Biden can’t escape blame for Afghan fiasco | VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

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The Afghan army, fed by the Americans for the past 20 years, which had already suffered thousands of casualties, evaporated within hours during the encirclement of Kabul.

Enlisted people apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were even better than fighting as an addict of the postmodern United States – despite its powerful diversity training programs.

Forces stronger than the Taliban, in far more strategic locations, will now take advantage of an ideologically but predictably incompetent administration, an awakened Pentagon, and politically armed intelligence communities.

Why not, when President Joe Biden trashes both the US frackers and the Saudis – only to beg the kingdom to rush to export more of its hated oil before the US mid-term?

Why not, when Biden asks Russian Vladimir Putin to demand that Russian-linked hackers be a little less rowdy in their selection of American targets?

And why not, as our own military rivals the “white supremacist” windmills as Afghans drop US military planes in fatal desperation to reach a supposedly racist nation?

Biden keeps repeating that he was bound by the planned withdrawal of former President Donald Trump.

Truly?

A mercurial Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his readiness to use air power to protect US personnel and to bomb a so-called Islamic caliphate. The Taliban knew this and so struck when Trump left.

Biden claims he was bound by Trump’s decision to step down and therefore cannot be blamed for his reckless operation of a predetermined departure. But all Biden has done since taking office is destroy the Trump pacts, overturning agreements on energy leases, protocols with Latin America and Mexico on border security and pipeline contracts.

No sooner did Biden claim he was being hampered by Trump than he turned the tide to defend not only his own withdrawal, but the disastrous manner of it. Biden claims he has no free will while insisting he wouldn’t have done anything differently if he had.

In a healthy world, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense would resign. For too long we have heard their careerist brag about singling out climate change as their main challenge. For too long, they have pointed out to Congress their critical credentials in racial theory. For too long, they have bragged about removing the so-called white supremacists from their ranks. For too long, they have fought with journalists while waging wars on Twitter and posting cartoonish ads attesting to their credentials.

In other words, they lectured on anything and everything except their plans to prevent a humiliating military defeat of US forces and their allies.

Our intelligence and investigative agencies are just as morally suspect. The legacy of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and Andrew McCabe has been the destruction of the reputation of the CIA, NSA and FBI.

Current and retired intelligence lackeys and careerists have all wasted years enacting Russian “collusion.” They swore that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian “disinformation.” They have watched and unmasked officials and hatched teenage plots against an elected president. All of this was more important to their careers than warning of growing threats in Afghanistan.

In the aftermath of the Afghan debacle, we must depoliticize and disarm these distorted agencies and incompetent institutions. We could start symbolically by removing security clearances from all retired officers, officers and diplomats who are on television to offer partisan analysis.

Senior retirees and retirees should finally be held accountable if they violate the principles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When four-star generals teach the nation that an elected president is a Mussolini or a Nazi but remain silent during the biggest military setback in half a century, they should forgo exemptions from existing military codes.

Retired officers entering and leaving Pentagon defense and housing company boards should have a five-year cooling-off period before leveraging their in-depth knowledge of the Pentagon’s supply maze.

As for Biden, his defeated team threatens the victorious Taliban with possible ostracism from world diplomacy as the price of their illiberality. We have to assume that between executions of women, the Taliban will fear losing the chance to visit the United Nations in New York.

Biden challenged a Supreme Court ruling and assumed it was a good thing he broke the law. Under his watch, the fate of the US border, equal law enforcement, the economy, energy, crime security, foreign policy, and race relations imploded – and in no less than seven months.

If Biden were a Republican, the current Democratic House would have impeached him. It would have been right to do so.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classic and historian of Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books. Contact at [email protected].

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