In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich to meet Adolf Hitler. There, Chamberlain, and ministers from other Western nations, signed the Munich Pact, handing over the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, to Germany. Czechoslovakia was not even invited to the talks. The Munich Pact was England’s and France’s attempt to appease Hitler. With his superb wit and usage of the English language, Winston Churchill famously told Chamberlain upon his return to England, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will get war anyway.”
America and its allies handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban during the first two weeks of August is the West’s worst foreign policy disaster since Munich. And by West, we mean America. And by America, we mean President Joe Biden.
And it was so unnecessary! The dumbfounding strategy of the U.S. State and Defense Departments, combined with monumental incompetence by the U.S. military leadership here and in Afghanistan, allowed the Taliban to take over the country in less than a month.
Since when do you tell your enemy exactly how you plan to give up and the date you aim to walk away?
Why would you ever abandon your key airbase at Bagram – as the U.S. military did on July 1 — from which air cover was needed to support your Afghan allies and protect the U.S. military and its allies?
The military and government leaders who are carrying out this disaster have acted as if there is no one they have to report to in order to explain their actions.
That’s an open question: Is there?
Consider some other facts.
The U.S. military had not suffered a single combat death in Afghanistan in 18 months. The Trump administration had negotiated a deal with the Taliban that required the Taliban to stop all attacks on U.S. military and to negotiate with Afghan leaders a new government. If these conditions were met, the United States planned to conduct a gradual and orderly exit from Afghanistan. By the time President Biden took office, the U.S. military presence was down to 2,500 troops. And the Taliban knew that attacks on Americans would be swiftly dealt with.
Enter Biden’s yo-yo policy. He first extended the withdrawal deadline from May 1 to September 11, before eventually speeding it up to August 31. He pushed a fiction that the U.S.-friendly Afghan government would be able to stand up to the Taliban. Meanwhile the Taliban, knowing that President Biden would not commit force because it would make his exit strategy look bad back home, began their attacks. And President Biden and his team did not have a clue how they were to stop the Taliban from capturing not only millions but perhaps billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters. Nor could they stop the Taliban juggernaut rolling up the country.
Who planned this withdrawal? Who will claim ownership of it? Who will resign because of it?
Is anyone even being called on the carpet to explain what happened?
Is anyone in charge?
The Afghanistan disaster is the worst foreign policy humiliation that the United States has suffered in decades. What can we even compare it to?
It’s worse than Saigon in 1975, where U.S. troops had left the country two years before. And even as the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon, the United States evacuated more than 25,000 South Vietnamese friends and allies before the NVA reached the U.S. Embassy.
Have you seen the pictures of the Taliban in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul? How about the pictures of the airport? It’s a horror show.
Almost as scary is the feeling that no one in the U.S. government has taken responsibility because no one is actually in charge.
The obvious candidate, President Joe Biden, seems out of touch with reality.
On July 8, a reporter asked Biden if he saw any similarities between the U.S. pullout in South Vietnam in 1975 and the U.S. pullout in Afghanistan in 2021.
“None whatsoever,” Biden said. “Zero.”
The White House transcript says Biden also said: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
Except he didn’t. He actually finished his thought by saying “It is not at all confarable,” substituting an “f” where the word actually has a “p.” (Check the video here.)
Now, everyone gets words wrong from time to time. But Biden fought the TelePrompter through his entire statement that day before taking questions, showing signs of being reading-impaired. During the question-and-answer period, he made foolish, overconfident statements of the sort his staff apparently didn’t want repeated six weeks later, which can be the only reasonable explanation for why Biden failed to take questions Monday, August 16 during what had been billed as a “press conference” after the fall of Kabul.
On Sunday, August 22, he said he hadn’t seen a new poll that predictably shows his approval rating and (more important) confidence rating have fallen precipitously.
Biden’s mental decline is old news. What’s new about this circumstance is Biden’s manifest inability to deal with an international crisis – of his own administration’s making.
Mistakes by a president are also old news. What’s new about the Afghanistan mistakes is that the president doesn’t seem aware that he has made them.
In 1961, President Jack Kennedy made a series of poor decisions that led to a disaster in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He took immediate responsibility and accepted the blame.
In 2021, President Joe Biden comes on television from time to time and tells the American people untrue things about what is happening in Afghanistan and refuses to admit he was wrong and take the blame.
Is it possible he’s unaware that he should?
America’s curious election of 2020 has left us with an unprecedented situation: A president with small and diminishing capacity; a vice president with no discernable achievement, experience, or judgment.
May God save the Republic.
New to NewBostonPost? Conservative media is hard to find in Massachusetts. But you’ve found it. Now dip your toe in the water for two bucks — $2 for two months. And join the real revolution.
