**** this administration and all who voted for it.
President Joe Biden’s push to advance a multitrillion-dollar spending plan focused on a range of Democratic Party priorities has marred his handling of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, a former official said.
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President Joe Biden’s push to advance a multitrillion-dollar spending plan focused on a range of Democratic Party priorities has marred his handling of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, a former official said.
“This Afghanistan withdrawal has exposed the fundamental flaw in the Biden administration. If it doesn’t involve spending American taxpayer money on a new element of the progressive scheme, they don’t care,” said Michael McKenna, a veteran of former President Donald Trump's White House and the George H. W. Bush administration. “They’re not going to let it distract from their message. And paying attention to the border, and paying attention to Afghanistan, and paying attention to China, distracts from that fundamental mission.”
“You’re the president, you got elected, you can do that,” McKenna continued. “But every once in a while, it means you’re going to get an American shot overseas. Benghazi was a symptom of that.”
The Sept. 11, 2012, Libya attacks that killed Chris Stevens and three other Americans came after warnings from U.S. security officials the situation was fragile and could quickly degrade. Local Islamist militia leaders said later they also warned U.S. diplomats of growing threats against Americans. A congressional investigation later revealed how top Obama administration officials gave false accounts of the terrorist attack.
“The reason we didn’t go to Benghazi with the troops we had there is that we didn’t feel like it,” said McKenna, Trump’s former deputy legislative affairs director. “Not because we couldn’t, and not because we didn’t have time. It’s because we didn’t want to."
“And the reason why the withdrawal in Afghanistan hasn’t been orderly and relatively peaceful is that the Biden guys don’t care,” he continued. “They made no effort to make it that way.”
Throughout the crisis, Biden’s top aides have continued to push the president’s domestic agenda.
“The No. 1 priority for our Cabinet overall, from our perspective here, is to build support throughout the [August] recess process for the legislative agenda,” White House senior adviser Neera Tanden said in an interview with the
Los Angeles Times last week. Tanden “is dispatching Cabinet members to key states, monitoring lawmakers’ town halls and arranging hundreds of local TV interviews with administration officials,” according to the report.
This full-court press was visible in Biden’s Afghanistan remarks on Tuesday, which began with updates on the White House’s Build Back Better agenda. Almost half of the 12-minute address was devoted to Democrats’ domestic priorities.
Biden has also been working the phones.
Asked about the president’s outreach to members of Congress, specifically on Afghanistan, White House press secretary
Jen Psaki told reporters most of these conversations have focused on the legislation his party is hoping to push through Congress.
“I don’t have an assessment for you of how many of those have included questions from them about Afghanistan,” Psaki said.
Biden is suffering his lowest approval ratings since taking office in January, but the White House may be correct to think public outrage over Afghanistan will wane.
According to a
Morning Consult/ Politico poll published on Wednesday and conducted between Aug. 21-24, 47% of Americans said they support withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, even if the Taliban assume control — up 9 percentage points since last week. Forty-five percent of Americans said they backed the withdrawal even if it opens opportunities for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to establish operations inside the country, an increase of 10 percentage points from one week prior. The boost was most pronounced among Democrats.
The survey sampled some 2,000 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Biden has said his goal is to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from Kabul by the end of the month, despite pressure from Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But the evacuation mission hinges on cooperation from the Taliban.
Taliban leaders have
warned of “consequences” if the United States prolongs its withdrawal past Aug. 31. Islamic State militants pose a separate threat to Kabul airport, according to reports.
The circumstances have
worsened for Afghan forces and others who aided the U.S. military mission in the country already. On Saturday, a 2-year-old girl was
crushed to death while her family attempted to reach the airport. Her mother was an Afghan interpreter for an American company.
Biden has argued his administration’s hands were tied by a deal to exit the country that he wouldn’t have signed, but the president decided to move ahead with the plan, albeit with an extended deadline.
“If they have a governing doctrine, it is that Americans only care about foreign policy when s*** is going badly,” one analyst said. He summarized the principle as, “Don’t do anything that signals foreign policy is a priority unless it’s a sure winner.”
“Like withdrawing from Afghanistan,” this person said. “They still think this is a political winner for him.”
Biden has argued his hands were tied, saying the exit was marred by a flawed deal he wouldn’t have signed.
That charge has prompted criticism.
“Biden seems to undo everything that Trump has done except Afghanistan,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calling the policy an “abysmal failure.”
The U.S. has evacuated roughly 82,300 people since Aug. 14, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. But thousands of more Afghan interpreters and military aides still hope to leave.
Bowman, who is on the advisory board of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit organization to help Afghans eligible for special visas reach the U.S., said the group had pressed government officials, “including the Biden administration,” on the issue for more than a year.
“It was not a priority. It was a priority for us, but it wasn’t a priority for the administration,” he said. “And we saw the handwriting on the wall.”
Bowman continued: “We were begging ... that we have to get them out now while we can, while the troop withdrawals are happening; otherwise, they’re sitting ducks. How, if we knew that, they didn’t know that.”
Of the security situation, he warned, “It’s open season now for ISIS, al Qaeda.”
The analyst likewise pointed to the growing risk.
“It’s Benghazi on steroids,” this person said.