Before President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech on Monday, President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN, “You cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster … It’s a failure. And he needs to own that failure. He’s the commander in chief.”
That is not what Biden ended up doing. Not even close.
Instead of taking responsibility for what any reasonable person can see as a complete failure, Biden blamed former President Donald Trump, he blamed the Afghan government, he blamed the Afghan army, and he blamed the Afghan people.
The closest Biden came to taking any responsibility for what is still happening in Afghanistan was when he admitted that “the truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.”
After blaming everyone but himself for 20 minutes, Biden stopped reading from the teleprompter, turned, and left the room without taking any questions from the assembled reporters. The White House then announced Biden was returning to his vacation at Camp David.
Considering how terrible his speech was, at least he won’t be missed.
