By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, August 19, 2021
After making no public appearances for four days — during
a major foreign crisis — President Biden read a 20-minute speech off a
teleprompter on Monday afternoon and took no questions. He immediately returned
to Camp David. He had no events on his schedule Tuesday. On Wednesday, he gave
another 20-minute speech about vaccine boosters off a teleprompter from Camp
David, and again took no questions. Also on Wednesday, the president sat for an
on-camera interview with George Stephanopoulos that did not go well. According
to the White House public records, Biden has had two phone conversations with
foreign leaders in the past ten days — one with Boris Johnson and one with Angela Merkel.
As of this writing, Biden has no public events on his
schedule for today. He is scheduled to receive the president’s daily briefing
from the intelligence community and meet with his national-security team.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, he
is scheduled to return to his house in Delaware today.
This is a highly unusual schedule for a president during
a foreign-policy crisis. Yes, a president can perform his job anywhere, whether
it’s Camp David or his own private residence. But Biden is barely appearing in
public, not saying much of anything when he does, not answering any questions
outside of his lone scheduled interview, and sounding angry when he did face
questions from Stephanopoulos.
Biden began the interview by insisting that the
intelligence community had given him unclear and excessively optimistic answers
about the state of the Afghan military and government:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Back in July, you
said a Taliban takeover was highly unlikely. Was the intelligence wrong, or did
you downplay it?
BIDEN: I think — there was no
consensus. If you go back and look at the intelligence reports, they said that
it’s more likely to be sometime by the end of the year.
The first problem is that there is no way to square what
Biden said yesterday with his July 8 declaration that the intelligence community
had not stated that the Afghan government would likely collapse:
Q: Mr. President, thank you very
much. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government
will likely collapse.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.
Q: Is it — can you please clarify
what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.
They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.
Then during the Stephanopoulos interview, Biden insisted
that he himself had predicted that the Afghan government would collapse by the
end of the year:
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know that
Senator McConnell, others say this was not only predictable, it was predicted,
including by him, based on intelligence briefings he was getting.
BIDEN: What — what did he say was
predicted?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator McConnell
said it was predictable that the Taliban was gonna take over.
BIDEN: Well, by the end of the
year, I said that’s that was — that was a real possibility. But no one said it
was gonna take over then when it was bein’ asked.
The president either does not remember what he said on
July 8, or he is simply trying to gaslight everyone into believing that he did
warn of the Afghan government’s collapsing.
This morning, Douglas London, a former CIA
counterterrorism chief and former member of Biden’s counterterrorism working
group, writes that the president is lying: “Ultimately, it was
assessed, Afghan forces might capitulate within days under the
circumstances we witnessed, in projections highlighted to Trump officials and
future Biden officials alike.”
Biden not only dodged questions — we’re used to
politicians doing that — he offered a barely coherent word salad in some
responses:
STEPHANOPOULOS: So when you look at
what’s happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning,
execution or judgment?
BIDEN: Look, I don’t think it was a
fa– look, it was a simple choice, George. When the– when the Taliban — let me
back — put it another way. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the
leader of that government get in a plane and taking off and going to another
country, when you saw the significant collapse of the ta– of the– Afghan troops
we had trained — up to 300,000 of them just leaving their equipment and taking
off, that was — you know, I’m not– this — that — that’s what happened. That’s
simply what happened.
Stephanopolous continued, “We’ve all seen the pictures.
We’ve seen those hundreds of people packed in a C-17. We’ve seen Afghans
falling-”
“That was four days ago, five days ago!” Biden
interjected. It was two days ago, but that’s not really what
is important; what is spectacularly odd is that Biden is reacting as if he
thinks Stephanopolous was bringing up irrelevant ancient history.
Why was Biden indignant that Stephanopolous was asking
about those horrifying sights?
Perhaps most unsettling was President Biden’s insistence
that nothing could have been done any differently, and that none of the horrors
we are witnessing could have been prevented.
“So, you don’t think this could have been handled — this
exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?” Stephanopoulos
asked Biden.
“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way
that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow,
there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that
happens. I don’t know how that happened,” Biden replied.
Biden is now insisting that the chaos of a Taliban
takeover was inevitable, even though he stood before the country on July 8 and specifically
assured the country that a Taliban takeover was not inevitable:
Q: Is a Taliban takeover of
Afghanistan now inevitable?
THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.
Q: Why?
THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the
Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the
world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not
inevitable.
