Joe Biden’s Afghan Critics’ Bloodlust

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Soldiers. Illustrated | iStock

There was a tragic suicide bombing at Kabul airport on Thursday. At the time of writing, 169 people have been confirmed killed, including 13 US soldiers.

This sparked an instant denunciation frenzy on the cable news and the Republican neoconservatives. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Demanded that Biden resign immediately, as did Meghan McCain. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) Asked Biden to reverse course. “For every American who is killed, a city in Afghanistan should be wiped off the face of the earth,” tweeted conservative expert Todd Starnes. Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) and Representative Mike Waltz (R-Fl.) Issued a joint statement demanding that Biden recognize the former Afghan vice president and chief intelligence officer as the country’s legitimate government.

Yet these bloodthirsty critics have no argument or even suggestion that does not involve getting more American soldiers killed except for the genocidal slaughter of Afghan civilians. President Biden is right to stay the course.

It is not yet entirely clear who carried out the attack, but initial reports point to a local offshoot of ISIS, with the likely objective of reigniting the conflict between the Taliban and the United States. . Starnes and the rest of the hardliners yelling at Biden. (By the way, it’s worth pointing out that the Taliban are fiercely opposed to ISIS and in fact in the past have received temporary support in their fight against the group from none other than the military. American.)

To reaffirm what is still quite undeniable, we have just completed 20 years of occupation which have categorically failed to create a viable Afghan government. This government is now gone. There is a deal with the Taliban to come out at the end of the month, signed by President Trump and respected by Biden.

Giving up that deal by sending in more troops or taking over Bagram Air Base, as parliamentary minority leader Kevin McCarthy suggested, would not only require deploying more forces to restart the war, but it would expose the troops. there who are currently protecting the evacuation to immediate attack from all sides, and possibly even cutting them off from reinforcements, given the ease with which it is to prevent flights to Kabul airport. Indeed, as members of the US government, Graham and Walz’s request puts US soldiers at a significant risk that the Taliban will take it as a policy statement and open fire. And now what?

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Not a single one of these morons even bothered to sketch out a medium-term plan.

The simple fact is that the Kabul evacuation cannot help but be a dangerous undertaking, and one attack or another was always a risk. Indeed, this is the first sacrifice of American soldiers in years that can be said to have actually accomplished something worthwhile in Afghanistan. More than 2,400 of them have died in the past 20 years in a war that any fool could see as impossible to win in 2003 at the latest. Their lives were wasted along with those of perhaps a quarter of a million civilians by three presidents who were too stupid or cowardly to face reality, cut our losses and come out of it.

These troops, on the other hand, gave their lives to protect an evacuation which, while flawed in many ways, actually did a lot of good. More than 100,000 people have indeed been airlifted at the time of writing, and mass evacuations are still underway. Given the chaos of Kabul’s initial collapse and strained relations with the Taliban, this is quite a remarkable achievement.

These armchair generals don’t care about any of that. They do not care to come up with a viable plan to do anything in particular, or to defend any conception of American interests, or to respect the sacrifice of Our Troops. They want to use the shock, horror and pain of slain American soldiers to stir up a good old war frenzy, just like they did after 9/11, and make hundreds or thousands more soldiers. injured and killed during another insane imperialist crusade. The US military is a toy for these people in their crusade to seize power within by spurring citizens into a foaming desire for revenge.

There is no doubt that the Kabul evacuation could have been better planned and better executed. But it’s water under the bridge. President Biden continuing to stubbornly stick to what is clearly the only realistic course of action, despite a frenzy of blind condemnation by the media and the GOP, and the lack of support from his own party, is the act strongest political courage I’ve seen from a president in my life.

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