Biden did what Trump wouldn’t

by | Aug 27, 2021 | Editor's Blog | 6 comments

Nobody should be more excited about what Joe Biden has done in Afghanistan than the ardent isolationists who supported Donald Trump. Not only is he getting America out of a 20 year war with no foreseeable end, he’s largely blown up the foreign policy establishment that supports military interventions first and foremost. The howling over the evacuation comes from both the left and the right of the foreign policy establishment. The media who are emotionally invested in the region are covering the story as if there could have been an orderly and disciplined exit. Given the speed with which the country fell to the Taliban, that clearly wasn’t possible.   

Republicans are calling for Biden to be impeached or resign. That’s absurd. Some version of what’s happening in Afghanistan was going to happen when we tried to get out, whether it was this year or next or ten years from now. We clearly over-estimated our influence in the country. The Taliban took the country barely firing a shot. 

Nobody called for Reagan to resign or be impeached when the barracks were bombed in Lebanon killing 241 American soldiers. Nobody called for George W. Bush to resign in the wake of 9/11. And nobody called for Donald Trump to resign when he abandoned the Kurds. 

The events, though, are nonetheless horrific and tragic. The suicide bombing that took the lives of at least 13 American soldiers and more than 74 Afghans was carried out by ISIS, the terrorist force that Trump insisted he defeated. In fact, he used their defeat as a reason for abandoning the Kurds in Syria. Maybe if the Kurds were still a viable force in Syria, ISIS wouldn’t be a force in Afghanistan. 

Foreign policy hawks from sides of the aisle and in the media are declaring the evacuation a disaster. One reporter said that it was clearly worse than Saigon. To put that in perspective, the evacuation of South Vietnam was carried out over about a month in April 1975. Within the first week, a plane load of evacuees crashed, killing 155 of them. By the end of the month, the South Vietnamese army had collapsed and defectors had turned on the government. Americans lost control of the airport altogether so there were no flights leaving Saigon, hence the helicopter scenes. At the end of April, about 7,000 Americans were evacuated. During the month of April, a total of about 90,000 people had been evacuated from the country of 50,000,000 people. And, yes, we left some Americans behind, most of whom were allowed to leave later. 

So far, more than 105,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since August 14. By the August 31 deadline, that number will probably be close to 150,000. Unfortunately, people who helped Americans will be left behind. Evacuating everybody was never going to happen, but the people leaving won’t stop next Tuesday, either. About 350,000 Vietnamese left the country over a ten year period and we can expect Afghan refugees for years to come. 

The real blame for the debacle we’re seeing now is US hubris. We believed we could build a democracy from scratch. Every time we try, we fail. We failed in Afghanistan. We failed in Iraq. Our interventionist tendencies destabilized the whole Middle East and led, both directly and indirectly, to failed states in Libya and Yemen. Just about the only successful interventions in my lifetime were when we invaded Grenada and went into Panama to topple Noriega.

We need to change our approach to foreign policy. Yes, we’re the most powerful country in the world, but that doesn’t mean we can bend every country to our will through military force. Instead, as Ezra Klein wrote yesterday, we should use our power to intervene in positive ways. Build schools and hospitals. Develop sources for clean water. Help in natural disasters. Using force as a first response clearly hasn’t worked very well. It’s time to try something different. 

Joe Biden did what Donald Trump wouldn’t. He blew up our foreign policy and extricated us from Afghanistan. All those who cheered Trump’s bravado should be cheering Biden’s actions. Use this time to build consensus for a new approach to foreign policy. 

6 Comments

  1. Fail Bot (@Promontorium)

    “Evacuating everybody was never going to happen” It would have if this was even remotely planned in advance, and done before the Taliban took over. Your glorious savior Biden claims he foresaw everything, and yet chose not to evacuate until after the Taliban took over. Unwilling to admit even the slightest error, creates new errors.

    They evacuated 100,000+ random people. Not the people that needed to be evacuated. Because the evacuation was done without any measure of control or authority of the U.S. but under the acceptance of the Taliban.

