Columnist Curt Smith: Joe Biden: A synonym for shame

When last we considered Joe Biden, he had just been elected president, given his 2021 inaugural address, and seemed to be if not “Uncle Joe,” at least likeable and wearable. We forgot how in politics, everything can change over time, or overnight.

By 69-23 percent, a Suffolk University/USA Today poll decries how Biden has withdrawn U.S. troops from Afghanistan. To writer Michael Goodwin, his “cowardice” exceeds even British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s, who appeased Hitler by signing a 1938 Munich agreement that sired World War II and of whom Winston Churchill said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Biden’s surrender to the Taliban regime dishonors America’s mission that began after the terrorist group Al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan and Pakistan crashed four planes on Sept. 11, 2001, into New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and rural Pennsylvania. President Bush launched a War on Terror, invading Afghanistan to hopefully overthrow the Taliban, destroy Al-Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden, who planned and implemented the 9/11 attack.

In 2003, an American-led “Coalition of the Willing” entered Iraq to seize alleged weapons of mass destruction. Notably, its war, like Afghanistan’s, lacked an exit strategy. In 2011, U.S. forces killed bin Laden — tellingly, the sole Biden senior adviser to President Obama to oppose the murder. Our Afghan troops peaked at 98,000, dropped to 5,500, rose, and fell again, Al Qaeda not expunged.

As Bush, Obama, and Donald Trump debated but never removed all U.S. troops from either country, increasingly we forgot 9/11 — moreover, our reason to stay: prevent terrorism against the homeland. In 2020, Trump agreed with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan next May. The issue became not whether to withdraw — but how? Surely by not fueling another jihadist strike. Biden is unconcerned with such niceties, obsessed as he is with all politics, all the time.

According to The Wall Street Journal, he told advisers that “the U.S. was providing life support for the Afghan government, which in his view was corrupt” — in contrast, one supposes, with his presidency that strangles law enforcement, ignores Supreme Court eviction orders, and welcomes record illegal immigration at our Southern Border. Mr. President, what could be more corrupt than sentencing Americans and Afghan advisers who trusted us to desertion and death?

Biden says that he bears “zero responsibility” for the recent Taliban takeover, blaming other presidents for not leaving sooner; Afghans for not fighting; civilians for asking us to stay. He pathetically distorts Trump’s conditional deal as “boxing me in,” despite no troops having died there in the last 18 months. Biden is so self-absorbed that he removed them all, imposing a 9/11 deadline so that he could garishly celebrate what Bush, Obama, and Trump couldn’t — the end of 20 years of U.S. involvement. Some celebration: 9/11 now means humiliation — ours.

A wise withdrawal would have retained air cover and minimum ground support — by contrast, 28,500 troops patrol South Korea — before extracting civilians, diplomats, and troops in that order. Instead, Biden’s deadline chaotically removed military and air support first and civilians last. Former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in 2014 that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” The Taliban marks Joe’s fifth.

Biden claims no ally has criticized his withdrawal. Please. Germany’s likely next chancellor, Armin Laschet, rips a “debacle.” Britain’s Daily Telegraph bays, “Parliament holds [Biden] in contempt.” The Labor Party head scolds Joe’s “catastrophic error of judgment.” As the Taliban seized the capital of Kabul, thousands of refugees were left at its sole (Karzai) airport, Biden having deserted the larger and more secure Bagram Air Force Base. For two days, he ignored foreign leaders, finally returning Boris Johnson’s call. Criticism? There is nothing but.

“[He] will never be trusted the same way again,” rued the Journal after Biden quoted Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here.” Joe’s buck stopped only after he changed his version of the Taliban conquest more times than a wayward teen who crashed the family car. First he said he had overruled advisers to remove all troops, then that a few disagreed, then that all supported him, claiming that none mentioned a potential bloodbath, as if their ignorance was an excuse.

On July 8, Biden said that a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely,” soon changing the 9/11 deadline to 8/31, making it impossible for all Americans and advisers to evacuate before then. Fantasizing a kinder, gentler Taliban, Biden relied for airport-area security on the terror group. The Taliban ordered him not to cross its “Red line,” then shut the airport’s main road. A real leader could not have been bullied. Uncle Joe crumbled. Afghan terrorists were once our prisoners. Now, we are theirs.

Images reverberate. Desperate to save her child, a mother reaches above an airport fence to hand him to a waiting Marine. A baby is knocked from the parent and trampled by a crowd. Trying to escape, two Afghan teens fall to their deaths from a U.S. C-17’s landing gear. Biden calls Al-Qaeda “gone from Afghanistan,” even as a United Nations report says it exists in at least 15 Afghan provinces. With each mistruth, the president’s veracity collapsed.

On Aug. 25, citing “a high risk of terrorist attack,” the Administration told Americans to leave and avoid the airport. Next day, in a Taliban sector to which Biden had outsourced U.S. safety, a suicide bomber killed 13 service members and at least 60 Afghans, wounding scores more. Days before, the president said he would change nothing, as cold and callous as when as a senator in 1975 he reportedly said about aid to Cambodia, “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation.”

The last note of this calamity is $85 billion of U.S. weaponry America abandoned to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and a new terrorist group, ISIS-K: planes, tanks, automatic assault weapons, night vision goggles, and an estimated three million rounds of ammunition. Who doubts one day that it may be used against us?

A New York Post headline, referencing Britain’s 1940’s heroic evacuation of Dunkirk, France, bannered: DUMKIRK! In truth, what Joe Biden lacks is character — that blend of courage, judgment, and loyalty that spurs abiding trust. He is now a synonym for shame.

Curt Smith is the author of 18 books, a former speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush, senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester, and twice-monthly columnist for Messenger Post Media. Email curtsmith@netacc.net.