The disastrous management of withdrawal from afghanistan has not finished haunting Joe Biden. The President of the United States comes out of it very weakened, at home and internationally.
For the first time, the majority of Americans disapprove of his action. The discontented outweighed the satisfied from August 19, four days after the fall of Kabul.
Biden’s improvidence
Biden has never been a president in a position of strength. With a slim majority in Congress, he came to power with less support than his recent predecessors except Trump. Even before the Afghan fiasco, its rating declined, mainly due to the migration crisis on the southern border and the resumption of the epidemic.
Despite the staggering images of Kabul airport and the attack which killed 13 American soldiers in particular, Biden speaks of “extraordinary success”. His defense is that the United States should leave Afghanistan and that he accepts that decision.
A specious argument which tends to mask Biden’s improvidence. The real question, in fact, was not to stay or to go, but how to handle the withdrawal so that the image, credibility and alliances of the United States were not shaken.
Since one of their commandos killed Bin Laden, sheltered in 2011 by the strange Pakistani ally of Washington, most Americans, apart from ” hawks Such as Bush Jr. or Hillary Clinton, wants the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
From Bush to Biden, including Obama and Trump
In fact, there is continuity between Trump and Biden on the necessity of the withdrawal. Biden also kept the very imperfect agreement between Trump and the Taliban, limiting himself to delaying the departure.
During the presidential election, Biden portrayed himself as everything Trump was not: competent, expert in foreign policy, serious, empathetic, reliable.
This portrait is now cracked. The majority of Americans no longer think of Biden as “competent, focused and efficient.” They believe that he had “no plan” to evacuate civilians, some of whom, Americans and Afghans, remain stranded in Afghanistan.
If the responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal lies first and foremost with the current chief executive, the bankruptcy of the war in Afghanistan belongs to all American officials: from Bush to Biden to Obama and Trump, from the White House to Congress in going through the Pentagon, the State Department or intelligence agencies. Without forgetting the “think tanks” which advise them or the companies of the defense sector.
Americans deceived by their ruling elite
Since the 2001 attacks, Americans have been calling for a redefinition, or even a rupture, of their country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which they consider to be the real sponsors of Al-Qaeda, unlike the Taliban or the Saddam Hussein. They have long wanted the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan to be invested in the United States.
However, the Americans have not been heard by their ruling elite and have even been deceived by them: the lies of the Bush administration on the justifications for the invasion of Iraq and of the following administrations on the situation in Afghanistan. Americans are going to become even more hands off. Their leaders will find it very difficult to persuade them to support any new military engagement.
For Biden, the only good news, but only in terms of political politics, is that the next election will not come until November 2022.
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