Drip. Drip. Drip. With every passing hour, we have more damning evidence that the Biden administration simply didn’t care about the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan which has led to this frenetic and ignominious exit from the country. Our longest war is over. We lost. But not before Joe Biden decided to do his rendition of the Fall of Saigon as a bookend to this conflict. On July 8, he promised that the Afghan government could sustain itself. Five days later, a State Department memo painted a vastly different picture. Biden apparently ignored it. We’re now dealing with the Taliban in control and 10-15,000 Americans trapped in the country. We have no plans to get them out other than wish them well on the way to the airport in Kabul that’s littered with Taliban checkpoints. We’re trusting a terror organization with not harming our citizens. That’s Biden diplomacy. Kabul is the only place where those who seek to flee can go and pray to get on a chartered flight out of the country.
Biden did give another address about the situation, but it was a lie. This chaotic exit does kill our credibility. Our allies are infuriated and for good reason: we kept them in the dark. Well, Biden did. United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to reach Biden for hours. He ignored him for over 36 hours. And now we know why members of NATO are so mad at Biden. He totally lied to them. In June, he promised them that US forces would remain to keep the situation stable in Afghanistan as NATO withdrew its forces. The UK thought they could keep their embassy open as a result. Well, flashforward to August and it’s the wasteland from Mad Max.
Huge story… leaked memo shows Biden promised Boris Johnson and G7 leaders in June that the US would maintain enough of a security presence in Afghanistan that they would keep Kabul safe — then failed to keep that commitment https://t.co/ZdJvGxFjma
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) August 20, 2021
Goes some way to explaining why UK/EU are so angry with Biden and why other Nato countries were caught short
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) August 20, 2021
Horribly chaotic scenes outside the compound in Kabul where British forces are evacuating some Afghans - many struggling to get through, as thousands of desperate people without travel permission have also turned up
— Secunder Kermani (@SecKermani) August 20, 2021
Our report running on BBC News
W / @MalikMudassir2 pic.twitter.com/huXDMSodE2
Bloomberg had the story.
Again, we were told this White House would be filled with policy aces. That leadership would be resorted. The adults were back in the driver’s seat. And diplomacy was back. That’s what Biden tweeted during the G-7 summit where he was also bitch-slapped by the French.
Not so much. This whole crisis has undercut all the core tenets that this White House was supposed to embody. It’s an incompetent mess. The intelligence community, the Pentagon, and Joe Biden are all saying different things about Afghanistan. It’s a grade-A mess just like the scene in Kabul.
