Joe Biden has long been a critic of the war in Afghanistan. His decision to step down shouldn’t come as a surprise

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President Joe Biden (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

In 2009, just days before taking the oath of office as vice president, Joe Biden gave a grim view of the state of the war in Afghanistan, telling the New York Times that the situation had deteriorated considerably and that this was going to be heavy. .

Now as President, Mr. Biden is leading the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades of conflict and more than 2,000 American lives lost, as well as countless Afghan civilians. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed suit, announcing that British troops would leave Afghanistan.

However, many questions remain, especially as the Taliban have made significant gains across the country. And Mr Biden was suspicious when reporters asked him about the withdrawal.

But while Mr. Biden has proven to be politically flexible on everything from abortion to LGBT + rights to economics, his skepticism of nation-building in Afghanistan has been a steadfast guiding principle of his politics for over a decade, often to criticism from more established voices. on foreign affairs.

In 2009, when then-President Barack Obama debated whether to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, Mr. Biden dissented from General Stanley McChrystals’ demand for an increase in forces.

Rather, Mr. Biden wanted to focus on CT Plus, which focused on building Afghan security forces, combating terrorism against al-Qaeda, and attempting to detach some fighters from the Taliban.

Mr Biden might also have had reservations about nation building due to his son Beau serving in the Delaware National Guard before entering politics himself. In a confrontation with Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Mr Biden, I am not sending my boy there to risk his life in the name of women’s rights! He added that it just won’t work, that’s not what they’re here for. Bidens’ younger death from brain cancer in 2015 was one of the many reasons his father forwarded his candidacy for president in 2016.

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Mr Bidens’ position put him at odds with many officials in the Obama administration, including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, who supported an increase in membership.

Mr. Bidens’ dissent has also earned him the derision of some in national security circles. In an infamous 2010 profile of Mr. McChrystal in Rolling Stone, the then general was joked that he had misheard Mr. Bidens’ name was Bite Me. Mr. Gates wrote in his memoir of 2014 that, while Mr. Biden might be believed to be a man of integrity, he believed Mr. Biden had been wrong about almost every major foreign and national security policy issue over the past four decades.

Likewise, if Mr Biden had run against Ms Clinton in 2016 for the Democratic presidential nomination, their contrasting views on Afghanistan would have been a major dividing line between the two candidates. In fact, Clinton, along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, expressed concern about the troop withdrawal on the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year.

But Mr Bidens’ criticisms persisted. Ten years after his pre-swearing-in trip, amid revelations from the Washington Post in his deep dive into war documents, then-Democratic presidential candidate Mr Biden said in a debate that the reconstruction of this country as a whole is beyond our capabilities.

This does not mean that the president is a dove. When he was a senator, he was both Chairman and First Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and supported military action in Bosnia and Kosovo. Like many Democrats, Biden supported the Iraq war before it eventually escalated. In the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Biden joined with 97 other senators in authorizing the use of force that sparked the modern war on terror.

Likewise, in his speech announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan in April, Biden said the United States would reorganize its assets to prevent the emergence of terrorists and said the metastasizing nature of terrorism was the reason the military presence in Afghanistan made no sense.

At the same time, Mr Bidens’ choice to withdraw from Afghanistan shows that he does not consider it worth spending domestic resources. He is of course not the first president to view the war with skepticism. His predecessor Donald Trump had previously called the war a total disaster before increasing the numbers.

Mr Bidens’ plan will likely continue to be criticized, especially if Afghanistan crumbles or falls into chaos once the last troops leave the region. But now, as Commander-in-Chief, after his criticisms have dominated much of the discussion in Afghanistan with America still mired in conflict, Biden has a chance to see if his strategy is better.

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