Tipsheet

Biden Administration Takes Victory Lap After Leaving Americans Behind in Kabul

President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan went from bad to worse to a worst-case scenario. Not just humiliating, it was deadly, and now there is a still-unknown to the Biden administration number of Americans left behind in a terrorist playground along with thousands of Afghan allies. 

The disarrayed departure was marked with broken promises, horrifying images of Taliban executions carried out with American equipment, and still, potentially worse scenes may play out in the days ahead due to Biden's failed leadership.

From the beginning of his mismanagement of the withdrawal, President Biden intended for this to be a Presidency-defining and legacy-framing moment coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite claims that his administration had planned for every contingency and everything was going according to plan, there's no more pretending that it did. But that didn't stop Biden and senior administration officials from taking a victory lap Monday night anyway.

President Biden, who didn't address the nation Monday, released a statement bragging about the "largest airlift in US history." It's true that American service members did carry out an impressive evacuation, but their commitment to our country is not something Biden can brag about while leaving Americans in harm's way. American service members succeeded, Biden failed. The success of the airlift belongs to the boots on the ground who carried it out, not the suits who bungled things so terribly that Americans were stranded.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin — the man who similarly bungled America's withdrawal from Iraq while CENTCOM Commander as it fell to ISIS during the Obama administration — released a statement Monday evening saying his department "completed the U.S. military evacuation of civilians and the removal of all forces from Afghanistan." Nowhere in his statement is mention made of the Americans or Afghan allies left behind. Instead, Austin merely claims credit for the selfless and brave work of those who carried out the final days of America's military presence in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Monday evening in lieu of a Presidential address from Biden, and he too bragged about the number of Americans evacuated without offering a concrete plan to get the remaining U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan. And while he claimed "a new chapter of America's engagement with Afghanistan has begun," there will not be any diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and the "engagement" appears to be little more than dependence on the Taliban's goodwill to spare American lives.

The State Department's spokesman, Ned Price, meekly tweeted without comment a literally unbelievable piece by everyone's favorite formerly "conservative" columnist Jen Rubin in a desperate attempt to change the narrative that Biden and his senior officials had failed spectacularly.