Biden projects America's failure in Afghanistan on the Afghans
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°104 | 17 August 2021
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Situation
Joe Biden, yesterday: “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
Analysis
It was the right policy move withdrawing from Afghanistan, but I was hoping Biden would use his platform to condemn the whole of the foreign policy establishment. That he’d introduce formal and informal mechanisms to hold the current and former military and civilian leaders who started/perpetuated this awful war to account.
Biden didn’t explicitly say he wouldn’t do any of that, but he did pin America’s failure in Afghanistan entirely on the Afghans, which is not the sort of thing one says if they’re about to introduce some sort of accountability to US foreign policy-making communities.
Moreover, by saying Afghan forces “are not willing to fight” Biden comes across as extraordinarily cruel, in part because he’s not even close to being correct:
Thanks for your time,
Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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