I voted for President Biden,
trusting his character and assuming he’d seek input appropriately from
others. His withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrates incompetent planning
and undermines my confidence in his character. However, his performance
does not justify recall/impeachment. (As I’ve commented in the past, it
is important not to spiral into a third world governance situation.)
President Biden claims to take
responsibility for his decision, but continually insists he is 100% right and
blames others (President Trump; Afghanis) for his failures. I agree that Trump’s Afghanistan approach was
wrong, but Biden made his own decisions, against
the advice of his military advisors. (Sadly, his decisions appear to be
motivated by politics, wanting to crow about his achievement on 9/11/2021,
which gives the appearance of lack of character.)
President Biden falsely states
the alternative was 000s of US soldiers dying. He is correct to dispute
the comparison to US troops killed in Afghanistan in the 17 months previous to
his withdrawal. As he notes, the few deaths were attributable to
President Trump’s withdrawal agreement. However, he conveniently ignores
that in the 5 years previous to 2020, we
averaged 12 combined military and civilian deaths killed in action/year in
Afghanistan (16 including deaths that did not occur in action), not
thousands. His withdrawal has already exceeded that average.
President Biden states that no
army ever withdrew every person successfully. How many people did the
Russians leave behind in Afghanistan? How
many people did we leave behind in Japan or Germany in WWII? The issue is
not whether it is possible to get every person out, it is whether he acted
incompetently to expose so many people to danger.
Our successful evacuations from
Afghanistan are not to President Biden’s credit; they are thanks to the strong efforts
of our military, State Department staff, etc. despite the terrible situation President
Biden created.
President Biden says our
purpose in Afghanistan was “to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a
base from which to attack our homeland again”. He falsely said that Al Qaeda
was no longer in Afghanistan. If our
purpose is to ensure Afghanistan won’t be used as a base to attack the USA, why
re-open Afghanistan for terrorism? How many US deaths will that cause?
He says nation-building ”never
made any sense to me”, but he
staunchly supported nation-building early in this century and specifically in Afghanistan. Changing his mind can be a good idea, but why
can’t he admit it?
President Biden has continually claimed that he
would strengthen ties with our allies, but he did not inform them about his
decision even though he was putting their citizens in danger.
He says we can control terrorism
from afar. But that is hard and becomes more difficult when bases in the
area are closed.
President Biden continually says
the Taliban are “bad people” and can’t be trusted. “Trust but verify”, an
excellent strategy in many international situations, does not require labeling
people as “bad” or “untrustworthy”. Democrats are so careful to protect
people’s feelings (almost everything can be “hurtful”, as, in a recent example,
patches that honor slain policemen). Do
those concerns disappear when it seems politically expedient to tar people?
Remember when Trump’s travel bans from some countries that were largely
Islamist were decried as casting all Islamic people as terrorists? Are
all Taliban and their supporters bad people? (Note: I also pushed back
when President Bush accused the 9/11 perpetrators of being “cowards”. I
don’t think it is cowardly to give your life for something you believe in.)
If the Taliban are bad, why did
President Biden decide to abandon the good people of Afghanistan to the
atrocities of these “bad people” and to increase our risk of terrorism?
We did not lose the war; we
abandoned the war. There is a big difference, particularly in the eyes of
our Afghani helpers and people in other countries. The long-term repercussions will be
huge. Terrorists, Russia, China and
other enemies will be more aggressive and will spotlight US weakness. Israel, Taiwan, South Korea and other allies have
become more vulnerable. President Biden’s
actions will increase global strife.
I fear that President Biden is making economic concessions to the Taliban in return for short term support.
Side issue: Of course, there is some information the government can’t share. Why does the press ask so many questions they know can’t be answered for security reasons? To feel important? In the hope that someone will slip up and give an answer that should not have been given?
