Last Thursday, Aug. 26, at 6:00 p.m. in Kabul, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest as American troops at Abbey Gate were processing entrants to Hamid Karzai International Airport. Nearly 200 people died at that horrific moment, including 13 U.S. service members.
It was a horrific massacre that didn't need to happen.
There is only one person to blame, and that is President Joe Biden -- not for his decision to leave Afghanistan, but instead for his stubborn insistence on leaving the country on a specific date. It is a stubbornness rooted in negligence, not incompetence, a word often thrown around as reasoning for his failure at this moment.
In the days since Kabul fell, we have learned through reporting that the U.S. has depended on the Taliban for security screening outside the airport since mid-August, purposely choosing to rely on foes that killed Americans for decades to screen jihadists determined to kill Americans.
We have also learned through reporting by Politico that U.S. officials gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies to grant entry into the outer perimeter of the Kabul airport -- giving their information to the very entity that has viciously murdered any Afghan who has joined up with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the 20-year war.
And those hundreds of students, their relatives and staff of the American University of Afghanistan who had boarded buses on Sunday to evacuate on U.S. military flights were told after seven hours of sitting on the bus that all evacuations were permanently called off; The New York Times reported that because of Biden's mandatory deadline, the military will now only be bringing its own personnel home. But a list of their names and their passport information has been shared by the U.S. military with the Taliban fighters guarding the airport checkpoints.
Biden's negligence on Afghanistan is not a singular event but a pattern of behavior. He has been negligent in his dismissal of the crisis at the border. The dramatic surge in illegal U.S. southern border crossings -- last month alone there were nearly 200,000 -- is a humanitarian crisis that has endangered lives and communities, increased human and drug trafficking 100-fold and turned the lives of people who live along the border upside down.
Incompetence denotes that Biden has no idea what he is doing. And yes, he certainly seems unsteady in numerous settings. But he has shown stubborn purpose in making the withdrawal from Afghanistan, whatever the circumstances. He has been equally purposeful in showing no responsibility for conditions at the border. That is negligence.
Biden's fragility as the leader of our country is illustrated by the frequency of his negligence and the ease with which he and his administration and military leaders have been dismissing it.
They have willfully overlooked his flaws, or they have pardoned him without criticism. That's why history will show that his negligence is their negligence as well. If the media do not hold him accountable, they also share that burden.
Salena Zito is a national political reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner as well as a weekly columnist for the New York Post. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS
21 comments:
WELL SAID - I AGREE 100%
The date had been set as May 1st by the Trump administration.
I'd like someone to tell me why they believe that an ISIS suicide bomber wouldn't have shown up at any date from the negotiated May 1st until Christmas.
And, why is it ignored that all the coalition partners feared that if there was enough early exits to be noticed that it would destabilize the existing Afghan government? Beginning those exits before troop withdrawal was the most likely path to safely get those who wanted to leave out.
I'd like you to tell me why it's ignored that the Trump immigration reforms you like that are still in place played a role in getting visa approvals. Also, requests began and were stymied beginning at the signing of the " peace agreement". And, there are still those hired during the past administration in the INS.
Some folks ( including extreme right groups threatening attacks on Afghans who are coming here), wanted out of Afghanistan but didn't want Afghanis.
Joe isn't in charge. The speech he was given last night was read to perfection and was more like something Hitler would have said and more or less did. Joe Biden is POTUS because of his family ties to China. He is the perfect puppet ! Liberty died yesterday at 4 oclock CST and I am not sure the 2022 elections will save us from another Civil WAR.
Comrade Joe Stalin Biden has some catching up to do.
@ 11:32 -- Had Biden stuck to the May 1 deadline, things would have been markedly different. Do you know why May 1 was the exit date? Because the Taliban's fighting season starts in mid-April. The fighting season is dictated by weather and its effects on terrain. A May 1 date deprived the Taliban of freedom or operations and freedom of maneuver to take district centers and provincial capitols which would build the momentum to topple the Afghan government and Kabul before the US withdrawal date. You do know that the first province capitol didn't fall until August 7, 2021, right? That was about a month after Biden withdrew the remaining US forces and abandoned Bagram Air Base. Biden extended the date by four months giving the Taliban four months of freedom of operations which culminated in the fall of Kabul in short order.
Here's the short list of Biden's incompetence regarding execution of his withdrawal plan:
1. Biden withdrew US forces nearly two months before the withdrawal deadline.
2. Biden withdrew US forces before evacuating US citizens and at-risk Afghans.
3. Biden abandoned Bagram AB, a stronghold and a two-runway airhead, nearly two months before the withdrawal deadline leaving only the Kabul airport for flights in and out. Bagram was well defended based on a defense plan refined over nearly two decades. No US forces were on hand to secure and defend the Kabul airport.
