The "Failure" in Afghanistan is a Political Narrative, But It's Not Biden's Failure

Here's a fact that needs to be acknowledged before anyone writes a piece on the Biden Administration's policy in Afghanistan.  If you were not involved, you do not know.  Second guessing from the editorial office of a news network in New York, or Atlanta, or a newspaper in Chicago or Washington, D.C. is not a position from which an informed point of view can be cobbled into an editorial.  

History always seems to be the point at which American journalism falls short of its goal of informing the people.  As a country, we have never been good at interpreting it or teaching it correctly and objectively to our students.  That has forced us to endure repeating it and making the same mistakes that were made in the past.  We have a long history of interference in the affairs of other countries based on the generic "protection of American interests" that acts like a blank check to set aside principles that we claim are part of our national heritage and bully some other country, usually because of some economic interest that our leaders want to protect and oh, by the way, here are the principles of our democratic constitutional republic.  

So let's be clear.  We were not in Afghanistan for 20 years because of any decision made by Joe Biden.  He's the fourth president down the line who has had to deal with the mess there that someone else made.  Nor is he responsible for the limited options that were available to him when he finally set the deadline to get our troops out.  Those decisions were made by the Trump administration and Biden was forced to work with what he had.  

Let's face another fact.  Staying in Afghanistan to establish and support a democratic government will go down in history as one of the worst Presidential decisions ever made.  That's on George W. Bush.  Puppet governments, which is all an American-established government in a predominantly Muslim country would ever be, don't last.  History tells us that.  What happened is that as a stream of American money began flowing through the country, those in the "democratically elected" government figured out how to tap into it, and they figured out how to rig the system and stay in government.  

It was pretty clear early on that the constitutional government in Afghanistan would not be able to hold the country together without American help, at any point.  Even during the early years of Hamid Karzai's presidency, in the latter years of the Bush administration, the government was incapable of turning the corners it needed to turn in order to stand on its own.  It was never possible to trust the armed forces entirely, and areas that were not secured by American troops were just flat out dangerous.  

Biden was faced by a situation created by the indecisiveness and hesitation of his predecessor who did a lot of big talking about getting us out because it was popular with the American people.  He made some moves to make it seem like he was actually doing something, and wound up doing what Trump does, making a deal with the Taliban.  It was, as you might expect, an unrealistic deal, giving the Taliban just about everything they wanted, including the release of 5,000 prisoners, and a promise to leave the country in exchange for the Taliban making sure Afghanistan does not get used as a base from which to attack the US.  As the Washington Post reported, the deal required taking the Taliban's word on faith.

Deliberate Undermining of the Afghan Democratic Government by the Trump Administration

So in negotiating a deal to get the US out of Afghanistan, Trump goes to the Taliban?  He even proposed a secret meeting that would bring them to Camp David, until news of that incredibly stupid act leaked out and made him look bad.  But the whole Trump "deal" was a clear message to both the Taliban and the world that the United States, who stayed in Afghanistan and spent $6 trillion providing security for its fledgling democracy, was abandoning the Afghan government.  Nikki Haley, a Republican and former Ambassador to the UN tweeted that "Making a deal with the Taliban is like making a deal with the Devil."  

That's on Trump, as is everything that is happening in the wake of the American departure.

Biden's just the president who got stuck with the circumstances and had to figure out how to get Americans safely out of Afghanistan in a relatively short period of time while the army and government that we spent 20 years, 3,000 lives and $6 trillion dollars propping up.  He did a remarkable job, letting his military commanders do what they do best, not stepping in and interfering with anything they were doing.  It was an incredible feat, way beyond the capabilities of either George W. Bush or Donald J. Trump.  

What we are seeing from Joe Biden is a level of competence, integrity and honesty that we haven't seen in the Presidency for the past four years.  We are seeing a President who is familiar with both the limitations and the capabilities of the American military, who had a better perspective than anyone else has had about the situation in Afghanistan for the past 20 years, and who didn't hesitate to make the decisions that he needed to make in spite of the risks and the uncertainties.  We have a President who found the most competent leaders available, put them in charge of what they were experts at doing and let them do their job.  Somehow, in an event that the media has labelled a "failure" and "chaos," 5,500 American citizens and their families, and a total of over 122,000 people were evacuated by air from an airport with just one operating runway.  

What in the world would make you think that if Trump were in charge, anything close to that would have occurred?  You'd be able to use the words "failure" and "chaos" then.

Let's See Some Accountability from the Media

Maybe the media is tired of reporting on Trump's ineptness, incompetence, lack of leadership and inability to get things done.  There's been too much of it.  But the American people need to know and they need to keep writing and reporting until his role in this failure is a fact.  

Does anyone in the media want to go back to the four most miserable years in American history, and the most incompetent failure ever to occupy the White House?  Then this needs to be where it was when the orange idiot was President, on the front page.  People need to know that Trump undermined the democratic government in Afghanistan and helped hand the country over to the Taliban by making a "deal" with them.  

Maybe the reporter or editor who thinks themselves capable of organizing and conducting an air lift that could have evacuated more people from Afghanistan can criticize the situation as a "failure."  But Biden was able to get it done, so those who don't see themselves as being that capable need to point out what failure really looks like, and it's not been this evacuation.