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Joe Biden was the only hero of Afghanistan

I have nothing new to say about this. I just want to endorse it 100%.

Read the accompanying op-ed from the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. We knew for years and years that we were accomplishing nothing in Afghanistan, but we lied about it over and over. And yet it's the guy who finally had the guts to admit it that gets all the brickbats.

69 thoughts on “Joe Biden was the only hero of Afghanistan

    1. Joseph Harbin

      I don't know if a fair assessment of Carter will be ever be the consensus view. So much of what people think today comes out of decades-long partisan hagiography of Reagan, whose elevation to sainthood comes with the necessary demotion of Carter to the lowest ranks of modern-day presidents.

      No doubt Carter had some flaws. All presidents do. But the truth is, he had some strengths and accomplishments we are better not to forget.

      Perhaps in the future the comparisons will judge Reagan more harshly. His election in 1980 was a turning point for the country, and we have yet to correct-course. We need a new turning point, and soon.

      What begins with Reagan leads directly to Trump:
      1. the accelerated move toward oligopoly control of government
      2. the end of Labor as a major factor
      3. the move toward monopolization of media by right-wing interests
      4. "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"

      And in the long run, perhaps the most damaging move any president has ever made:

      5. removing Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the White House, while turning against science and the need to transition toward a sustainable climate

    2. J. Frank Parnell

      My sad Jimmy Carter story. In the late seventies I traveled to ESU (Enormous State University) for a week to use their cyclotron as part of my thesis research. While there I partnered up with a Bengali friend who was a student from my home university and who was based at ESU for an extended period. He regularly took me to one of the cafeterias where we ate at a table frequented by foreign graduate students. I became friendly with a group of Iranian students also at ESU courtesy of the Shah’s support. They were smart and well spoken, and I suspect the best and brightest of Iran. One day as we were leaving dinner my Bengali friend commented that as a group all of the Iranian students had sworn to assassinate the shah if they ever had opportunity even if it was at the cost of their own life. This occurred about the same time that Jimmy Carter proclaimed that the Shah’s government was an “island of stability” in the Middle East. After the fall of the Shah I was left to wonder how I had come to have better intelligence about the stability of the Iranian government than the President of the United States.

      1. spatrick

        The Shah wanted Iranian students at Western universities to learn what you were learning and much more. The problem was they took in a lot of the radicalism at these schools in the 60s and 70s. As a result, SAVAK had set up shop in the U.S. to monitor them ( and other opponents of the Shah and they obviously resented it. Imagine going to school and being watched constantly, maybe even blackmailed or forced to become an informant. Or have your family threaten back in Iran. Yeah, it was not a good situation.

    3. Kay Eye

      I remember my feeling of profound relief when Biden announced and then brought this failed war to a quick end, hamstrung as he was by the "brilliant" Trump negotiations. That quickly turned to profound shock when the corporate press pounced with its narrative of catastrophe. I knew then that the legacy press would begin their attempt to destroy the remarkably successful Biden presidency, and would never let that narrative go.
      Bush couldn't do it, Obama wouldn't do it, Trump made it worse. Biden got it done. Kevin, feel free to have your say about this every few months. I for one am grateful.

  1. Dr Brando

    To be fair, Trump also said what we were doing there was a mess. He just also worked out a deal without consideration of the Afghan government or the real logistics of getting out, planned it across presidential administrations, and didn't seem to have much of a set plan while obstructing the transition of power.

    1. Solar

      To be fair, Trump says everything is a mess simply because he wasn't involved before regardless of the actual status of things. The reason he didn't care or prepare about any of the other things you mention, is because Trump has never attempted or tried to fix anything.

      1. J. Frank Parnell

        Trump always says anything he is not involved in is a mess. He cares about no one and no thing except Donald Trump. He says the world laughs at us, but the only the only president to be openly laughed at by the UN General Assembly was Donald Trump.

    2. dilbert dogbert

      tDrumpf wanted to invite the Taliban leader to Camp David. There is that photo of Pompeo and the Taliban.
      My SIL spent a year at Bagram working with Afghanis. He found most of them were in the program for the money. When they had enough for a bride price they left. I told him before he was in country that no one over there was his friend.

      1. Salamander

        A slight addition: "tDrumpf wanted to invite the Taliban leader to Camp David over the 9/11 memorial period." Cluelessness and tastelessness at a max, not to mention historical ignorance ... of events he allegedly even lived through.

