Biden faces growing blame for Afghan debacle

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Published on: 08/13/2021 – 19:32 Modified: 08/13/2021 – 19:30

Washington (AFP)

The Taliban’s staggering advances in Afghanistan threaten to tarnish President Joe Biden’s record, but he has stood firm on the withdrawal of US troops and believes the public is with him.

Twenty years of investments that cost $ 2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives disintegrated in days as Islamist insurgents seized two of the largest cities with little resistance and moved closer to the capital Kabul.

Republican rivals predictably attacked Biden, but he also faced the most critical coverage of his presidency, with TV networks juxtaposing footage of Afghanistan’s collapse with his remarks a while ago. more than a month that “the Taliban invading everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

In a scathing editorial, the Washington Post said Biden had jeopardized real progress in Afghanistan since 2001, including the education of girls, which was banned by the Taliban during their last reign.

“The ruined or lost Afghan lives will belong to Mr. Biden’s legacy as surely as the US dollars and the lives his decision could save,” the newspaper writes.

The United States was returning 3,000 troops – roughly the same number withdrawn in this month’s final withdrawal – to evacuate embassy staff and flying Afghans whose work with American forces put them at risk.

But Biden, who during his decades in public life has gained a reputation for empathy, was not moved when asked about the Afghan losses and instead spoke of protecting American troops, a deeply personal matter as her late son Beau served in Iraq.

The former vice president and American opinion polls have shared his point of view for years. VoteVets, an advocacy group, hailed Biden for finally having “the strength to stand up to those who want endless war.”

– Lack of planning? –

Biden argues that the United States has long achieved its primary goal of defeating Al Qaeda after the September 11, 2001 attacks and has done more than enough by training 300,000 Afghan troops.

US President Joe Biden focuses speech on falling prescription drug prices amid chaotic scenes in Afghanistan MANDEL NGAN AFP

“They have to fight for themselves, to fight for their nation,” Biden said Tuesday.

Administration officials say delaying the withdrawal only prolonged the inevitable.

But Andrew Wilder, an expert on Afghanistan who visited in June, said the administration could have spent more time preparing for the expected effects and that it was not “a withdrawal orderly and responsible “.

“I think it’s hard not to conclude that it was not the American withdrawal, but the way we withdrew that played a critical role,” said Wilder, vice president of Asian studies at the ‘American Institute of Peace.

The US withdrawal also created “an air of inevitability” that has undermined the Afghan will to fight, even if the Taliban remain unpopular.

“For me, the psychological factor is what we haven’t taken into account adequately,” Wilder said.

Senior Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Biden had authorized a “massive, predictable and preventable disaster” and former President Donald Trump issued a statement denouncing the “tragic mess” and writing in capital letters: “You miss me Again?”

But Trump himself triggered the pullout with a February 2020 deal with the Taliban.

Critics have drawn parallels with the chaotic fall of Saigon in 1975, but then-US President Gerald Ford had been in office for less than a year and is rarely seen by historians as solely responsible for it. tortured experience of the United States in Vietnam. .

– American apathy –

Biden had presented Afghanistan as a costly side issue when the United States must focus on a bigger challenge from China.

Brian Katulis, a senior researcher at the left-wing Center for American Progress, wondered how the Taliban’s gains would affect Biden’s stated mission to defend democracy from authoritarians.

Taliban fighters drive Afghan National Army vehicle through Kandahar street – AFP

But Katulis said it was not clear what political price Biden would pay. The US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, pushed by Biden, was popular until the rise of the extremist Islamic State movement.

“It really depends on how ugly it gets,” Katulis said.

“If this is a series of atrocities involving only Afghans, you can think of Syria as an example where there is just a general shrug of indifference saying that there is nothing we can do.” , did he declare.

“But if the Americans are involved, then all bets are off.”

AFP 2021

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