Biden also said that day that, “I trust the capacity of
the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- —
more competent in terms of conducting war” and “the likelihood there’s going to
be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly
unlikely.”
Elsewhere in the Stephanopoulos interview, Biden insisted
that, contrary to published reports, his military advisers had not recommended
keeping 2,500 troops in the country:
STEPHANOPOULOS: But your top
military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you
to keep about 2,500 troops.
BIDEN: No, they didn’t. It was
split. Tha– that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They didn’t tell
you that they wanted troops to stay?
BIDEN: No. Not at — not in terms of
whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue
against that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told —
your military advisors did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops.
It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can
continue to do that”?
BIDEN: No. No one said that to me
that I can recall.
There are notes of these meetings that can be
declassified. We can see if, as the Wall Street Journal and
other publications reported, “The president’s top generals, including Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a
force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace
agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense
Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the
region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.”
If they did not, Biden is telling the truth and there’s been an insane effort
by Pentagon brass leaking that they’re warning the president of about certain
dangers, and then not doing so in the meetings. (There is a third possibility,
of course: Biden genuinely does not remember what was said and recommended to
him in a meeting several months ago.)
Jon Ralston, no knee-jerk critic of Biden, was appalled. “This is so bad. No mistakes? No
responsibility? No contrition? My God.”
The obvious answer to why Biden rarely appears on camera
or takes questions is because every time he does it, he inflicts more damage
upon himself and his agenda. The president whose empathy is endlessly touted
now sounds cold and dismissive when asked about Afghans’ desperately crowding
into American planes or falling to their deaths. All of the available evidence
indicates that the president ignored the warnings of his foreign-policy team,
withdrew the armed forces before evacuating the civilians, gave up Bagram Air
Base, and now is in a large-scale foreign crisis that is mostly the result of
his own choices. There is no good defense to be made, so when cornered, the
president invoked his late son’s military service in the Stephanopoulos
interview:
STEPHANOPOULOS: I– I think a lot
of– a lot of Americans, and a l– even a lot of veterans who served in
Afghanistan agree with you on the big, strategic picture. They believe we had
to get out. But I wonder how you respond to an Army Special Forces officer,
Javier McKay (PH). He did seven tours. He was shot twice. He agrees with you.
He says, “We have to cut our losses in Afghanistan.” But he adds, “I just wish
we could’ve left with honor.”
BIDEN: Look, that’s like askin’ my
deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy
captain and then major– I mean, as an Army major. And, you know, I’m sure h– he
had regrets comin’ out of Afganista– I mean, out of Iraq.
He had regrets to what’s– how– how
it’s going. But the idea– what’s the alternative? The alternative is why are we
staying in Afghanistan?
The president turns 79 in November. He last
released a summary of his health condition in December 2019. In May,
a White House spokesman said Biden had not had a medical checkup or taken a physical this year, but
that he would by the end of the year. There have been no updates on the
president’s health since.
Back
on July 26, John Ellis astutely analyzed how it was acceptable to
acknowledge Biden’s age and mental condition if you used certain euphemisms:
Somewhere along the way of the last
few years, Biden transitioned from “young old” to “old.” Veteran reporters
describe the transition in code. “He’s lost a step or two.” Or: “he’s lost
something off his fastball.”
You’re not supposed to talk about
it. If you do, and you’re a Democrat, you’re scolded for aiding and abetting
the enemy. If you do, and you’re a Republican or (God forbid) a MAGA voter,
you’re a horrible hate-mongerer, trying to overturn the results of a free and
fair election (and you probably watch Fox News to boot).
The problem is that it’s there for
all to see. Pretending not to see it is untenable.
Something is wrong with President Biden, and we are all
being asked to pretend we don’t notice.
ADDENDUM: Mario Loyola points to recent history in Iraq as a
vision of what our counterterrorism mission will become in Afghanistan with no
military presence on the ground:
Most of us didn’t realize at the
time that when Obama pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq, he also pulled out all our
“ISR”: Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance. So when ISIS began its
dramatic advance across the Middle East, all we had going was satellite
intelligence — not much help against fighters who dress like everyone else and
roll around in Toyotas.
In a region of the world teeming
with U.S. military and intelligence assets, Iraq had become a black hole: No
AC-130s, no helicopters, no drones, no special forces, no regular soldiers
within hundreds of miles. That’s what the “over-the-horizon” strategy looked
like in Iraq. Those assets all need local operating bases, and we had none.
Satellites and supersonic aircraft were of no help against ISIS.
We don’t even have an embassy in Afghanistan anymore.
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