  2. marknc

    I was having a conversation with a friend and up came Afghanistan. I didn't know he was a FQX News type. He started yacking about the rotten job President Biden did planning the withdrawal and blah, blah,...........I said WAIT, WHAT? President Biden got us out of Afghanistan. Well good for him. Finally, somebody had the balls to do that.

    Now what were you saying?

  3. spatrick

    Because as George Carlin said so we'll: "We like being lied to." People don't want to hear the truth because it hurts. Why didn't Trump bite the bullet and pull out when he had the chance? Because the intelligence and military said it would be like Saigon '75 all over again and he knew that it would destroy any chance of being re-elected. I suppose he could have done so in his second term and convinced his followers it was the right thing to do. Maybe he was the only one who could do so. But, we'll never know. What we do know and we'll appreciate long into the future is U S troops aren't dying in that hellhole for nothing anymore. Afghanistan was not becoming the 51st state. Biden ignored the warnings because it was right thing to do for the country, consequences be damned. And it cost him, just as Vietnam cost Jerry Ford and there wasn't a damn thing either one could do about it other than lay out the bare truth. People don't like the truth. It's unfortunate but sometimes you got to make that sacrifice and Biden did so and he should be honored for it.

    1. xmabx

      I don’t know if it’s that people don’t like the truth. It’s that people don’t like nuance. Biden did something that looked weak and had a small initial blow up but was 1000% the right thing to do when you take a close look at the details. So his opponents can sell a simple narrative that he was weak and it sells because no one cares to know the granular details of why it was the right thing to do. Inversely presidents can over react and cause all kinds of negative externalities but they look strong and the negative impacts usually pay out over years or decades so they look strong. And if any great number of people figure out what happened because of what they did it’s far too late for them to ever pay a cost.

      Similarly Carter was patient and negotiated to end the hostage crisis while his opponents called for him to bomb Tehran. Carters plan worked but not before he looked as weak as a were piece of lettuce and cooked his Presidency.

      1. ScentOfViolets

        Nuance like it was actually Trump who pulled us out of Afghanistan and Biden merely implemented Trump's directive? That kind of nuance?

        1. xmabx

          Yes 100% that kind of nuance. That Biden either had to comply with Trumps agreement to withdraw or face escalating attacks from Taliban is exactly what I’m talking to.

          I spoke to someone at work a few weeks ago who told me it was Bidens fault that Hamas used weapons that the Taliban had captured from the Afghani military. When I said that the weaponry was in the possession of the Afghani which until a few days before the US withdrawal was still operational and was the US military going to spend a few months driving around Afghanistan collecting these weapons and returning them to the US under hostile conditions they just looked at me blankly.

          1. Joseph Harbin

            True, and I think that still understates Biden's contribution to the pullout.

            Trump agreed on a date of May 1. Biden pushed out the date to the end of August. That allowed time for, among other things, passage of the ALLIES Act in June, which provided the legal authorization and funding for evacuations out of Afghanistan. The media blowup was all about the chaos of the early days of withdrawal. But the US stayed through the month and over 17 days airlifted more than 120,000 people (US and Allied citizens, and Afghan allies). That was a success beyond what anyone thought possible. Media never pivoted from their "debacle" slant to the story.

            1. Citizen99

              All these things are true, but there was one thing Biden said that made me do a head slap. When asked how long he thought the Afghan army could hold out against the Taliban, he said something like "one or two months." I immediately imagined being an Afghan soldier hearing this. It meant "You can keep fighting for one or two months and then you will die." To which the logical thought is "Then obviously I should get the hell out right now so I won't die."
              Of all the things Biden did and said, this is the one that was idiotic, because it guaranteed that the Afghan army would fall almost immediately, making it impossible for the U.S. to carry out an orderly withdrawal. So they had to rush it, which led to the initial disaster.
              It's true that after that first day or two, the withdrawal was amazingly effective. And I fully agree with the decision to leave, as well as what a nincompoop Trump was to put Biden in a no-win situation.
              But it was another example of Biden's fatal flaw: his inability at critical times to engage his brain before opening his mouth. Overall, he was a good president, as long as he was able to control this one tendency. Unfortunately, this was not one of those times.

              1. TheMelancholyDonkey

                I immediately imagined being an Afghan soldier hearing this. It meant "You can keep fighting for one or two months and then you will die." To which the logical thought is "Then obviously I should get the hell out right now so I won't die."

