The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is that liberty requires honorable and honest leadership. President Joe Biden has lied to Americans. When Afghanistan fell on Sunday, Biden was on vacation at Camp David and made no effort to speak to the American people. The backlash was too harsh, and Biden was forced to return to Washington, D.C. to attempt to explain the disaster that took place after he ordered all U.S. forces and support personnel to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
The only problem is that Biden did
not attempt to explain went wrong. He declared that he “did not regret” his
decision, and he used his 19-minute speech to blame the disaster on Donald
Trump, Afghan government leaders, and the Afghan Army. According to Biden,
everyone was at fault except Biden and his administration.
The American people are quite
forgiving of leaders who mess up but admit their mistake. If Biden had been
contrite and humble while admitting his mistake, things would have gone much
better for him. Because he did not, he has been blasted from all sides. Thomas
Spoehr wrote about Biden’s five statements that he considered “the most
egregious” and his rebuttal. Biden’s
5 Mistruths on Afghanistan (dailysignal.com)
1. “We’ve developed counterterrorism
over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on
any direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and
decisively if needed.”
This statement was crafted to allay fears
that now that America has left, we won’t be able to continue to influence
events in Afghanistan. It’s incorrect. With the Taliban now in complete control
of the country, America’s ability to understand what is going on will be even
less than what it was pre-9/11….
To strike Afghanistan will now require
multihour flights from Qatar or carrier ships in the Persian Gulf, and will
have to be done without eyes on the ground.
2. “There was only the cold reality of
either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating
the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in
Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict.”
Biden sought to paint his choices as
binary: either withdraw or send thousands more troops to fight the Taliban. But
there was already a third option, which was already working.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama
declared the combat mission in Afghanistan over. At that point, the U.S.
military began operating in a train-and-assist and counterterrorism role in
Afghanistan, with the Afghan army in the lead….
The Afghan army, with U.S. support, was
standing and fighting the Taliban. Military leaders had advised that they
thought that with 2,500 troops they could sustain the status quo in
Afghanistan. What passed for the status quo in 2020 looks pretty attractive
compared to the dumpster fire that is Afghanistan today.
3. “I know that there are concerns about
why we did not begin evacuating Afghans, civilians sooner. Part of the answer
is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier – still hopeful for their
country.”
Maybe there was some small number of
Afghans who remained hopeful, but most were hoping to leave, and today are
stranded. In July, the U.S. had a visa application backlog of 18,000 Afghan
translators and others who wanted to leave. The effort to get those people who
had risked their lives to help the U.S. military should have started much
earlier and gone much faster.
4. “The truth is: This did unfold more
quickly than we had anticipated.”
Maybe the rapid advance of the Taliban
surprised a White House who wanted to believe otherwise, but the potential that
the Taliban could quickly retake Afghanistan was a commonly shared belief among
the intelligence community and the Pentagon.
Intelligence agencies began to warn of a
potential Taliban takeover soon after Biden’s decision to conduct a total
withdrawal in April. Military leaders knew that once U.S. support was removed,
including the vital contractor support that kept the Afghan air force in the
air, there was a strong potential of collapse.
5. “American troops cannot and should not
be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to
fight for themselves.. We gave them every chance to determine their own future.
What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future… It is
wrong to order American troops to up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would
not.”
Of the mistruths uttered by Biden, these
were among the most galling. The Afghan army has been fighting and taking
casualties in its war that would have made even the most hardened warrior
blink. Casualties among the Afghan army are estimated to be 69,000 killed, more
than America suffered in the Vietnam War.
The Afghan army did not stop fighting
until it realized it had been abandoned, its logistics and air support stopped
when America pulled out the 18,000 contractors who had been supporting its
efforts.
Our president and his advisors are
lying to us. Thankfully, Americans have eyes and can see what is happening.
Even CNN is not buying their stories now instead of throwing up smoke in their
defense. Biden and his administration are responsible for abandoning Afghanistan
and bringing shame to our nation. Americans want their country to do their job,
which is to defend and protect Americans. Instead, the Biden administration has
abandoned 10,000-15,000 Americans and left them behind enemy lines in
Afghanistan.
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