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Like most Wide World of News readers, I am an ordinary (conflicted/confused) American when it comes to Afghanistan and evaluating the Biden administration’s actions: The war was unwinnable; the war had been won; it was time to get out; this wasn’t the right way to get out.
We also all see the same cruel upcoming metrics of morality and politics:
* What percentage of Afghans who worked with the U.S. over the years will get out and what percentage will be slaughtered?
* How widespread will Taliban atrocities be, including against those who worked with the U.S., women, girls, and other vulnerable groups?
* How much video coverage of these atrocities will there be – and how much will reach U.S. shores/hearts/minds?
* Will anti-U.S. terror capabilities reconstitute on the ground in Afghanistan?
The answers to those questions are unknowable, and they will define whether this is an August news narrative or the international story of the Biden administration and our time.
It is sad to watch the absolute lack of The Presumption of Grace and bipartisanship on our national town square as America grapples with the current crisis.
I wish I were the least bit surprised.
Here, then, for this evolving situation, is your players on the WWoN scorecard, representing the various elite points of view that hover near the perspective of the actual American people on all this, a perspective that we don’t actually know today – and won’t know for some time.
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THE FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT (WITHOUT SYMPATHY FOR JOE BIDEN)
Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal:
Joe Biden believed three things about Afghanistan. First, that he could stage a dignified and orderly withdrawal from America’s longest war. Second, that a Taliban win in Afghanistan would not seriously affect U.S. power and prestige world-wide. Third, that Americans were eager enough to put the Afghan war behind them that voters wouldn’t punish him even if the withdrawal went pear-shaped. He was utterly and unspinnably wrong about the first. One fears he was equally wrong about the second. We shall see about the third, and his Monday afternoon speech staunchly defending the pullout indicates that he believes he can carry the country with him….
A well-executed withdrawal that visibly served a coherent national strategy might have accomplished what Messrs. Trump and Biden hoped. But that is not what we have, and the Biden administration is facing a major test of credibility. The president’s tragically misguided press-conference remarks of July 8, in which he doubled down on naively optimistic predictions that would have embarrassed Baghdad Bob, cast a shadow over the president’s judgment that will not be easily or quickly dispelled.
The Taliban’s sweeping military victory should not have surprised Mr. Biden. The core of the argument for withdrawal, an argument he has embraced for more than a decade, is that the Afghan government and military are so irredeemably weak and corrupt that it is pointless for America to support them. To expect that such a government and such an army would cohere long enough to provide its vanishing betrayers a dignified retreat is magical thinking of the silliest kind.
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THE FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT (WITH SYMPATHY FOR JOE BIDEN)
The United States had been watching the Taliban gain ground in Afghanistan for years now. It is rich and powerful enough to have been able to mask that reality through a steady stream of counter-attacks and air, missile and drone strikes. But none of that changed the fact that, despite all its efforts, it had not been able to achieve victory — it could not defeat the Taliban. Could it have withdrawn better, more slowly, in a different season, after more negotiations? Certainly. This withdrawal has been poorly planned and executed. But the naked truth is this: There is no elegant way to lose a war.
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THE GANG OF 500:
[O]ver the past few days, the images from Afghanistan have put on vivid display an inability to plan, an underestimation of a foreign adversary, an ineffective effort to scramble and make up for it — and, as Biden demonstrated in a brief address Monday, an attempt to deflect full responsibility.
Biden conceded that his administration was caught off guard by the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan and the ensuing chaos, and he declared that “the buck stops with me,” yet he used his remarks to cast blame in multiple directions for the bungled U.S. withdrawal….
“He didn’t really spend much time on the issue that I think really concerns the American people, which is the execution of that decision. What went wrong and how it is going to be fixed?” said Leon E. Panetta, a longtime adviser to Democratic presidents who served as defense secretary under President Barack Obama. “It just struck me that they were crossing their fingers and hoping chaos would not result. And it doesn’t work that way.”
Panetta, who said he has been unsure what to tell the numerous contacts in Afghanistan calling him seeking a way out of the country, said, “Right now it just does not look like we have our act together.” He expressed surprise at the seeming lack of preparation.
“It’s not the Joe Biden that I often saw in the National Security Council raising questions about the planning involved in any decision that the president had to face,” he said. “He would be among those that would say, ‘Have we looked at all the consequences? Have we looked at all the possible land mines that we might have to face in implementing that decision?’ He was good at that. I assume he must have asked those questions. But it’s clear that, for whatever reason, those plans or strategies or precautions were not put in place.”
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THE CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARIAT (2022/2024 DIVISION)
Both at the [Mexican] border and in Afghanistan, Biden merely had to keep in place what he inherited to sustain success or at least avoid disaster. On the border, Trump’s pandemic-era controls and his agreements with Mexico and Central-American countries were sensible and tested. Afghanistan was more difficult, but with some determination and finesse, Biden could have maintained the minimal US commitment that had forestalled a Taliban takeover for years.
Instead, in both cases, he quite literally chose chaos.
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THE CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARIAT (INTELLECUTAL DIVISION)
The mission in Afghanistan was never to turn that country into a Jeffersonian democracy. It was to ensure that Afghanistan had a government whose leaders did not wake up every morning thinking that America must be destroyed — and did not provide sanctuary for terrorists determined to bring that destruction to the American homeland. That mission was succeeding — until Joe Biden’s misbegotten, incompetent, unconditional retreat handed Afghanistan over to the United States’ enemies, who will turn it into an Islamist militant haven once again.
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HOPEFUL DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CONSULTANTS
The political impact of the chaos and possible bloodshed in Afghanistan is far from clear, either in the midterm congressional elections next year or the 2024 presidential election….
Once the images from Kabul this week fade from television screens, relief that the war is over — at least for U.S. troops — could be the dominant emotional outcome.
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THE LONG GAMERS
[U]ltimately, the Biden team will be judged by how it handles the morning after the morning after. Biden made a claim — one that was shared by the Trump team — that America would be more secure and better able to deal with any terrorist threats if we were out of Afghanistan than if we stayed embedded there, with all the costs of people, energy and focus. He again suggested as much in his address to the nation Monday afternoon.
The Biden team essentially said that the old way of trying to secure America from Middle East terrorists through occupation and nation-building doesn’t work and that there is a better way. It needs to tell us what that way is and prove it out the morning after the morning after.
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GOTHAM CITY JOURNAL
* Essential reading: John Podhoretz thinks Andrew Cuomo might not actually resign or might run again, or, something.
* Essential viewing: A bunch of celebrities HEART New York (and HEART a great Billy Joel song):
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