Biden is not to blame for this mess. The Afghan people own this one.

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(Doug Mills | The New York Times) President Joe Biden pauses while speaking from the White House in Washington on Thursday, August 26, 2021, about the situation in Afghanistan, after explosions claimed victims and rocked the area outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

By Ryan Hinkins | The public forum

| August 31, 2021, 12:00 p.m.

I am writing in response to the letter from Susan Rounds in which she blames President Biden for all the mess in Afghanistan. It seems that Susan Rounds suffers from amnesia as to how America ended up in Afghanistan.

Former President George W. Bush rightly attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then looked away and attacked Iraq. President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney had no strategy to get us out of Afghanistan, instead they resorted to nation building.

Every president after Bush was stuck with this mess.

America has spent billions of dollars and, more importantly, we have lost the lives of thousands of our servicemen as well as many injured in trying to give Afghans a chance to create a better country for themselves. The Afghans had twenty years to accomplish this and they did not. The point is that until the Afghan people as a whole decide to make changes to their country, no country, including the United States of America, can build this for them. We could have been there another twenty years, and when we left Afghanistan we would have collapsed as quickly as today. That was and is the problem with the neoconservative idea of ​​nation building, unless that nation does it itself, it will not happen. Biden is not to blame for this mess. the Afghan people have this one.

Ryan Hinkins, Salt Lake City

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