The View from Right Field

Biden Said No One Advised Him to Keep Troops in Afghanistan. Top Generals Say They Did.

Joe Biden said, back in August, that, as far as he could recall, his military advisers did not recommend to him that we should keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.  Yesterday, top generals, including Gen. Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, testified before Congress that they recommended that exact thing to President Biden.¹ 

Obviously, I could see Donald Trump doing something like this.  That is one of the reasons he needed to lose last November.  But Joe Biden wasn’t supposed to do this kind of thing.  He was supposed to be better than former President Trump. 

Who’s Worse on Foreign Policy: Biden or Trump?

Donald Trump did a bad job on foreign policy.  I talked about that a lot, though, eventually, I got tired of saying it over and over, so I mostly stopped.¹  Even though I felt that way about former President Trump, I did not vote for Joe Biden because, in Illinois, I did not need to.  President Biden was going to win Illinois.  And I was very concerned about President Biden’s domestic policy – or, rather, the domestic policy of his supporters.  Still, when President Biden won, I was hopeful American foreign policy would be better than it had been under former President Trump.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been.

On February 19, President Biden told the Munich Security Conference that “America is back.”  That was the hope: President Biden would restore, or at least start to restore, America’s credibility and reliability around the world.  But the way we left Afghanistan was a disaster.  Obviously, President Biden was handed a terrible mess in Afghanistan.  President Trump signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban on February 29, 2020, under which we were to leave on May 1, 2021.² 

After Afghanistan: What Next for American Foreign Policy?

After the collapse in Afghanistan, the questions for many are: Why did it happen so quickly¹ and why we weren’t prepared.  Which are good questions.  But I have a different question: What’s next for American foreign policy?  In that regard, I was surprised by the very negative reaction from Europe to our quick and unilateral pullout from Afghanistan.  One might have expected concern from Asia, but the comments from Europe were very interesting.  Here are excerpts from an article Wednesday’s Financial Times (behind the FT paywall):

“European allies had hoped Joe Biden’s election to the US presidency would bolster Nato’s relevance after Donald Trump’s acrimonious years.  Washington’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan is prompting a rethink.

The Afghan People Deserve an Apology for What Joe Biden Said Yesterday

At some point in the future, I hope we have a president decent enough and honorable enough to apologize to the Afghan people and the Afghan armed forces, for comments made by Joe Biden yesterday.¹  In defending his decision to leave Afghanistan and the way we are doing it, President Biden said:

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. …

We gave them every tool they could need. …  

We gave them every chance to determine their own future.  What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.”

“An Indelible Stain on His Presidency”

That was is what Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was ambassador to Afghanistan under Barack Obama,¹ said of Joe Biden’s policy in Afghanistan a week ago.  As I said on Saturday, Donald Trump deserves much of the blame for how our involvement in Afghanistan ended.

However, President Biden is the one who has been in office for the last seven months.  He is the one who could have changed or modified the policy former President Trump set (he did it in many other areas).  He is the one who could have prepared better for what actually happened, as opposed to what he hoped would happen.  Ultimately, he wanted to leave Afghanistan, and he made the final decision for us to leave as we did.  As Ambassador Crocker said, that decision and what has happened is, and will be, “an indelible stain on his presidency.”
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¹ As well as ambassador to many other countries under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Biden Has Defined Success in His Afghan Exit: Nobody Pulled Off an Embassy Roof By Helicopter

When Joe Biden was asked last week if there was any similarity between Kabul today and Saigon in 1975, he said no:

“None whatsoever.  Zero.  What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our Embassy.  Six if I’m not mistaken.  The Taliban is not the South, the North Vietnamese army.  They’re not – they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.  There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy [in Afghanistan].”

He also defended the withdrawal by asking:

Hunter Biden’s Paintings Tell Us How to Handle Disclosure of Contribution

Joe and Hunter Biden may have solved the problem of how we handle disclosure of contributions to political causes.  For Hunter Biden’s paintings, the Bidens are considering a plan whereby the paintings will be sold by a third-party art gallery.  The art gallery won’t tell Hunter or President Biden – or the public – who buys the paintings or even who bids on them.  Therefore, there is no possibility of corruption or improper influence.

Which seems like the solution to contributions to political causes, too.  California wanted to know the names of contributors to charities, including ones that take political positions, so it could ensure nothing untoward happened.  But the U.S. Supreme Court said no because of concerns about confidentiality and retaliation.  The Bidens may have given us the solution.

The “Why Should Anybody Trust Us” Version of Leaving Afghanistan

As we leave Afghanistan, the question (or at least one of the questions) is what about the people who we are leaving behind.  Maine Senator Angus King (I, but really D), among others, is worried we aren’t going to be getting our Afghan translators and interpreters out with us.¹  These people helped us.  They worked with us.  They took a big risk in doing so, because the Taliban, who are not nice people, will come after them if they can.  They already have in some cases.  When we leave, they’ll do it more.

We promised these people we would get them to the United States, but guess what, it’s not going to happen.  Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told CNN:

“We’re determined to make good on our obligation to those who helped us, who put their lives on the line, put their families’ lives on the line working with our military, working with our diplomats”

Liz Cheney, Donald Trump, 2020, and the Republican Party

Liz Cheney was ousted as head of the House Republican Conference last week, mostly (entirely-?) because she wouldn’t sign up for former President Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.  The decision to remove her was taken by a voice vote.  Which was either because almost everybody agreed or because, if one wants to be cynical (which I often find is the best way to look at things, especially politics), people didn’t want to go on the record. 

In any case, here are a few comments on Donald Trump, the 2020 election, and the future of the Republican Party:

Bringing Us Together: We Have to Do It Ourselves

In his Inaugural Address, Joe Biden talked about how he wanted to bring us together:

“My whole soul is in this.  Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. …

And so today at this time in this place, let's start afresh, all of us.  Let's begin to listen to one another again, hear one another, see one another.  Show respect to one another.”

I hope he can do it.  He seems like a nice guy (I talked about this before, so I won’t repeat myself).  What I would say, though, is while I hope President Biden can help to bring us together, it’s not something he can do himself.  It’s something we have to do ourselves.