Biden's Departure from Afghanistan

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?