people. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
His zombie-like refusal to accept any responsibility or even to acknowledge the scope of the disaster was disheartening only if you were foolish enough to expect otherwise.
Blinken, you see, is a charter member of the striped-pants brigade, a foreign-policy careerist with vast experience in failure in Democratic administrations. Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran — he got the top job despite being on the team for those disasters, so what’s one more?
He’s living proof that, in much of Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Like his boss, the president, Blinken has never been held back by being wrong.
Besides, Blinken knew Dem lawmakers would bubble-wrap him with denunciations of the Trump administration’s initial deal with the Taliban and lob softball questions about “going forward.” Anytime anyone in government talks about “going forward,” you can bet they’re trying to close the book on the past, even if the past was a catastrophe just yesterday.
But it’s not a simple thing to close the book on the biggest foreign-policy debacle of a generation. Here are three reasons why Afghanistan will haunt the Biden administration, and maybe America, for years to come.
First, the wall-to-wall news coverage of the harrowing events last month is unforgettable. The gripping scenes started with video and photos of desperate Afghans clambering aboard moving airplanes, and some falling to their deaths from the air as they sought to escape Taliban hell.
Then, even as the lucky ones managed to get inside the thronged airport for a flight to safety, came the suicide blast that killed 13 Americans and perhaps 200 Afghans. The next scene was the arrival home of the flag-draped coffins, with President Biden frequently checking his watch as if he had to be someplace else.
The second reason why the story won’t go away is that the Taliban won’t let it. Mugging for the cameras in US military gear and guns, the terrorists are now the champions of the jihad world and a recruitment poster for aspiring Islamists everywhere.
The Taliban are also rounding up Afghans who helped the US and other NATO nations, and implementing their seventh-century version of Sharia law. Each gruesome tale of repression, torture and beheadings is a reminder that Biden paved the way.
Third, America’s defeat in Afghanistan would reverberate across the globe in any event, but the fact that surrender was a policy choice carries a special resonance to our allies and adversaries.
Indeed, the craven talk in the White House and Pentagon about our “Taliban partners” must be provoking belly laughs in China, Russia and Iran. To our allies, America looks to have gone soft in the head and is no longer dependable in a crunch.
As Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said to Blinken: “You own this. The Biden administration caused this disaster.”
If the White House even understands that view, the two days of hearings were the place to change the perception and make a strong case for credibility. For example, Blinken could have been resolute in promising to rescue the citizens and allies left behind and sent a tough signal to the Taliban about not barring their departure.
He also could have delivered a broader message to our adversaries and other terror groups that America remains committed to using our superior military to protect itself and the free world.
Blinken did none of those things. He was wishy-washy about the next steps and tried to fend off criticism by citing how many inquiries his office got from Congress and how many it responded to. For those keeping score, as he is, the numbers were 26,000 and 21,000.
He also said his diplomats made 55,000 calls and sent 33,000 e-mails trying to find and help people get out of Afghanistan before the withdrawal was complete. His reliance on effort instead of success is the bureaucratic version of getting a participation trophy.
Despite having those numbers, he claimed repeatedly not to know how many Afghans with American green cards and special immigrant visas were left behind, saying only they were in the “thousands.”
Most infuriating, Blinken continued to boast about how the “international community” is issuing statements and setting expectations for the Taliban, as if there is doubt about the fundamental nature of a group whose government includes a terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head for killing Americans.
And he sounded almost delusional when he insisted the US still has “leverage” over a country we abandoned in a desperate dash for safety.
While the real world scoffs at such nonsense, the scariest thought is that Blinken and the Biden White House actually believe it.