Former President Donald Trump lacked shame. His behavior was outrageous and unrepentant. To Trump, the words “I’m sorry” were a foreign language, and any admission of error was inconceivable.
Many Trump appointees, however, were honorable. They sought to protect the president from his own worst instincts and mitigate the damage some of his more impetuous decisions risked. They also understood that it was not possible to view in isolation America’s actions and the president’s decisions. Both reputation and credibility mattered.
Responsible Trump appointees understood that his gratuitous and uncoordinated abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria was morally bankrupt and could enable the return of the Islamic State. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Special Envoy Brett McGurk resigned in protest.
The same held true with Ukraine. When Trump, Rudy Giuliani, or others threatened Ukrainian officials for misguided if not illegal purposes, officials spoke up, some privately and more publicly. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, removed from Ukraine, retired. So, too, did National Security Council official Alexander Vindman, who resigned from the military. Trump fired others, such as H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, who refused to temper their advice on a variety of issues.
For all the Democrats’ hand-wringing over Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine, they remained silent when President Joe Biden did much the same thing: Biden’s team pressured Ukraine to remain silent as it cut a deal with Germany over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which privileged Russian interests at the expense of pro-Western forces in Ukraine. This is not whataboutism to excuse Trump — he deserved the censure he received.
But no one on Biden’s team has resigned in protest of his recent actions.
When Biden announced his intention to withdraw all military forces from Afghanistan, he initially tied the departure of the final American soldier to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. It was a stupid move that enabled al Qaeda to claim the date as a double victory. Shortly after, I spoke to someone on Biden’s national security team. The official readily acknowledged frustration and noted that everyone below the top layers of the White House and State Department understood the mistake right away. The official also confirmed that the paperwork involving the decision passed through dozens of hands, all of whom were either too afraid or too ambitious to speak up.
The White House eventually realized its mistake, even if it was unprepared to admit it, and accelerated the withdrawal to avoid the 9/11 anniversary. Still, what Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan call “forever wars” is, in reality, just traditional containment and deterrence, a bedrock of American strategy for three-quarters of a century.
Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was a purely political one. It was untethered to the reality of national security for either Afghanistan or the United States. It stands as an abandonment as arbitrary but far worse than what Trump did with regard to the Syrian Kurds. Biden fuels a jihadi narrative with which the U.S. will be forced to live for generations. He exposes a generation to slaughter. The Taliban already hunt down and slaughter those who have allied themselves to America. The disaster represents a wholly avoidable moral stain that should haunt the U.S. conscience.
And, yet, there have been no resignations. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who commanded both U.S. forces in Iraq and Central Command, understands the sacrifices so many Americans made in Afghanistan and the strategic mistake at hand. He is silent. Sullivan has lived his life in a bubble: His career essentially is one of a privileged political hack. He is silent. His principal deputy Jon Finer co-founded a refugee support group following his work in the Obama administration. In hindsight, that appears to have only been political posturing. Perhaps ambition got the best of them.
Trump was a charlatan, but at least some of the men and women under him understood that honor should trump the trappings of power. Unfortunately, no one on Biden’s team appears to have a sense of shame. It is time for those of good character to resign.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
