It must have been shocking for many to see the president of the United States, the man who campaigned on a return to empathetic and stable politics, dismiss the crisis in Afghanistan so cavalierly during his interview with ABC News this week. But for those familiar with Biden’s career, his indifferent attitude wasn’t a surprise at all.
This is always who Biden has been: a stubborn and defensive man who lashes out when confronted and refuses to admit when he’s wrong. We saw hints of this on the campaign trail, when he called a New Hampshire woman a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” after she asked him a question at a campaign rally, or when he snapped at an Iowa voter, calling him a “damn liar,” or when he told a Michigan factory worker that he was “full of s***.” But no one wanted to believe that good ol’ Middle-Class Joe could be just as cruel as the guy he was running against.
Well, now the world gets to see Biden’s boorishness at its worst. When asked about horrific images of Afghans falling from the sky after clinging to U.S. planes as they took off, Biden wrote the tragedy off as old news — as if that would somehow make it less important. And when asked whether he could have executed the U.S. withdrawal in a more orderly, humane way, Biden, seemingly forgetting about the thousands of Americans trapped behind Taliban checkpoints and the masses of terrified Afghans begging to be let into the airport, Biden said, “No.”
“I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that — we’re going to go back in hindsight and look. But the idea that, somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” he said.
This is a flat-out lie. Intelligence officials had reportedly warned the Biden administration that the Taliban’s takeover would be swift, but Biden failed to come up with a plan to evacuate all U.S. citizens and our Afghan allies quickly. So, he left them behind, and now he’s trying to claim he had no other choice.
There is always a choice. Biden just didn’t care enough to make the right one. But again, this should not come as a surprise. Very early in his political career, during a discussion about sending aid to Cambodia in 1975, Biden declared, “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality or moral obligation. There’s a point where you are incapable of meeting moral obligations that exist worldwide.”
Biden’s indifference toward the plight of Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis he created, proves he has not changed. He is still the same arrogant jerk he was back then. The difference now is that his callousness could cost American lives.