    The massive lie Biden, you, the left continue to push is this notion that this was unavoidable. Then you obfuscate and make the discussion about getting out. I’ve been for getting out since 2002. But this isn’t how it’s done. Begging your enemy for permission to let random people latch onto planes.

    Yes Biden did what Trump wouldn’t. He allowed the Taliban to fail their end of the bargain. He allowed all of Afghanistan to fall before even bothering to evacuate people. He allowed 13 Americans to die. He drone murdered 7 children.

    The entire premise was a lie from the beginning. Biden claimed they planned on getting everyone out by 9/11, but they couldn’t even pull that off. They couldn’t even be bothered to forego paperwork that prevented translators and other Afghanis who helped America for decades and would be clear targets for the Taliban.

  2. Rick High

    One of the lessons of Vietnam was that 3 Presidents knew it was a disaster, but were too afraid of losing an election to withdraw. His decision may cost him the election in 2024, but he had the courage to withdraw.

  3. Rick Gunter

    Maybe it is because I agree with every word in this column, but I consider it one of your best.

    I would venture that no fewer than four presidents have wanted to do what Joe Biden is doing in Afghanistan. They simply lacked the guts to do it.

    What was the alternative? The alternative was more killing and more wasting of precious treasury.

    And the Republicans who are criticizing President Biden, calling upon him to resign, are nuts. Where were these fools in face of one egregious outrage after another by Donald Trump? They were mute. They have no moral standing to utter one critical word. None.
    One of the problems of contemporary media, in which I have spent my entire adult life, is the lack of institutional memory. Tons of journalists simply do not remember the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam War. To compare what is happening now to what happened in 1975 is insane.

    I was a young editorial writer in Asheville when that happened. I had served in the Army four years earlier. I recall that then President Ford was hit in the gut by criticism. But even he did not face the cruelty directed at Mr. Biden.

    Many Vietnamese fleeing their country ended up in temporary American havens. One of them was in Arkansas. President Ford showed up there one day. He was decent to a fault.
    Where has that decency gone in our private and public life?

    Afghanistan, save for some elimination of terrorist havens, was a fool’s errand basically from the start for the U.S. To believe that country made up largely of tribes that dislike each other was going to bloom into a democracy was nuts. I am just a country editor in rural Virginia, but this child of the Vietnam era has a long memory.

    I fully support President Biden. Forget the GOP crazies. And forget the Democrats who are about as nutty on this issue as the GOP. Those who criticize the President are telling us that their alternative would be more killing. They are telling us that hundreds of thousands of people could have been freed from that god-forsaken country quietly. What fools these critics are. Many of them are the reason our country got bogged down in Afghanistan for 20 tortuous years.
    To believe all of this could be pulled over with no bloodshed and no chaos is to ignore that there is no grace for losers in a war that we never could have won.

    • Mark English

      Thank you Rick Gunter, for saving me from typing a somewhat similar reply. You are spot on. And thank you Thomas Mills, for posting some sanity in a somewhat insane world. I was a child (12 years old, to be exact) when we withdrew from Saigon and i still remember it vividly on the nightly news. I also remember that no one called for the president to resign after that. And, no one called for Reagan to resign after the American Marines were killed in the Lebanon attacks. Nor was Clinton asked to resign when the sailors were killed on the USS Cole. Nor was George Bush Jr asked to resign after the attacks on the World Trade Centers killed many, many American citizens.

  4. Chester Vogel

    I found your analysis interesting and well focused. However, Trump had significant help from Stephen Miller by processing few Afghans, a short timeframe May 2021 which Biden extended to August 31, and not inviting the Afghan government to talks with the Taliban.

    The fact that the Taliban released ISIS from jail suggests they supported Trump’s agenda. I think Biden has no choice but to extract vengeance from both the Taliban and ISIS. Clearly action against the Taliban can’t start until they only allow very few Afghans we want leave Afghanistan. Action against the Taliban should start with significant bombings where Pakistan allowed the Taliban to retreat to and rest. I look forward to opinion on how to get even.

  5. Sue Tuman

    Agreed

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