President Joe Biden finally addressed the nation the day after the last U.S. soldier left Afghanistan on Monday. Biden was late for his press conference by almost an hour — odd, given his alleged habit of frequently checking his watch. But in it, he declared the exit a success.
Wow. Did Biden forget that he was vice president for eight years? Did he forget he was a senator before that who supported the war in Afghanistan?
“We saw a mission of counterterrorism in Afghanistan, getting the terrorists and stopping attacks, morph into a counterinsurgency, nation-building, trying to create a democratic, cohesive, and united Afghanistan, something that has never been done over many centuries of Afghanistan’s history,” Biden said. “Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home.”
Unless Biden specifically believes the period between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan. 19, 2021, was when the U.S. military presence should have ended, his comments at this time are intellectually dishonest. It would be one thing to lament the time we spent in Afghanistan, but it is another to ignore the responsibility that comes with being part of those who made the decisions.
Biden took zero responsibility for his role in the United States’s presence in Afghanistan. Biden also cited the killing of Osama Bin Laden as a benchmark of when the U.S. could have left, despite opposing the operation that killed bin Laden.
Yet, during his time as vice president in the Obama administration, neither Biden nor former President Barack Obama made any suggestion about leaving Afghanistan. Imagine that.
Biden was second-in-command of a presidential administration that escalated troop deployment to Afghanistan. He was also second-in-command of a presidential administration that failed to meet its own self-imposed deadline to have troops out of Afghanistan (by the time Obama’s second term ended).
We should also not forget that it was former U.S. Secretary of Defense (under Bush and Obama) Robert Gates who in 2014 declared that Biden was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Some accounts suggest that Biden did support troop reduction in Afghanistan while he served as Obama’s vice president. Yet, he was unable to have such policies implemented. Somehow, he wants credit now that he has failed. It is very embarrassing.
