The forever war is over, but the forever debate may be only beginning. As he presided over the end of a lost 20-year mission in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden on Tuesday touched off a prolonged argument for history over his decision to get out, how he handled it and what it means for the future of America.
In declaring an end to America’s misadventure in nation-building halfway across the world, Biden was playing a long game, banking on the assumption that he will be remembered by posterity for finally extricating the country from a quagmire, not for how he did it. While his approval ratings have sagged to the lowest levels of his short tenure, most Americans in polls still support leaving Afghanistan and the White House assumes they will quickly move on to other issues like the pandemic and the economy.
“We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan,” the president said from the East Room of the White House, where so many important speeches about Afghanistan have been delivered by four US presidents over the past two decades. “After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
He cited the 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies evacuated in the two weeks since the Taliban seized power in Kabul, boasting that “no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history.” And he maintained that after more than 2,400 US combat deaths, it was past time to disentangle from a country where the United States has no vital national interest in staying.
But the images of pandemonium at the Kabul airport and the president’s failure to evacuate every American as he promised to do just days ago raised questions about his leadership that may prove damaging in the long run as well. They could fit into a broader indictment by Republicans portraying Biden as an unreliable, ineffective commander in chief who humiliated America on the international stage — never mind that the withdrawal was based on an agreement negotiated with the Taliban by former President Donald Trump.
“President Biden’s unseemly victory lap was detached from reality,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., wrote on Twitter after the president’s speech. “His callous indifference to the Americans he abandoned behind enemy lines is shameful.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a member of the House Republican leadership, chastised Biden for refusing to take responsibility for the messy pullout. “Shouting at and blaming the American people is not what was needed in this speech,” she said. “For Joe Biden, the buck stops with anyone and everyone but himself.”
Biden’s supporters pushed back, saying he demonstrated political courage in sticking with the withdrawal in the face of powerful blowback.
“There was no perfect time or way to exit Afghanistan,” said former Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., who backed Biden over Trump in the November election. “President Biden directed the evacuation of more than 100,000 people and got our troops out. I disagree with the president on a lot, but I’m grateful he pushed through despite all the pressure.”
A poll released this week by Reuters and Ipsos found that the vast majority of Americans wanted Biden to keep troops there beyond the deadline if needed to ensure all Americans were out. Forty-nine percent said the military should stay “until all American citizens and Afghan allies have been evacuated” and an additional 25% said they should remain at least until all US citizens were out. Just 13% said troops should “evacuate immediately.”
Overall, 38% of Americans approved of Biden’s handling of the pullout. But they do not hold him solely at fault — 20% say he deserved “most blame for the current state” of Afghanistan, while 10% named former President George W. Bush, who opened the war following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and 9% singled out Trump, and others pointed to the Afghans, generals or others.
Beyond the politics will come debate about what the Taliban victory means for America’s place in the world. Biden is intent on setting a new course for foreign policy, somewhere between the muscular, trigger-ready internationalism prevalent under Bush and, at times, President Barack Obama, and the America First isolationism of Trump.
“The world is changing,” Biden said Tuesday, citing the challenges of China, Russia, cybersecurity and nuclear proliferation. America must lead, he added, but not always with military force. The withdrawal from Afghanistan signals the end of “an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
Even so, some European allies have expressed concern that the defeat of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan will embolden terrorist groups and weaken America’s standing in the world.
Part of Biden’s political trouble in handling the Afghan withdrawal has been reconciling his own words with the reality on the ground. He was the one who vowed in April to conduct the withdrawal “responsibly, deliberately and safely” and added in July that it was “proceeding in a secure and orderly way.”
But on Tuesday, he suggested it was unrealistic to have expected that. “Now some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and, ‘Couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner?’” he said. “I respectfully disagree.
“The bottom line,” he added, “is there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges and threats we faced. None.”
Likewise, he was the one in July who said it was “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would take over the country and that there was “no circumstance” of an embarrassing, chaotic exit akin to the helicopters lifting off the embassy in Saigon in 1975.
And he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News after the Taliban took over Kabul that he would keep US troops in Afghanistan beyond his self-imposed Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline if necessary to evacuate any Americans still on the ground. “If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out,” he said then.
With 100 to 200 US citizens left in Afghanistan who wanted to leave, Biden made no effort Tuesday to explain why he did not then extend the deadline as he said he would but suggested that most of those still there were dual citizens who “earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan” only to later change their mind.
Instead, he pointed to the 5,500 Americans who were successfully evacuated. “The bottom line, 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” he said. (The White House later corrected him and said it was 98%.) “And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.”
Still, after a half-century in national politics, Biden knows better than most how quickly the news cycle moves on. His advisers and allies expect another round of tough criticism around the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with pictures showing the Taliban flag flying over Kabul.
Within days or weeks of that, though, they assume that attention will shift back again to the coronavirus pandemic, the president’s proposals for large public works projects and social welfare programs and a dozen other issues that will absorb the public more than far-off Afghanistan.