                If this didn't make zero difference, it made something indistinguishable from zero difference. The problem wasn't Afghan (and, for god's sake, people, it's "Afghans." The only nationality that gets the "i" at the end is Pakistanis, for linguistic reasons) troops hearing Joe Biden saying that the Afghan government would only last a couple of months. It was watching their own officers cutting deals with the Taliban, embezzling funds that were supposed to support their units, and running away at the first hint of danger. The Afghan army didn't need Biden to tell them that everything was going to collapse. It was perfectly obvious to them alread.

                1. ColBatGuano

                  The soldiers in the Afghan army were all negotiating with the Taliban from the day the withdrawal plan was announced. They knew they wouldn't survive without U.S. military support. There were a few diehards that hoped Biden would change his mind, no doubt encouraged by their U.S. advisors, but the vast majority knew what was going to happen.

  4. spatrick

    Just remember any Paulites out there it was Democrats who ended these wars and brought troops home (Obama and Biden) When Trump sends U S. forces to bomb Mexico or invade Denmark, then you can antiwar he is if you're not making excuses for him ala Glen Greenwald

  5. akapneogy

    What really concerns me is that we are rapidly becoming inhabitants of Earth 2 built on a foundation of lies and resentment. The consequences can't be good.

  6. KawSunflower

    And Biden wasn't the depraved individual who had to be blocked by his staff from inviting the Taliban "negotiators" to Camp David to celebrate the unfinished deal.

  7. Lon Becker

    I think Biden deserves credit for getting us out. But I don't remember being lied to. It seems that for well over a decade it was clear that we were treading water in Afghanistan and the problem was that when we pulled out the Taliban would return. And that is what happened.

    The issue was whether it was worth staying to keep the Taliban out of power. And given what it meant to the women in Kabul, for example, this was not an easy question.

    But it is infuriating, and the point that I most wish Harris had ripped Trump apart in the debate, that Trump wants to scapegoat career military officers for the difficult position Trump put them in by reaching an agreement with the Taliban that gave them everything and did nothing for getting our soldiers out. It says everything about Trump that a man who doesn't understand the concept of sacrifice wants to scapegoat people who have devoted their lives to their country, and most of the people in the country who scream about their own patriotism voted for this jackass.

    1. spatrick

      Every mistake the U.S made in Vietnam were repeated in Afghanistan almost to the letter. And people felt like we were being lied to back then

    2. TheMelancholyDonkey

      I got lied to. It was perfectly obvious at the time that the various administrations telling us that progress was being made, so I never believed the lies, but they were definitely lies.

  8. rick_jones

    And yet it's the guy who finally had the guts to admit it that gets all the brickbats.

    Kevin, wasn’t one of your defenses of Biden at the time was he was simply finishing what Trump started?

    1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

      Correct. Trump negotiated the deal with the Taliban, and set a pull-out date for the next Presidential term, figuring that if the next prez was somebody else then they would take the blame for the inevitable Taliban takeover.

      Biden carried out that deal, and did indeed take the blame.

        1. TheMelancholyDonkey

          No. Trump continued to pretend that the results of his actions would be positive. Just like every other subject, Trump's plan was brilliant and no downside whatsoever. If it went wrong, it was only because other people implemented the plans incorrectly.

          Biden was the first who wanted to pull out and admitted that it constituted a defeat.

  9. cephalopod

    Afghanistan was never going to go well. It was obvious before we even went in. The Afghan people deserve a modern democratic state, but you can't just build one from nothing in a couple of decades. It would have required at least forty years of actual heavy-handed colonialism, which was never going to happen.

    That is just the reality of human institutions. It takes a long time to develop functional, stable Democratic governance. It takes decades to root out corruption or build a competent civil service. That is true whether a country does it all on its own or it has a system forcefully imported. You can create the facade of a functional state for a while, but people don't believe in its permanence until it has been around for a long time.

    1. jdubs

      There's literally no reason to think 4 decades of a more heavy-handed approach is a recipe for success.

      This sounds an awful lot like the approach that failed spectacularly. More time + more deeply involved = certain success! Just wait!

  10. JohnH

    And the smear on Biden persisted to color the American election, with the full endorsement from not just Fox, but the NY Times and the rest.. Although not a major issue for many voters, it did go into the image of Biden as fumbling, old, and incompetent.

