President Biden Stood Up To His Critics And Ended The War

 

It has been obvious for over a decade that the war in Afghanistan was not winnable, and the corrupt government we installed there could not survive once we left.

But three presidents ignored that fact and continued the war -- even increasing the number of troops we had in that country.

President Biden is different. He understood the realities of the situation, and he had the political courage to withdraw our troops and end the war -- and he did it in spite of substantial criticism from powerful interests.

We owe President Biden a debt of gratitude!

The following is much of an op-ed at MSNBC.com by Mehdi Hasan:

I never expected Biden to be anything other than belligerent once he was seated inside the White House Situation Room.

Yet as of Tuesday evening, Biden has done something that three previous presidents either wouldn’t or couldn’t: ended the longest war in American history. The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on schedule and ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

But Biden has also done something that no other president has managed to do in living memory: He has stood up to the generals.

In 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office, the new Republican president’s instinct was to wind down the war in Afghanistan, but his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, pressured him to send more troops. McMaster reportedly presented Trump “with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul, to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return.”

It worked. Trump, who before entering the White House had called the war a “total disaster” and said the U.S. “should leave Afghanistan immediately,” agreed to escalate troop levels.

In 2009, Barack Obama’s first year in office, the new Democratic president debated with his advisers whether to “surge” troops into Afghanistan. On one side, Obama had a bevy of military leaders — Adm. Mike McMullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command; and Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan — urging him to escalate.

On the other side, Obama had Vice President Biden, who, according to Obama’s memoir, viewed the conflict as a “dangerous quagmire.” On one occasion during the discussions about a surge, Obamarecalls, Biden grabbed him by the arm and said, “Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He leaned into Obama’s face and whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.”

Less than three months later, Obama signed off on sending 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Fast-forward to 2021, Joe Biden’s first year in office. The new Democratic president could have easily ditched the February 2020 agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in Qatar to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan this year. He could have listened to his top military advisers, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired general, and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, both of whom reportedly urged him to keep a small force of 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But Biden didn’t let them “jam” him. In April, he ignored the entreaties of his top generals and announced that all U.S. troops would be leaving Afghanistan ahead of Sept. 11, 2021. Since the Aug. 15 fall of the Afghan capital to the Taliban and the chaos in and around the Kabul airport, a chorus of hawkish generals, journalists, pundits, comedians, Afghans, Republicans and even Democrats has lambasted Biden for his handling of the pullout and for sticking to his Aug. 31 pullout date. His approval rating has taken a hit, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wants to impeach him.

Yet Biden didn’t budge. Lest we forget, it’s shamefully easy for presidents to start wars and much, much harder to end them. Biden’s decision to withdraw now is not, as his critics say, “an indelible stain on his presidency” or a “cowardly betrayal” or a sign of “weakness.” It is perhaps the boldest foreign policy move by a president in my lifetime. . . .

It is worth pointing out that more than 100,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan since the middle of August, including the vast majority of U.S. citizens who had wanted to leave the country. That milestone came in the wake of claims that Biden was abandoning our Afghan allies and suggestions that evacuating even 50,000 people would be impossible. . . .

President Joe Biden didn’t lose this war. It was lost in October 2001, when President George W. Bush refused to accept the Taliban’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral third country, and in December 2001, when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to accept Taliban surrender terms.

It was lost as U.S. politicians, diplomats and generals, as the Afghanistan Papers revealed, “failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan ... making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”. . .

America’s longest war is over. . .To borrow a line from the president himself, it’s a “BFD.”

Biden Is Keeping His Promise - But Some Will Still Complain

President Biden is keeping his promise to evacuate Americans and our Afghan friends from that country. Over 83,000 have been evacuated, and many more will be evacuated before operations cease. But if you listen to the media, you might think the evacuation was a failure. It is NOT. But however many are evacuated, there are going to be some (especially on the right) who will not be happy with the results. Those people would not be happy if a million people were evacuated!

Here is part of Jennifer Rubin's take on the situation in The Washington Post:

Now that the number of evacuated Americans and at-risk Afghans has cleared 87,000 since the end of July (the vast majority of which are Afghans), the media’s premature declaration of “failure” looks off-base. Indeed, the coverage has tended to ignore or minimize the achievements of U.S. military and State Department personnel, which have exceeded any previous noncombatant evacuation operation. It becomes more difficult to argue that the United States has “abandoned” Afghans, given that we are moving heaven and earth to extract tens of thousands of them.

But don’t expect the media to rethink its excessively gloomy verdict. Instead, get ready for the post-Aug. 31 coverage that will point to every stray American (even those who failed to reply to State Department messages). Moreover, we will be told of the plight of many Afghans left behind as evidence that President Biden didn’t keep his promise to get Americans and Afghan partners out. . . .

 The New York Times reports that “the Biden administration had identified about 50,000 special visa applicants, and their families, to be evacuated.” However, thousands more could qualify under the special immigrant visa (SIV) program or be considered “at high risk of being targeted by the Taliban — former Afghan security forces, government officials, journalists, judges and prosecutors, and women rights advocates among them.”. . .

No one ever envisioned airlifting hundreds of thousands of people in such a short timeframe before the Afghan government collapsed. This was a challenge with the Trump administration’s May 1 deadline and by Biden’s agreement to leave by Aug. 31. But the problem of the left behind would have existed even if the deadline was Oct. 1 or Dec. 1. It’s simply not possible to remove a significant portion of the population after having lost the war.

We could get all of the known SIV applicants, plus thousands of at-risk Afghans, and still leave many vulnerable Afghans behind. In one sense, every girl and woman might face a threat of persecution. But evacuating tens of millions of people is unimaginable.

Meanwhile, MAGA folks will be turning themselves inside out to argue that the United States left too many Afghans behind while also complaining that it is taking too many in. Fevered hatred of Biden will collide with their xenophobia.

The administration can and should continue to attempt rescue operations after Aug. 31. But some perspective is in order: The herculean effort could end up evacuating tens of thousands or even 100,000 Afghans and still fall far short of rescuing all at-risk Afghans. Yet this cannot be considered neglectful or hardhearted, because the pool of vulnerable Afghans is virtually limitless. . . .

In sum, the commitment to remove Americans and SIV recipients who worked directly with the United States and its allies was never intended to rescue large swaths of the population. When the United States accomplishes something difficult — exceptional even — and acts with kindness, humanity and decency, it should be acknowledged, even if its performance falls short of perfection. Subsequent drafts of history must provide context, perspective and moral discernment.