SAN DIEGO: Joe Biden claims “zero responsibility” for abysmal policy failure to end the Taliban’s notorious violence in the War in Afghanistan. But there are questions to ask about any Biden claim to promoting any successful foreign policy in his political career. There are a numbered thousands of Americans adversely affected by the Obama administration’s ramp-up of Middle East conflicts.
Biden’s blurted out the ‘zero’ remark on Feb 23, 2020, in an interview with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. This illustrates the mindset of the man who would command our troops if elected Nov 3.
The discussion topic was the ‘Future of troops in Afghanistan’.
Brennan reminds Biden about a 2010 Washington Post story, and his quote to Richard Holbrooke, the then envoy to Afghanistan. The subject was Afghanistan. Biden alludes to his oldest son Beau Biden, an Iraq war veteran, in his comment referring to the Taliban’s Islamic war on women that violates their chastity, dignity, denies them education and basic freedoms.
“I’m not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights. It just won’t work,” says Biden.
(Beau Biden died of a brain cancer diagnosis in 2015, previously serving as Delaware Attorney General).
Biden said we can’t go to war to solve “every single internal problem that exists throughout the world.”
This exaggerates America’s generous legacy to maintain global security and curb human suffering. And the following a gross detachment of our role in Afghanistan, something a would-be president must shoulder.
The interview.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But then don’t you bear some responsibility for the outcome if the Taliban ends up back in control and women end up losing the rights?
BIDEN: No I don’t. Look, are you telling me that we should go into China because- go to war with China because what they’re doing to the Uyghurs, a million Uyghurs, in the- out in the West in concentration camps? Is that what you’re saying to me?
MARGARET BRENNAN: It was your quote, sir; I was asking you what you meant.
BIDEN: No I know. I gave you my- I gave the answer. Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility.
‘Other’ families’ sons and daughters have to fight Afghanistan’s war.
Both Biden and Obama acted as leaders during the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan from 2008-2016. Like it or not, they have American blood on their hands from when they were running things.
If Biden would not send his own son to Afghanistan, how does he send everyone else’s with obvious abandon? The president and vice president knew 2010 was shaping up to be the deadliest era of the war there. We lost young service members in droves – their bodies riddled with bullets or blown up, and minds traumatized by a fierce elusive enemy. So many either killed or severely injured with lifelong handicaps. Our warriors did the job they were sent there to do without question and paid the price.
Some Afghan and Iraq war veterans say “My friends are dead because of your policies.”
The number of Afghan war casualties during the Obama administration startles at 1,882 troops – an overwhelming majority of 2,354 total casualties to date.
Biden really did support the Afghan War.
Three years earlier, during a 2007 campaign speech on C-span, Biden tells a different story than the one he tells Brennan.
“That’s the source of my anger about this president [Bush] and his policies. If we surge troops anywhere – it should be in Afghanistan…NATO has taken on the responsibility it should for Afghanistan,” says Biden.
He clamors for international assist to the embattled nation.
“If we make it clear to Europe that we have made the commitment to Afghanistan and to rebuild it, which is incredibly cheaper that what is going on here [Iraq?], they will participate,” adds Biden back then.
Sporting a lie, in 2020, says on national TV about Afghanistan,
“Look, I opposed the surge in the first place. Number one, I didn’t think we should have even [sent] the troops we sent there.”
AFGHANISTAN, 2011. U.S. Army Pfc. Ben Bradley (left), a Bulldog Troop, Red Platoon scout, 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, ducks away from insurgent machine gun fire, as fellow scout Sgt. Jeff Sheppard, launches a M-203 grenade at the enemy’s position, during a combat engagement in northern Bala Murghab Valley, Baghdis province, Afghanistan. Bradley, Sheppard, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Kevin Wallace, U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Lee and his military working dog ‘Valdo’ were wounded by a rocket propelled grenade blast in the engagement. Photo Tech. Sgt. Kevin Wallace
After all the fighting, Biden still does not know America’s enemies.