4. Biden failed to heed the warning of State Dept. personnel in Kabul in July that the Afghan government would fall quickly and evacuations must start not later than August 1. [SOURCE: "US diplomats warned Blinken in July country could fall to Taliban: report," Aug, 19, 2021, The Hill (from story: "About two dozen diplomats working at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken in July that Kabul risked falling to the Taliban shortly after the military’s withdrawal, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The classified cable, sent through the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, detailed swift gains by the Taliban throughout the country, the collapse of Afghan forces and offered recommendations for speeding up evacuation efforts. . . . The cable urged the State Department to begin registering and collecting personal data of Afghan interpreters and other allies who qualify for special immigrant visas to leave the country and said the U.S. should begin evacuation flights no later than Aug. 1.")]
5. Biden failed to heed the warning of the CIA that the Ghani government would fall quickly after the withdrawal of US forces. Douglas London, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief for the region including Afghanistan, wrote on August 18, 2021 that Biden misled the public by saying that the situation unfolded more quickly than officials thought possible. "The CIA anticipated it as a possible scenario," he wrote in Just Security. [SOURCE: "Afghanistan disaster puts intelligence under scrutiny," Aug. 18, 2021, The Hill]
6. Biden deployed 6,000 troops to Kabul in an effort to correct his incompetent execution of the final phase of his withdrawal plan thereby creating the target attacked by ISIS-K resulting in the killing of 13 service members and hundreds of Afghan civilians. Biden failed to put sufficient combat power on the ground in Kabul to secure the Kabul airport and prevent attacks like the one executed by ISIS-K.
11:32 must be a Xiden troll/supporter.
AMEN 11:32.
You China a Russian conspiracy theorists need to get a reality check.
I’m glad we are out of Afghanistan. We never should have been there except for bombing and intelligence missions. It is peculiar how the guy who put us there doesn’t get any of the author’s blame.
This is what matters. Do not let the Biden administration distract you from their incompetence by issuing the vaccination mandate of private employers. They know the mandate will fail; they also know the narrative will shift among their media comrades and trick you into talking about it over their disastrous Afghanistan pullout and refugee policies.
12:58 .........Bahhhhhhh bahhhhhhhhhhhh
Sleepy, Creepy Joe. 350 million people in this country and he is the best and brightest guy we could find to run this country? WTF
@11:42
Civil War between Conservatives and domestic Communists may attract China to participate on side of Left.
I served 2 tours of duty in Afghanistan and its a well known fact that the Taliban quit fighting during the winter month.
The generals should have told the President to pull the troop out during winter.
@11:32
Biden is so deranged, demented and delusional, he couldn't out-maneuver a rubber duck in a bath tub, though he may have long conversations of gibberish with one.
Anyone taking up for Biden at this point just hates Trump's bluster more than they love America and individual liberty, which Trump championed effectively.
My question is will the Afghans be allowed to bring their dancing boys and tea boys that they were so fond of keeping in their military bases? Asking for a former Marine who wanted to puke while he was ordered to ignore the endless child rape and to work along side the Afghan National Army aka Northern Alliance Warlords.
Krusatyr, please understand at this point, this has nothing to do with Trump. Good or Bad he isn’t the president right now.
The only real reason that we were in that shithole for 20 years was to prop up the military industrial complex, fueled by the kickbacks from said military contractors to politicians. It's a giant circle jerk.
The blame is shared by Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Wow today is 9/11 guess who is at Fight in Florida rather than in New York for the remembrance ceremony .
@11:18 you couldn’t be more wrong if your life depended on it. There is blame for Afghanistan but it’s the Taliban and Bin Laden who underestimated America. And of course there is blame to go around for not fighting a war to win it. We did the same damn shit we did in Vietnam and didn’t learn a fucking thing from it. We didn’t give Nazi Germany time to breathe and yet we allowed Pakistan to harbor the guy who brought down the towers. Don’t go to war if you don’t plan to win period.
America's leadership has been left for the hot button issue DEPLORABLES on each side of the aisle to determine with the help of CNN and FOX. The country's best and brightest mostly choose to stay out of the shit throwing contests and the few individuals who feel compelled to throw their hats in the ring for the sake of the country are usually insulted by their own party worse than their opponents.
The party primaries were comprised of stooges that each party chose to make their yes man look good. As for D Trump FOX's Rupert Murdoch took the opportunity to shuffle the GOP's chosen one, Bush III, off into obscurity in favor of a CLOWN PRINCE.
And so, down we go toward scraping the bottom of the barrel in coming elections. We can always blame the other party for all the problems.
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