    And the smear was multiple in nature. He let down heroic fighters? No, his only mistake, which didn't last long, was underestimating how feckless they were, giving up the fight to save their skins as fast as they could. It was chaos all the down? No, after that it went exceptionally well, beyond any precedent such as Saigon. He should have planned to fly out all who supported our side? No, for that would be half the country, which couldn't be shipped and resettled here even if Biden's opponents didn't despise waves of immigrants.

    He should have put this off? No, for how long could he do so? Trump wanted to end our role because he wants nothing to do with the world, but he couldn't carry it out. Biden had the courage to plan it and to carry it out.

  11. gs

    I thought GW Bush was the hero of Afghanistan.

    (I feel compelled to explicitly state here that I am being sarcastic, to prevent comments from people who don't understand (or pretend to not understand) sarcasm.

  12. gibba-mang

    We should never have stayed to begin with. The mission goal was to destroy and degrade the Taliban. Once that was accomplished we should have high tailed it out of there. I understand the case for staying and "nation building" but once we realized Karzai was working against us, again, time to leave.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        We should never have gone in in the first place.

        A terrorist organization based at that point in Afghanistan—with the support of the regime that governed Afghanistan—inflicted a terrorist attack on US soil whose casualty numbers and economic impact essentially made it an act of war.

        It would have been both broadly untenable and wrong on the merits not to use an entity on which we spend hundreds of billions annually as part of our response. I mean, why the hell have a military if not to strike at enemies who wage war on us?

        But. yes, we should gone in and gotten out rapidly.

          1. Jasper_in_Boston

            You break it, you own it.

            No. We incinerate a bunch of AQ bases. Kill a bunch of their leaders. Same to the Taliban. And then get out.

            Sure, it would have been politically difficult to extricate ourselves after a several month-long mission. No argument! But good leaders do what it's the national interest even when the politics are difficult. Bush was a horrible leader.

            Obama should have gotten us out, too, but at least he was very, very good on many other things.

            1. Toofbew

              Obama was good for Wall Street (bailed out Goldman Sachs 100%) but failed Main Street (2.5 million mortgaged homeowners out on the street). Then investors bought up the empty houses cheap and have been screwing renters ever since. Obama also failed to help unions. The ACA was a great accomplishment but Trump came within ONE Senate vote of killing it. Then there was Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for SCOTUS. When Moscow Mitch scuttled that, Obama just took it in the shorts with very little push-back. And Obama gave Hillary the green light ahead of a significantly younger (then) Biden, and allowed the DNC to sandbag Bernie. Etc.

              1. KenSchulz

                Right on most of this, but the claim that the DNC somehow engineered Bernie Sanders’ loss in the 2016 primaries is a conspiracy theory and fantasy. He lost because he got fewer votes, in open and closed primaries and caucuses. That’s it. National party committees just don’t have the kind of power you imagine, least of all the DNC.

            2. KenSchulz

              Pretty much my thought on the matter from the start. Grab or terminate as many of Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership as you can in a limited operation, tell the Minister of Sewer and Water or whomever he’s now the PM, and leave.

    1. Salamander

      The "Taliban"? I thought the US "went in" to root out al-Qaeda and capture/kill Osama bin Laden. Remember them? The holy day of 9/11? The World Trade Center, Pentagon, etc?

      The Taliban had nothing to do with it.

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        Well, the Taliban had nothing to do it beyond allowing al Qaeda to set up bases in Afghanistan and openly conduct terrorist training. And sharing a logistics network. The Taliban and al Qaeda were tied at the hip since they were fighting the Soviets together four decades ago.

        1. KenSchulz

          They also refused to acknowledge al-Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11, much less turn over its leadership for trial.

  13. jeffreycmcmahon

    Okay, but don't forget, Matthew Yglesias is always wrong about everything and should be ignored (even when he might be somewhat right).

  14. beckya57

    The political incentives coming out of the rejection of the Biden administration are going to be really ugly. Stay in hopeless wars endlessly; engender mass unemployment to lower moderate inflation, and don’t pursue leftist policies, as the left will give you absolutely no credit (since you didn’t create a socialist paradise, or something), and the upper class and rich will hate you with the heat of a thousand suns and will spend lots of money to destroy you. Heckuva job, America.

  15. Brett

    What really pisses me off is Obama on this. I expected Trump not to pull out of Afghanistan - he's a weasel on anything like this, and let the generals box him in. But Obama could have cut the Gordian Knot on this at the same time as he was ignoring pressure to intervene in Syria, after the 2014 elections. But instead he punted on the problem and left it to the next Administration.

