Would the unready Joe Biden please stand up?

Addressing the nation on Tuesday to announce the end of a 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden insisted that his policy had been a success.

The evacuation succeeded, Biden said, because “we were ready.”

Really? We were ready, but still left thousands of our Afghan allies and hundreds of Americans behind (at least 10% of whom Biden himself admits wanted to leave but could not)? We were ready, but betrayed our closest allies, who literally begged Biden to extend his unilateral timetable for evacuation?

If this is what the ready commander in chief offers, would the unready President Joe Biden please stand up?

Aside from his assertion that 1% of American families have born an outsize cost of war, Biden’s speech was an imaginative presentation of reality. The president insisted that Americans in Afghanistan had been warned 19 times that they could and should leave. I suspect that many Americans in Afghanistan will not recall receiving such warnings.

“I respectfully disagree,” the president said, with those who argue that the evacuation could have started earlier. But if he was “ready” and this withdrawal was the only way to evacuate, why was the embassy abandoned in such a rush? Why did the U.S. have to literally beg the Taliban for its modicum of perimeter security? Why were Americans and so many of our allies abandoned? Why did Afghans fly off the wings of our planes?

Biden said his policy reflected a collective “recommendation” by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Interrogative: Is this to say that the Joint Chiefs supported abandoning Bagram Air Base and leaving Americans behind? Perhaps so. But if so, it’s just more proof of a rot in the general officer ranks .

President “the buck stops here ” Biden also described a binary choice prison that had been set by former President Donald Trump. It was a choice, he said, split between a total withdrawal by Sept. 11, or accepting a permanent presence and ensuing “Taliban onslaught.”

This is not true. In 2019, 20 Americans died in Afghanistan as a result of hostile action. But 224 people died in al Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, 17 died in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and nearly 3,000 died on 9/11. Moreover, the U.S. military mission in 2019 was very different from that of the 2009-2011 Helmand river valley offensive. Indeed, some of the 2019 casualties were incurred as the Trump administration exerted special operations pressure on the Taliban to make a deal. Instead, the situation facing Biden in 2021 was one in which roughly 2,500 U.S. personnel were on fortress-like bases, providing command, intelligence, and logistics support for Afghan forces on the front line.

Like those at the Kabul airport gate, all U.S. losses in Afghanistan were terrible. But like the guardians at the gate , they died to protect American civilian life and security.

That matters because Biden also insisted that the overriding mission in Afghanistan is and was “to make sure that Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.” He is correct. But again, that mission is going to be much harder with no U.S. presence by which to recruit spies and facing terrorist groups that have learned operational security tactics. Oh, and facing an emirate that shares a great ideological affinity for terrorists who wish to maim and murder innocent civilians across the globe.

The president has committed to what he has said he would do: End the American military presence in Afghanistan. But he has done so in a condition of chaos and absent responsibility.

If this is readiness, let us hope that the unready Biden soon stands up. When it comes to President “ready” Biden, China and Russia will not be deterred.

SOURCE