It isn’t that everything he said was inaccurate.
It’s that everything he said was irrelevant, impertinent, inadequate, repetitive, obvious and deflective.
In short, he didn’t make it better. He made it worse.
President Biden spent 20 minutes Monday telling Americans why the U.S. is getting out of Afghanistan. Cue the choir. We all know why we’re getting out of Afghanistan. Virtually no one disagrees with the decision. Think about it. Withdrawing from Afghanistan has become a unifying issue. It is one of the few things upon which Democrats and Republicans agree. Polls show the overwhelming majority of American citizens want us out of Afghanistan. For Pete’s sake, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on the same side of this question!
Yes, Joe. Water is in fact wet, and the Sun does in fact come up in the East. Thank you for the confirmation.
Now kindly explain how and why you botched our immediate exit so ignorantly and incompetently, putting Americans and Afghans in unnecessary and terrifying peril, giving comfort to our adversaries, betraying our allies, shaming our image and dealing yet another blow to our global standing.
Biden broke out the obligatory “The buck stops here,” but then spent the rest of the time explaining why the buck did not in fact stop at his desk this time and why everything else and everybody else was to blame. He did concede that the collapse of the Afghan government and the resulting Taliban takeover “did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.”
Huh. Imagine that. Who could possibly have anticipated that?
He spent all of seven words referencing the core question of how his administration fucked this up so badly. I said “referencing,” not explaining.
“More quickly than we anticipated”? “We” who? Mr. Magoo saw this coming.
Biden didn’t just not get it right. He could not have been more wrong about everything. On July 8, just six weeks ago, he looked into a camera and told America that an immediate Taliban takeover was not “inevitable,” and in fact was “very unlikely.” He assured us there would be no optics reminiscent of the fall of Saigon in 1975. He told us that the 300,000 strong Afghan military, trained by the U.S. at cost of over a trillion dollars, could easily hold the Taliban at bay.
In short, he got everything wrong. Everything.
“More quickly than we anticipated”? Then that’s on him, his administration and his intelligence resources. The truth is that our military advisers have known for years that the Afghan Army would lay down their arms faster than a prom dress hits the floor.
Oh, and Biden said he adamantly defended his decision to get us out of Afghanistan. Uhh, it wasn’t even your decision, Bud. That decision had already been made and was almost universally popular. But then Biden reversed himself and blamed decisions made by his predecessor. In short, the president tried to have it both ways. He failed.
But Biden did burnish his credentials as Captain Obvious.
“There is never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.” You don’t say.
“Americans should not fight a war Afghan forces would not fight.” Yep.
“We gave them every chance.” Sure did.
We “could not provide them with will.” Evidently.
“It is wrong to ask Americans to fight if Afghans will not.” Wrong, indeed.
Now, kindly explain how you botched this exit so very badly.
John Kennedy owned the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Biden should simply have owned this one.