    1. iamr4man

      Two things…
      Prior to killing Bin Laden it would have been a political disaster to withdraw from Afghanistan. It’s my understanding that things were not going well for us there at the time. Obama was given the choice to withdraw our forces and face the possibility of Bin Laden arriving triumphantly in Kabul and giving a speech praising Allah for driving out the infidels (and basically ending his Presidency) or allowing a military expansion so our troops could safely stay there.
      After killing Bin Laden we had already expanded our forces there. The problem with leaving was what happens to the people who supported us and the women whose lives were better with us there? We had portrayed ourselves as “the good guys” and just getting what we wanted and saying “tah, take care” would be seen as pretty shitty. It seemed to me that at the very least we needed to evacuate the Afghans who helped us and faced danger when we left. But it didn’t seem to me that there was any will amongst Americans to allow hundreds of thousands of Muslims into the country.
      So, I understood Obama’s dilemma and don’t fault him for failing to get us out.

      1. NotCynicalEnough

        I think your recollection is slightly off. The way I remember it, the Generals, specifically Petraeus, were telling Obama that if he would agree to a "surge" in US forces, they would deliver a stable, pro western Afghanistan that could keep the Taliban at the fringes without US troops. It was bullshit then and continued to be bullshit right up to the end. The military, in every country, *ALWAYS* lies about how difficult a mission will be and what it will cost. The bigger the military, the bigger the lies.

        1. iamr4man

          I’m sure “the generals” and particularly Petraeus, were telling Obama they could “win”. But I’m not sure he believed them. Also, wasn’t Biden urging withdrawal?
          But in my mind, for sure he couldn’t get out while Bin Laden lived. Once he was dead I think you could argue both ways. I actually think both Trump and Biden wanted out. I think Trump was going for getting out and declaring victory. That’s why the disgusting Camp David thing.

      2. KenSchulz

        The initial mistake was relying too heavily on various Afghan militias, so that American forces could be held for the invasion of Iraq. Maybe we could have opened (probably fruitless) negotiations with the Taliban while we covertly planned a Special Forces operation to seize leadership; like SonTay on a larger scale. The American people were owed justice for 9/11, the Afghans weren’t owed a foreign-imposed democratic government.

  16. Justin

    The crazy Muslims are incapable of living in peace with the modern world. Other religious fanatics are similarly at war with modernity (most notably today are the ones in Israel, but the Hindus are making a run for it too.) It was indeed foolish to waste time on the afghans and so their current predicament is not worth a moment's consideration.

    As it turns out, some local employers where I live are trying to give afghan "refugees" a start here. It is, of course, also a colossal waste of time. No one wants to work with them.

      1. Justin

        Working class Americans are not, in my experience, the most enlightened and tolerant members of society. It could be also be that devout afghan Muslims are unsuited to work in a modern American factory. Religious demands are made and accommodated. What do you think... some of each? Culture clashes don't usually end well no matter how much we wish they did.

        I'm atheist myself so I have never been much for being friendly with religious people who believe silly things. I give them a wide berth.

    1. emjayay

      "No one wants to work with them."

      You must have some experience and/or other information to back that up. Please share it with the rest of us here.

  17. different_name

    Agree on the sentiment.

    The Ghost of Blogging Past obligates me to point out the rarity of Yglesias saying something sensible these days.

  18. SnowballsChanceinHell

    Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan was the bravest political act I have ever witnessed. His mistakes are minor in comparison.

  19. KenSchulz

    I nominate as a close runner-up the purple-district Democrats who voted for ACA and were defeated in the next election. It was clear when the vote was taken that the issue was totally politicized, and that it would cost them, but they did the right thing.

  20. Martin Stett

    Recalls MacArthur leaving the Philippines in 1942 after a mismanaged defence, and then, safe in Australia, denouncing the officers he left behind when they had to surrender.

  21. Martin Stett

    A lot of Americans may have gotten their schooling about wars in Afghanistan from the first "Flashman" novel, which dealt with the First Afghan War of 1839-1841. The first, and not the last, that didn't end well.

    Author George MacDonald Fraser expressed vitriolic rage at Tony Blair's decision to follow Bush into Afghanistan. He knew the history and he could have predicted the failure and the sorry end.

    Some clever journo might spend a month or so collecting all the optimistic quotes about victory in Afghanistan, together with the disdain for the weaklings who claimed it was hopeless.

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