President Joe Biden spoke again about Afghanistan to the press and the nation on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 22. He reported that 28,000 individuals have been airlifted from Kabul since Aug. 14 by U.S. and NATO allies, i.e., during the week that the Taliban have been in apparent control in Afghanistan. This is a large number in a short time, but the President added that “We have a long way to go.” He acknowledged the government is discussing extending the Aug. 31 deadline for the last U.S. military forces to leave Afghanistan, but stressed he hoped not to have to do so.
U.S. forces at Kabul airport are prioritizing American citizens, Biden said; and then “Afghan allies, women, and journalists.” Interestingly to the journalists, he said they were implementing “plans to move Americans to places of safety, and then to the [Kabul] Airport.” The phrase was seized on like fresh meat in the short questioning Biden allowed to journalists after his remarks; it was interpreted to mean U.S. troops were deploying out beyond the airport, but Biden would give no elaboration.
The President’s only remarks on the Afghan internal situation were that “ISIS-K (the Afghanistan version) is a sworn enemy of the Taliban; they are fighting one another"; and that the Taliban, in his view, is not an army but “a ragtag force” whose leaders don’t necessarily have much control over street- and village-level fighters, who belong to different factions.
After what could have been taken as an overall positive picture of developments in Afghanistan, Biden could not resist motivating thus, his decision to withdraw forces on a hard deadline: “Moscow and Beijing would love nothing better than for us to be bogged down in Afghanistan.”
Echoing the furious British attacks on Biden for withdrawing U.S. troops, Ryan Crocker, a long-time, big reputation State Department diplomat bitterly attacked the President on “Face the Nation” Aug. 22 along with Trump’s UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. George W. Bush used to call Crocker “his Lawrence of Arabia” when he was Iraq ambassador and a partner of David Petraeus during the “surge.” He’s a regime-change warrior, with the distinction of having been ambassador both to Iraq and to Afghanistan at the peak of the Bush and Obama “troop surges” in each. Crocker said both Trump and Biden have caused “a complete disaster” in Afghanistan which “has created a global crisis” and “emboldened Islamic radicalism” especially in Pakistan. He opined that China and Russia are “high-fiving” over this, but will regret it soon; etc.
