When President Joe Biden took office, the United States had an agreement with the Taliban to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1. It was contingent on the Taliban negotiating with the government in Kabul.
On April 14, however, Biden announced he was altering the deal. Troops would begin to leave the country by May 1 and would be completely gone by Sept. 11, even though the Taliban were not negotiating but instead moving toward the violent overthrow of the government.
Why Sept. 11? Did Biden’s top military advisers tell him that the best way to minimize the loss of American life and maximize the number of Afghan allies evacuated was to withdraw all troops by exactly 9/11? Nope. His military advisers told him quite the opposite.
The only reason Biden chose Sept. 11 as the date on which the last U.S. troops must leave (and turn out the lights) was so he could give a purely political victory speech saying the war was over on the 20th anniversary of its beginning. He decided the timing entirely because he wished to leverage the anniversary of the epochal terrorist attack on America to his own advantage and announce a new vision for counterterrorism operations throughout the world that we are asked to accept.
Biden’s promise of an Afghan exit conducted “responsibly, deliberately, and safely” has been completely shattered, a fact that cannot be concealed by his sickening bravado and his minions’ drumbeat of disingenuous denials.
Biden knew his rationale for removing U.S. forces by Sept. 11 was collapsing or he would not have scheduled a second speech and press conference on July 8. It was then that the “leader of the free world” accelerated the rout, moving up the exit date to Aug. 31 because, he claimed, “speed is safety.”
“Thanks to the way in which we have managed our withdrawal, no one — no one, U.S. forces or any forces, have been lost,” Biden boasted. If only that were still true. Nemesis swiftly followed on the heels of his hubris, and 13 members of the American military are now dead as a consequence.
Biden also assured the public that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable. His own assessment — “this is now Joe Biden, not the intelligence community” — was that Taliban victory and control was “highly unlikely.” Again, if only that were still true.
Asked if he trusted the Taliban, Biden replied, “no, but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.” If only… you get the picture.
Biden’s failure to predict the consequences of his decision to pull out by Sept. 11 accurately is matched by his ignorance as to which countries hold U.S. troops actively conducting counterterrorism operations.
Trying to justify his vision for “over the horizon” operations against terrorists, Biden cited Syria as an example of where the military keeps the Islamic State in check without stationing U.S. troops in the country. But of course, there are U.S. troops in Syria. Shouldn’t the commander in chief know that?
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to make a similar point the next week, naming Somalia and Yemen as countries “where we don’t have a presence on the ground and we still prevent terrorist attacks or threats to U.S. citizens living in the United States or around the world from growing.” There are, of course, U.S. troops in Somalia and Yemen. Again, shouldn’t the commander in chief’s lieutenants know that?
On Oct. 21, 2011, President Barack Obama removed U.S. troops from Iraq. Just three years later, he had to send them back to fight the burgeoning Islamic State, which had rushed in to fill the vacuum he’d left behind. There are still 2,500 troops in Iraq today. Biden has promised to remove these troops “by the end of the year.” One hopes he manages that withdrawal, or a decision to stay, better than he handled Afghanistan.
The way to make that more likely is to determine the right path forward not by reference to shallow considerations of headline-catching dates, not by calculating purely partisan political advantages, and not to create the illusion of a proper conclusion by the declaration of a Potemkin victory. Instead, he must make the decision based on a hard-headed and clear-eyed assessment of what is in the American national interest.
