It Was Not a Blunder

Passengers board a U.S. Air Force C-17 as part of the evacuation from Afghanistan, at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 24, 2021. Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Forces Europe-Africa via Getty Images

Commentary

The pileup of horrific decisions by the Biden administration in Afghanistan—one catastrophe on top of another—seems to defy explanation.

It’s not enough to say that Joe Biden had no idea what was going on, because the people around him definitely knew, or should have known, what was going on. Nor is it adequate to say we’re dealing with an administration of bunglers in the mode of Jimmy Carter’s administration in the 1970s, because even the Carter team didn’t produce such a rapid succession of obvious and avoidable disasters.

Let’s make a brief inventory of the debacle that this administration has created in Afghanistan, not because of its decision to withdraw per se, but because of the way in which it carried out the withdrawal. First, the Biden administration left tens of thousands of Americans behind in Afghanistan. Later, Biden would claim credit for the greatest evacuation in U.S. history, but the evacuation was only necessary because he himself got America out before giving safe passage to his fellow countrymen.

Moreover, the Biden administration left behind many Americans to face a Taliban bent on revenge and retribution. The Sacramento Bee reports that 24 area students are still stranded in Kabul with no definite prospect of being rescued or returned. Other Americans are conveying desperate messages about being in hiding and facing the risk of trial, torture, and death.

Second, the Biden administration abandoned valued Afghan allies who actively helped America during its long tenure in that country. An Afghan interpreter who saved Biden’s own life several years ago—when Biden and others were trapped in a snowstorm—by braving potential attack and the elements has somehow been left behind. His pleas to the Biden administration to get him out have been unavailing.

True, the Biden administration boasts of having airlifted over 100,000 Afghans, the State Department now admits it doesn’t know who many of those people are. They’re supposed to be vetted when they land in the Middle East, Europe, and America, but no systematic process appears to be in place to confirm that these are people who helped America, or even to distinguish between friend and foe. Quite possibly, the Biden administration is importing terrorists along with allies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a majority of interpreters who helped America were left behind in Afghanistan. Consequently, the people the Biden administration calls translators and interpreters are quite likely neither. The fate awaiting actual interpreters left behind can be discerned by what happened to a harmless folk singer Fawad Andarabi. A group of Taliban came to his house, had tea with him, and then before leaving shot him in the head.

Third, according to MIT Technology Review, the Biden administration left behind Afghan government biometric databases that provide detailed profiles of hundreds of thousands of Afghan families who were in any way connected to the United States. These databases have eyescans and personal data but also genealogies and family data, allowing the Taliban to carry out a widespread campaign of retribution even against Afghans who helped sustain America’s presence there in any way. All of this is on top of the contact list of Americans and friendly Afghans—a potential hit list, with addresses and phone numbers included—that the Biden administration provided to the Taliban in the final days of the withdrawal.

Fourth, the Biden administration rejected the Taliban’s offer for the United States to control Kabul during the evacuation. The United States insisted it merely wanted control of the airport, not the periphery or the roads leading to the airport. Consequently, the United States facilitated a massive suicide attack that killed around 200 people, including 13 U.S. servicemen. Incredibly, the United States knew about the imminent attack but didn’t close the airport gates to prevent it from causing the extent of damage that it did.

Fifth, the Biden administration left behind a treasure trove of weaponry that could easily have been airlifted or destroyed. This stash includes not only a vast supply of rifles, military goggles, and so on, but also armored vehicles, mine-resistant trucks, Humvees, C-130 transport planes, helicopters, and Embraer aircraft. Basically, we gave the Taliban an air force and a stockpile of weaponry that can now be sold to al-Qaeda, ISIS, or on the international arms market. Essentially, the Biden administration has become a state sponsor of global terror.

Finally, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan seems to be preparing to pay ransoms to the Taliban to secure the release of trapped Americans and friendly Afghans. Since America has a longstanding policy of not negotiating with terrorists, the ransoms are labeled “economic and development aid.” But who provides aid of any sort to a deadly enemy, aid that can be used to sustain terrorist operations all over the world?

All these destructive actions were preventable, every single one of them. Is it possible they were entirely the result of incompetence? Is the White House staff, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of all the intelligence agencies, all complete idiots? I find this hard to believe. Rather, I suspect that at least some of these actions were deliberate, intended to produce the consequences they did.

But why would the Biden administration do harm to the very country it’s supposed to represent? The answer is that the Biden team is largely made up of Obama loyalists, and as I’ve argued in two books and my film “2016: Obama’s America,” Obama built his presidency around an anti-colonial ideology that views America and the West as a destructive force in the world. Obama’s objective, quite successfully pursued over eight years, was to diminish America’s power and influence around the world. Obama continually looked for ways to penalize American intervention abroad, to teach America a lasting lesson that such adventures should never be pursued, or even contemplated, in the future.

Not only do Obama loyalists and cronies populate the Biden administration at the highest level, but Obama himself remains in D.C. and some have joked about this being “Obama’s third term.” Obama himself has joked about it. So is it far-fetched to believe that Obama’s anti-colonial and anti-American ideology continues to permeate the Biden administration? I don’t think so. And if I’m right, the startling implication is that America has two adversaries to contend with in Afghanistan, a Taliban bent on weakening and humiliating America, and a Biden administration that wants pretty much the same thing.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.