Biden’s Deadly Afghanistan Gamble

By David Harsanyi

Thursday, August 26, 2021

 

It is almost surely the case that President Joe Biden’s Afghan withdrawal was propelled by political considerations rather than any pressing moral or foreign-policy imperative. Biden, who for 20 years has taken whatever the most popular position happened to be on Afghanistan (so, all of them), believed he could get a quick, much-needed political victory.

 

You can still witness the cynical polling-centric takes from Biden defenders like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who only this morning, a few hours before American troops were being murdered by suicide bombers at the Kabul airport, was telling his co-host Mika Brzezinski, “As you look at those numbers and you look at the numbers right now, post-Afghan chaos, look at the numbers beforehand, 75 percent of Americans supporting it.” Later in the show, Jonathan Lemire, White House correspondent for the Associated Press, noted that “eventually, maybe not right away, eventually Americans will even give him credit for being the U.S. president that was able to finally end the war, something his predecessors were not able to do.”

 

As a policy matter, of course, Biden’s botching the evacuation is a separate issue from whether the United States should be withdrawing from the country, despite continual efforts to conflate the two. And past mistakes regarding Afghanistan do not absolve the president of his administration’s astonishing incompetence. Of course, Biden was also a proponent of both the war and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. It’s not as if he had no hand in creating the situation he is now bungling in deadly fashion.

 

By needlessly abandoning Bagram in June, by hamstringing the U.S. military and locking them in an airport, by failing to account for Americans and partners in-country before evacuating secure positions, by relying on the Taliban’s cooperation and allowing the group to dictate terms and timelines of withdrawal and security, the administration has created a humanitarian crisis. Now, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of U.S. citizens may be stranded in Afghanistan, in danger not only from the Taliban but also from ISIS and possibly al-Qaeda.

 

As far as polling goes, perhaps Scarborough and Lemire will be proven right. But it is almost surely true that support for getting out of Afghanistan is far less intense among voters than support for not seeing Americans being blown up by ISIS suicide bombers or being taken hostage by Islamists. Most voters, no doubt, favor leaving the region because they do not want to see Americans put in harm’s way. And yet that’s exactly what Biden has done through his staggering ineptitude. Today has been the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan in over a decade.

 

The American public’s positions on foreign policy can dramatically and quickly change. Pundits might feel compelled, as a matter of professional integrity, to remain philosophically consistent or to explain a change of heart (though fewer and fewer do.) Voters don’t. According to a Gallup poll, for example, the number of Americans who favored the war in Iraq — which Biden also enthusiastically supported — reached 60 percent leading up to the conflict. By 2003, when things were going well, polls were regularly above 70 percent in support. By the end of 2004, after troops were bogged down in nation-building and terrorist-hunting efforts, those numbers began cratering. Many of the people who supported going to war did 180s.

 

Today, a YouGov America poll, taken before the suicide bombings, finds that 68 percent of Americans say the Afghanistan evacuation was handled badly — including over 55 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of independents, and 84 percent of Republicans. Only 16 percent say it was handled well. I can’t remember any event in recent political history that Americans thought was more poorly managed. How many Americans wanted to end the war on this note?

 

Indeed, unlike the way they view most domestic issues, voters aren’t particularly ideological about foreign affairs. I don’t think I’ve ever met a self-described “neoconservative” or “isolationist” who didn’t work at a think tank or wasn’t involved in politics or journalism in some way. Americans want competence from their military, the biggest and most powerful in the world. They’re getting the exact opposite from the president, his administration, and our military leaders. It is quite likely that Biden has made a serious miscalculation, not only for the thousands of people in danger on the ground, but for his political fortunes.