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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
President Joe Biden’s remarks regarding the disastrous and deadly pullout from Afghanistan a few months after he took office are likely to infuriate tens of millions of Americans.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that, while Biden has publicly defended the controversial manner in which he ordered a pullout from the country in 2021, a new book says that his remarks were more than just politically convenient: He actually believes that no one in his administration made any mistakes during the withdrawal.
“No one offered to resign (after the Afghanistan exit), in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy,” said Politico’s national security reporter Alexander Ward in his upcoming book “The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump,” the outlet reported.
“Biden told his top aides, (National Security Adviser Jake) Sullivan included, that he stood by them and they had done their best during a tough situation,” Ward wrote, noting further that a White House official had told him that “there wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up.”
That’s not going to sit well with scores of Americans, especially Gold Star families who lost loved ones over the two-decade-long conflict.
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The Free Beacon added:
Much went wrong, however, as Biden ended the United States’s 20-year military presence in Afghanistan, including the Taliban’s immediate takeover of Afghanistan following the exit of American troops, 13 American military service members killed in a suicide bombing during the final stages of the evacuation, and thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies left stranded in Afghanistan.
During the poorly coordinated evacuation, the Biden administration also left the Taliban “nearly $7.2 billion worth of aircraft, guns, vehicles, ammunition, and specialized equipment,” according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
“Human rights in Afghanistan are in a state of collapse (two years into the Taliban’s takeover), acutely affecting the lives of millions of women, men, girls and boys,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk remarked in September 2023. “The shocking level of oppression of Afghan women and girls is immeasurably cruel.”
Biden, whose poll numbers tanked dramatically following the evacuation, tried to lay the blame at the feet of former president Donald Trump for the chaotic withdrawal, claiming his exit plan was “severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.” Trump responded by accusing the Biden administration of orchestrating “a new disinformation game” to hide “their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan.”
Just a few days before the final pull-out of all American forces, 13 U.S. military personnel were killed along with around 150 Afghans by a suicide bomber.
A gold star father who lost his Marine son in the final days of the war in that suicide bombing ripped Biden on the anniversary of the tragic incident in August 2023.
Mark Schmitz, whose son, Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021, blamed Biden during an interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Story” with Martha MacCallum after the current president attempted to lay the blame at the feet of his predecessor.
“The advisers were telling Biden not to do what he was going to do. He flat-out ignored it, simply for, I believe, that September 11 original date that he wanted to have as the deadline and moved it up to the 31st,” Schmitz said. “And then turns around and has the audacity to blame Trump for everything.”
Eleven Marines, two U.S. Army soldiers, and a Navy Corpsman were killed during the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing.
Biden remarkably called the operation a “success,” but Schmitz rejected that.
“There were so many incredible mistakes made during this entire situation, starting with Bagram. The fact that I sat there and listened to Biden boast about this being a success, the only (thing) he said right there was the bravery of our men and women that were over there, they were tasked with something completely impossible,” he told MacCallum.
“The advisers were telling Biden not to do what he was going to do. He flat-out ignored it, simply for, I believe that September 11 original date that he wanted to have as the deadline and moved it up to the 31st. And then turns around and has the audacity to blame Trump for everything,’ he said.
“It’s just — it’s disgusting. There’s been absolutely no one who’s taken responsibility for any of the bad decisions that were made. And that starts at the very top and goes all the way down the list,” he added.
