Pathetic retreat from Afghanistan shows shrinking Biden isn't up to the task of president

Alone under the bright lights of the presidency, Joe Biden has finally shown us the man behind the grin. A man who checked his watch instead of offering empathy to Gold Star families. A man who defaulted to dissembling and exaggeration when a nation yearned for honesty and clarity. A man who found the bottom of his personal deck after a lifetime of free passes from a fawning media establishment desperate to turn this midlevel partisan hack into something he’s not — a wise old sage just waiting for history to deliver his moment.

Well, the moment came. But the man didn’t. And a nation that is supposed to lead the world in defending Western civilization against the barbarians now looks inept and, perhaps, incapable or unwilling to meet the challenge.

God save us from whatever comes next.

It is often said that President Biden’s political superpower is empathy — the ability to understand others, to share in their grief, and to comfort them. Empathy from their commander-in-chief was exactly what Mark Schmitz, Roice McCollum and the other loved ones of 13 American service personnel, the last victims of our longest war, needed at Dover Air Force Base.

Instead, they met with a “bristling” president who offered a handful of “scripted and shallow” words. That attitude continued during Biden’s speech to the nation on Tuesday, in which a thin-skinned president angrily and incredulously defended his decision to complete our humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I'm one of the lucky ones: My family finally fled Afghanistan. Nightmare is just beginning for millions left behind.

So anxious was Biden to have American troops leave the Afghan theatre by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the president went through with a hasty — and ultimately deadly — retreat. Along with the lives of 13 of our finest, the operation produced the most substantial damage to American prestige since the Iranian hostage crisis. Even when it became clear that Biden would leave American citizens behind, he kept his arbitrary Aug. 31 deadline in place.

All for a talking point.

There was nothing magical about Aug. 31, mind you, other than the convergence of two promises Biden made. On one hand, he promised, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, he would not abandon a single American in Afghanistan. On the other, Biden promised the Taliban to leave the country by Aug. 31. No foreign policy decision is easy, but when push came to shove, Biden weakly rolled over for the medieval monsters.

As a parting gift, the commander-in-chief left the Taliban with state-of-the-art military equipment they could’ve only dreamed of, which they are now using to kill our Afghan allies who bravely helped the American mission.

If your blood needs a good boiling, look up the photos of Taliban fighters wearing American uniforms, driving our Humvees and apparently flying our Blackhawk helicopters. Some of the images and stories of the Taliban’s revenge are grotesque.

Of Donald Trump’s behavior, Biden once famously said: “We have to remember our kids are watching.”

They still are, Mr. President.

Biden's broken promise: President shamefully leaves Americans behind in Afghanistan

On Biden’s watch, Afghanistan has again become spring training for terrorism. A suicide bomber attacked the Kabul airport after Biden said we were working with the Taliban on security, killing the 13 American soldiers and at least 170 others.

To retaliate, Biden, rekindling the Obama-era playbook, ordered drone strikes — presumably using Taliban-provided intelligence — that killed several toddlers.

Expect more terrorists, more drones and more mayhem in the months ahead. Despite Biden’s “the war is over” rhetoric, nothing could be further from the truth. Wars only end when both sides agree to stop fighting, and there’s no evidence the radical Islamic terrorists are anywhere close to tiring out.

At every turn during this pathetic retreat, Biden has failed. His television appearances have been unsteady. He has lied, repeatedly, about what he would do and what the Afghan army has done. He blamed his predecessor, giving in to the weak “But Trump!” argument that remains the rhetorical refuge of choice for America’s lazy liberals. And he’s drawn sharp condemnations from America’s closest allies, dealing NATO the alliance’s most destabilizing blow in its history.

“American is back!” Joe Biden likes to say. Yeah, right.

Administration officials and Democratic Party leaders have offered weak-sauce tweets and platitudes as though the Taliban terrorists give a damn about their place in the “international community.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted “the world is watching its actions,” as if that would cajole these murderers into turning over a new leaf. With all due respect, Madam Speaker, the Taliban is counting on the world watching them humiliate the world’s remaining superpower.

And Biden has made the world less safe while feeding a false narrative that America’s presence in Afghanistan has been a failure.

For 20 years, brave American troops stopped Afghanistan from serving as a launching pad for international terrorism. That was always the goal, and our people performed brilliantly. There were humanitarian benefits along the way — females were being educated instead of raped and tortured, as will now happen thanks to Biden’s action — but the principal American aims of killing Osama bin Laden and keeping a lid on international terrorism were met.

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Since the first U.S. troops landed in Afghanistan, we’ve operated under a simple premise: We can fight radical Islamist terrorists over there, or we can fight them here. Two decades without a mass-casualty terrorist event on our soil proved the strategy was working.

At the mission’s conclusion, we had just 2,500 troops in country and were spending about 1% of the Defense budget on operations. We hadn’t lost a solider in over a year. The lid was on.

Casualties overall — 2,448 killed in action before the 13 were lost last week — were modest in the macro sense (though individually tragic, each one, in the micro) when you consider they occurred over a 20-year period. By contrast, despite Biden’s lies that the Afghans won’t fight, more than 66,000 died battling the Taliban. We had stopped fighting in the Afghan civil war roughly seven years ago and had been focused solely on counterterrorism operations.

Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 because we were told he was honest, moderate, had better judgment and cared deeply about other human beings. Next to Trump, his empathy seemed more heartfelt and important. Next to Trump, he seemed honest, possessing of the wisdom and desire for consensus that only four decades in Washington can produce.

“The adults are back in charge,” we were told. If this is adult decision-making, please send in the children ASAP.

When you are the president, there’s no basement in which to hide and no opponent against whom to post up. There’s just the job and the consequences of your words and decisions. For Joe Biden, some of those consequences have names that will be engraved on tombstones in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery.

And the reality is that this president simply isn’t up to the task.

Scott Jennings is a Republican adviser, CNN political contributor and partner at RunSwitch Public Relations. This column originally appeared at the Louisville Courier Journal. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY.

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Retreat from Afghanistan shows Joe Biden isn't up to the task