After watching President Biden speak about the reasons for our withdrawal from Afghanistan it has taking me sometime to claim down enough to write. He took a victory lap to extol defeat. He praised the work of many to get out US citizens as well as others that had worked for us. But not all. He started this by declaring the United States has ended 20 years of war. Like the British Evacuation of Dunkirk was the end of the war in Europe. He pointed out the ISIS-K, which supposedly carried out the bombing at the airport, are sworn enemies of the Taliban. This does not make the Taliban good or our friends, they are just different terrorist groups. He said that the made the decision on April 1 to end the war and set the final date as Aug 31. He actually set the date as Sept, 11. He spoke of the 300,000 strong Afghan Army that failed to fight. To begin he has used that number, which is wrong, it was closer to 179,000. And failed to mention that by closing Bagram airbase we removed the air power that we had trained the Afghans to expect. They did have an air force, but we also removed the contractor support that allowed them to continue flying.  He spoke of the government collapse and the president fleeing, amid the corruption and malfeasance “and turning the country over to the Taliban. The building he spoke from was once burnt by the British as President Madison fled. To my knowledge there has been no turnover of government and the Taliban are occupying the capital. When the French government collapsed, and de Gaulle fled to England did that mean everyone must accept the Nazis as the legitimate government of France. As the France resistance rose so we see a resistance movement in Panjshir under the old Northern Alliance. Are there plans to support them? We had been told there where between 10 -15000 Americans in Afghanistan. The President said they had identified early 5000 who wished to stay but now wanted out. He said that more then 5500 out, that leaves, using the lower number almost 5000 left behind. But he went on to say that only about 100 – 200 remain behind. Do the math Joe. He then goes on to say Blinken is continuing diplomatic efforts and cited a UN Security Council resolution that the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on their promises, com’on man are you that stupid, or worse do you think we are.  He claimed the Aug 31 date was not an arbitrary deadline and that he original date Trump gave was May 1^st. he changed it, therefore it was arbitrary and fungible. Biden then proceeded to outright lie. He said the agreement “It included no requirement that Taliban work out a cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government.” It did. The US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has said on more than one occasion the agreement had several escape clauses. But Biden declared that because of the agreement he had no choice, it was either leave or send in more troops. Like President Obama, who said of the Iran Deal it was that deal or war, Biden put everything out as black or white.

Biden said in the beginning of the speech that he took full responsibility then proceeded to blame everyone else. He blamed US citizens for not getting out even through they had been warned as early as March. Bagram Air Base would have been the logical point to remove these citizens but was closed 1 July. The administration continued to declare that the Taliban would not be in charge until the end of the year. He has said in the past that he followed the military commander’s recommendation on leaving to include ending the airlift, “The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisers.” I find it hard to believe that any decision was unanimous, as Gen Patton once said, “If everyone is thinking the same someone is not thinking.” In the end he asked the same thing he has asked in the past, what was America vital national interest in Afghanistan? The answer will likely become clear in the future. The terrorist problem will not go away because we want it to. We need to stop our current habit of only looking out 5 seconds into the future and saying I don’t see anything.