Joe Biden delivered his first speech since the end of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on Thursday, and couldn’t seem to make his mind up on what narrative it was he wants us to believe.
He began by spinning his disastrous withdrawal, which included his own Saigon moment, tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. equipment seized by the Taliban, and over an estimated 10,000 Americans stranded in the country at one point, as an “extraordinary success.” If this is what success looks like to Biden, do we even want to imagine what failure looks like?
Biden admitted that hundreds of Americans remain in Afghanistan now, quoting a figure of 100-200 Americans, as we somehow don’t know the exact number, making it impossible to know when everyone is safe.
Biden repeated the administration’s latest nonsensical talking point that part of the reason there are still Americans in Afghanistan are because some wanted to stay there, as if there are people who voluntarily want to live under Taliban oppression.
Biden then addressed the chaos in Afghanistan during his “extraordinary success,” which he dismissed as merely inevitable. While it may be true that a Taliban takeover following a U.S. withdrawal was in fact inevitable, evacuating troops before American citizens there was not, nor was leaving weapons in Taliban hands.
So to recap, Biden has touted the withdrawal as a success, and also admitted that it was chaotic. He then decided to scramble his talking points even further, and blame the “chaotic” portion of the “chaotic and/or extraordinary successful” endeavor on the Trump administration, as if Biden hasn’t undone countless other Trump-era policies. As Trump himself pointed out, “He [Biden] ran out of Afghanistan instead of following the plan our Administration left for him—a plan that protected our people and our property, and ensured the Taliban would never dream of taking our Embassy or providing a base for new attacks against America.”
So we “learned” from Biden that the withdrawal was a success of the Biden administration – but also a total disaster to be blamed on the Trump administration. And this isn’t even close to being the most nonsensical thing he’s argued.
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