Biden will start wars but loses conviction when America’s enemies survive his policy. Then he conveniently detaches from the sobering outcome. Unfortunately families of the fallen do not have that detachment ability.
How his mind works is unknown. He tells Brennan we should shame our enemies. That’s crazy – because those hurting and persecuting others, including women, feel entitled. They that kill the innocent are proud of it. Or he admonishes ‘go to the UN’ who does not have its own military forces, and relies on its member countries.
“Economic pressure” Biden adds will deter Taliban atrocities – when the Taliban have no reliance on the U.S. Most of Taliban income derives from illicit drugs, its taxation regime and extortion, and illegal mining of its estimated 1 bn in rich minerals and precious stones resources.
In contrast – as part of President Trump’s more aggressive counterinsurgency policy in 2018, “the US renewed its focus on targeting the Taliban’s financial networks and revenue sources, including [bombing] the drug labs where opium is converted into heroin,” reported BBC News.
U.S. and Afghan planes launched more than 200 strikes disabling production and trading on nearly half of the estimated 500 Taliban drug labs.
Leave a small American footprint to prevent big terror? Don’t think so?
Biden now says a small footprint of troops in Afghanistan is the future plan.
“Several thousand people” assures “a place from which we can operate, if in fact, you find that there’s a re-amassing of Taliban capacity, excuse me, of al-Qaeda and or ISIS capacity to strike the United States like happened in 9/11,” predicts perilous Biden.
How can a few thousand hold off the Taliban tide already resurged because Obama/Biden policy didn’t have a sustainable military/civil plan?
These guys thought it took 100,000 troops in August 2010 to turn back the tide and troops fought courageously in hellish conditions. There were 8,400 troops left when Obama exited office, still fighting the Taliban in a restricted ‘side’ role. Our warriors train to be in front – not cast to the side for long. With no transparency of what troops are accomplishing over there.
F- Grade to Democrat Dept. of State handling of Middle East conflicts.
The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) offers no learning curve in April, 2010,
“The State Department has never provided any meaningful public reporting on its role in either the Afghan or Iraq Wars. Its web site is little more than an intellectual vacuum, filled with topical spin.”
CSIS cited the Obama administration’s failure of not, “providing the American people and the Congress with a clear picture of progress in the war, the broad structure of US plans, and some picture of the timelines involved and the future costs of the conflict. There has been no meaningful transparency.”
Like Iraq, the Obama/Biden Afghanistan policy was underdeveloped and strategically misrepresented to those in the fight. The then president and vice president ignoring, excusing corruption, power brokering, narco-trafficking, and links to the Taliban in the Karzai government. This seriously compromised military efforts to stabilize the chaos and blocked the road to peace.
Unlike Biden, Trump uprightly carries the burden of this war.
“[Long War] Journal has been tracking the Taliban’s attempts to gain control of territory since NATO ended its military mission in Afghanistan and switched to an “advise and assist” role in June 2014…However, since the U.S. drawdown of peak forces in 2011, the Taliban has unquestionably been resurgent,” says Journal.
October 2019, troops in Afghanistan remain at 13,000, as Trump strives to broker a U.S./Taliban peace agreement.
One was signed in February 29, 2020 mapping a timeline to draw down troops in exchange for a Taliban promise to “prevent territory under their control from being used by terrorist groups and enter into negotiations with the Afghan government in March 2020… Despite this new agreement, there is still no official cease-fire in place,” as reported by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The U.S. honors it commitments:
“We’re on a glide slope (in Afghanistan) to be at 4,500 by the November time frame, late October, November time frame,” Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie said in an interview with VOA and two other media outlets.
But sadly terrorists do not:
An explosion near a tutoring center in western Kabul on Saturday left at least 30 people dead, according to security sources. Killing and wounding mostly young students, according to TOLO News.
“They are killing our youth,” said Rahima, a relative of a victim in the recent attack.
A heinous outcome to resurged violence in a country yearning for peace.
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