The Other McCain

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Gaslighting Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster

Posted on | August 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Gaslighting Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster

It has been pointed out that Joe Biden’s 19-minute Monday speech about the Afghanistan debacle was a masterpiece of gaslighting, in which he engaged in a straw-man argument, as if the point of contention was whether or not U.S. troops would be withdrawn, rather than the incompetence that turned the withdrawal into a shameful humiliation, abandoning not only our allies in Afghanistan, but also thousands of American civilians who are now stranded in a country controlled by the Taliban. Trump adviser Stephen Miller said on Twitter:

Biden’s speech is one of the most dishonest straw man arguments in history. He debated reasons for exiting Afghanistan. Not many dispute we should end war. This is about the unimaginable, inconceivable incompetence of Biden’s exit plan & the global humiliation it has wrought.
I must also reiterate that Biden abandoned & rejected the Trump peace plan. Under Trump, there was zero chance our flag would not by flying right now over the American Embassy, our staff working safely inside.
Biden cannot escape his own malfeasance, ineptitude & incapacity.

Even many liberal voices in the media are dumbfounded by Biden’s big blunder, and angry about the dishonesty of his excuses and blame-shifting. A basic claim of the anti-Trump media — that Biden’s presidency would mean “the grown-ups” were back in charge, an end to what the elites viewed as the crude amateurism of Trump — has now collapsed. Biden alone is to blame for a catastrophe that the actual grown-ups in his administration sought to prevent. Biden’s decision “was made against the recommendations of his top military generals and many diplomats”:

The president’s top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.
In a series of meetings leading up to his decision, military and intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that security was deteriorating in Afghanistan, and they expressed concerns both about the capabilities of the Afghan military and the Taliban’s ability to take over major Afghan cities.
Other advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, raised the possibility of Taliban attacks on U.S. forces and diplomats as well as the Afghans who for two decades worked alongside them.

So it wasn’t as if this catastrophe was not predicted, or that it could not have been prevented. Biden was warned, but did it anyway. And by the way, here’s a quote from 2002:

“History is going to judge us very harshly, I believe,
if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan
to evaporate because we are fearful of the phrase,
‘nation-building,’ or we do not stay the course.”

Who said that? A senator named Joe Biden.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)




 

Category: Foreigners, Joe Biden

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