Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the influential U.S. publication The National Interest, recalled that as recently as July 8, 2021, President Joe Biden said that under no circumstances would the world see people evacuated from the roof of the United States embassy in Afghanistan and that the possibility of the Taliban taking over Kabul and taking control of the entire country was “highly improbable”
Well, weeks later, the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan, while America tries to remove the remaining embassy staff and interpreters from Kabul.
“Is Biden to blame for this? – asks an American journalist, “In an article for the Washington Post, Max Booth says it is. According to Booth, this is the worst failure of US foreign policy since the fall of Saigon in 1975 – even more so than the surrender of Iraq’s Mosul in 2014 to the Islamic State”
According to the expert, Biden should not have honoured the withdrawal agreements with the Taliban signed by Trump. This is what some US military officials, including General Mark Milley and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, told the current US leader. It was explained to him that in the absence of US troops, the Taliban would prevail, but Biden did not listen to the generals.
As a result, the speed at which the Taliban advanced across the country, seizing more and more territory, came as an unpleasant surprise to the Biden administration. Washington thought it had much more time on its hands and was, in fact, taken by surprise, and is now struggling to find an explanation for what happened.
“It has now become clear that there was no Afghan state, no government and no military. These were convenient fabrications, fantasies, if you like, invoked by successive administrations to justify America’s presence as an occupying power. But no sooner had Biden left than the whole Potemkin village collapsed,” Heilbrunn said. “Whether Biden will pay the political price for withdrawing from Afghanistan remains to be seen. In the short term, a war-weary public, more concerned about COVID-19 than conflicts abroad, may even applaud his ironclad determination to cauterise the festering Afghan wound that has plagued American foreign policy for decades. But whether that endorsement will continue over the next year is not known.”
According to the author of the article, Biden’s political opponents are bound to exploit the situation and may even try to turn the midterm elections to the US Congress into some kind of referendum on who is to blame for the defeat in Afghanistan. Any new terrorist act on U.S. soil or another foreign policy setback could bring back memories of the defeats America suffered in the 1970s from the Soviets in the so-called Third World.
“Make no mistake: by openly admitting US defeat in the Afghan war, Biden risks making himself look like a ‘loser’,” concludes the author of the article.