Throughout the previous administration, hardcore supporters of the president would sometimes twist themselves into knots to defend his words or actions. They would adamantly insist up is down -- or that an obvious debacle was, in fact, fine, or actually good. They'd blame the media (often fairly) for relentlessly negative coverage, even when some of it was deserved. They'd claim that an outburst of half-baked foolishness or impulsivity was all part of some ingenious. 'four-dimensional-chess' plan. And in turn, their opponents would excoriate them as cultish hacks, willing to say anything and flat-out deny reality. For The Cause. And now the shoe is on the other foot. There is no spinning the disaster that is the Biden administration's Afghanistan withdrawal, even if one agrees with the underlying decision to get out. Like clockwork, some of the people who pronounced themselves aghast by Trump sycophants' slavish, reality-avoiding devotion have now committed themselves to similar hackery in defense of the indefensible. Let's discuss a few of their talking points:
(1) The Kabul airlift is a "success." This is actually the White House line, and some are still clinging to it, even after yesterday's bloodshed. As many have pointed out, it takes breathtaking chutzpah to claim credit for a frantic, scrambled rescue mission based on an emergency you caused. No one is seriously arguing that America's exit from Afghanistan could have gone seamlessly, or even well, necessarily. But only embarrassing partisans will try to argue that the absolute chaos, including unfathomable betrayals, that we've witnessed over the last two weeks is the best the United States could have done. An orderly, well-planned withdrawal would have been substantially better than this failure. Those who've worked 'round the clock to get desperate Americans and Afghans out of the country during the airlift should be applauded. Stories of heroism and bravery like this are remarkable. The raw numbers of people evacuated are significant. But this should be, yet is evidently not, totally unacceptable:
Increasingly looking like US will end up leaving behind > 1,000 American citizens and many times as many Afghans who assisted the US.
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 26, 2021
Will have to try to evacuate them in different ways after August 31st w/o US troop presence.
America’s allies are halting evacuation flights from Kabul today, forced to leave citizens and cleared Afghans behind because of the U.S. decision to shut down operations in Afghanistan by Aug. 31. My latest w ?@SuneEngel? in @WSJ https://t.co/HmgTeJrjeH
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 26, 2021
(2) This is Trump's fault. Nonsense. He and his administration will and should have to answer for any number of choices they made while in office, including engaging the Taliban in negotiations (which entailed freeing dangerous jihadists from custody), though it's hard for anyone on Team Biden to hit them over either move, considering that the new administration has shifted from negotiating with the Taliban to effectively taking orders from them. But the tired argument that the current president's hands were tied on any of this by his predecessor is preposterous. Biden has sought to unilaterally reverse virtually every Trump-era policy he can think of. He's the Commander-in-Chief. Of course he could have changed course in Afghanistan; he did, in fact, by pushing back the initial withdrawal deadline. The current, bloody, shameful debacle is the direct result of the sitting president's policy and "plan." In this context, pointing back at Trump is unconvincing impotence.
(3) The news media is screwing Biden over. With due respect, if this is part of your argument, it may be time to step away from the hallucinogenic drugs. The press widely despised Trump, and the feeling was mutual. Nearly every elite news room is almost exclusively populated with Biden voters, including a great many who wish their party's nominee had been much more progressive. The newfound lefty media critics flail in various directions to make their case. Some say the media is inherently "war-mongering," so that's why the coverage is so "slanted." But relatively few media voices have been assailing Biden's underlying decision to withdraw, but rather criticizing (or simply covering) the blatantly and tragically incompetent manner in which is has been carried out. Noticing a fiasco and covering it as such is not "loving war," or however the shallow blithering goes. Another strain of anti-media blame-storming is the contention that journalists are obsessed with false balance, and therefore want to "prove" how tough they can be on Biden, too. Setting aside the gobsmacking, endemic bias displayed during the 2020 campaign, this argument is punctured by the many elected Democrats -- including hardcore partisans like Adam Schiff -- who are hitting the administration over the meltdown in progress. It's not "false balance" to see an undeniable disaster and not deny it. The supposedly unjust media narrative would be a lot harder to foist on the public if it were not matched by images, reports, and developments on the ground. Also known as reality. And some of the reality -- this was quasi-confirmed by POTUS yesterday -- is almost too shockingly terrible for words:
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”
— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) August 26, 2021
W/ @AndrewDesiderio @alexbward
(4) If you're a stranded American, it's your fault. Out: Don't say stranded. In: Stranded Americans who remain in Afghanistan, any number of whom may well be abandoned indefinitely, should have heeded warnings and left earlier on their own. Except...the president said last month that a Taliban takeover was "highly unlikely," and the Secretary of State assured everyone that our diplomatic presence would remain operational and robust. Watch for yourself:
Joe Biden on July 8, 2021 — so, just over one month ago.pic.twitter.com/n9DhN6SKut
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) August 15, 2021
“We are staying, the embassy is staying, our programs are staying. If there is a significant deterioration in security...I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 16, 2021
- Sec State Tony Blinken
July 7 2021pic.twitter.com/j0kkFpwpJd
When I first started seeing "it's their own fault" trolling from online lefties, I wondered if it would ever go mainstream. Some observers started to openly ponder whether the administration was using the strange "Americans who wish to come home" formulation to set the table for embracing this argument. Whether that's a strategic consideration or not, it has started to break through into officialdom:
Top U.S. diplomat says the State Department put out repeated warnings every three weeks to Americans in Afghanistan telling them to leave since April: “People chose not to leave. That's their business," Ross Wilson said. pic.twitter.com/hr5HlLxA0F
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) August 26, 2021
"This blame-the-victims talking point they’re workshopping is going to play very, very badly for them. And the worse the situation gets, the worse it’ll be received," writes Allahpundit. And he's obviously right. Passing the buck to the stranded themselves, after demanding they're not stranded, is an unfathomably insane approach to messaging, and if they have any sense left at all, the White House will nip it in the bud. That's a big 'if' these days. As for the Afghans to whom we swore a blood oath, there seems to be almost zero concern for their survival among the hackery/excuse crowd, which happens to be compromised of many people who expend a lot of energy signaling their concerns about "Black and Brown bodies." Curious. Following yesterday's attacks, the harrowing reality began to set in even further:
More from this source:
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 26, 2021
“Military continues to retrograde and depart airport. Almost a certainty that Americans will be left behind. They will have to be extracted after-the-fact through either Taliban negotiation or unconventional means.” https://t.co/P4lofL3ohC pic.twitter.com/EixG7fVMT5
The reason these numbers look the way they do is because the evacuation has been handled badly by Team Biden. This poll was taken before Americans were killed at the airport:
By 68% to 16%, Americans say the Afghanistan evacuation was handled badly.
— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) August 26, 2021
% who say the evacuation was handled badly
Democrats - 55%
Independents - 76%
Republicans - 84%https://t.co/NxhEkoeyqJ pic.twitter.com/ETcB4MKzFH
It's not 'actually' a success. It's not the media's fault, or Trump's. It's not because people "chose" to stay for no good reason. People trusted the US not to do precisely what we are actively doing, but the president chose to put symbolism and politics ahead of careful planning and competence. The result is a blood-drenched national shame. I'll leave you with this:
NEW: America's reputation has taken a hit in a number of foreign countries – especially the United Kingdom – over the past several days of chaos since the fall of Kabul. https://t.co/x9Ms0sEoFt pic.twitter.com/Sh11Mzl0HG
— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) August 26, 2021
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