President Joe Biden desperately wants the public to believe his withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success. The chaos, the lies, the 13 U.S. lives lost, the $68 billion worth of military equipment left behind, and the 250-plus Americans who are stranded in the region say otherwise.
During his Tuesday speech announcing the end of the Afghanistan War, Biden deflected criticism for his handling of the humanitarian crisis that he created himself. He claimed that the United States was able to evacuate 90% of the Americans he had stranded in the region. While it is an objectively good thing that the U.S. rescued 90% rather than, say, 80% or 20%, that is not a success. Biden created the conditions that made this evacuation necessary in the first place, and he failed to complete the evacuation. As I wrote before, any subsequent effort by Biden to make the situation better is nothing more than damage control.
