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Chaos is not a strategy (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
I keep thinking of the people falling from the sky. The images are seared into my mind: Our Afghan allies, the people we were callously leaving to their fates after 20 years, clinging to an American plane taking off from Kabul Airport, only to drop to their deaths moments later. Afterwards, Joe Biden had the gall to declare “with all of my heart, I believe this is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America”.
A year on, how should we evaluate Biden’s declaration? Well, the Taliban has reinstalled a tyrannical theocratic government under which the precious freedoms gained by Afghan women over the past 20 years have been completely reversed. If the “best decision for America” involves trampling liberty and solidarity underfoot, then I don’t want to imagine what the worst decision would look like.
More tangibly, we were told that the Taliban would no longer harbour terrorists — Biden promised in his withdrawal speech “to make sure that Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland”. And yet, as Barbara Elias warned last year, this is not a promise the president had the power to keep. Links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda were and are too deep and strong to be severed. Elias cited worrying intelligence assessments that al-Qaeda could become a real threat to the US again as soon as 2023.
Her warning was vindicated two weeks ago, when Biden announced the successful killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul in an apartment rented by an aide of Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. Haqqani, in turn, is the leader of the Haqqani network, a Taliban offshoot that the Wall Street Journal has called the group’s “most radical and violent branch”. The Taliban claimed they were unaware of Zawahiri’s presence in the heart of their capital, a statement that knowledgeable observers have rightly called out for its sheer effrontery.
No doubt the truth about the current relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda will come out in due course. But the reasonable conclusion is that the two groups are still comfortably in bed with one another, and that al-Qaeda is once more using Afghanistan as a staging ground for its nefarious activities. We should welcome the killing of al-Zawahiri, of course, but his being found in Kabul gives the lie to Biden’s justification for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
In that withdrawal speech, Biden argued that “the real choice” was “between leaving or escalating”. This was a false dichotomy. America could have just carried on. Yes, perhaps Afghanistan was a very long way from becoming a proper democracy, but it would have been relatively inexpensive to keep a small force of a few thousand stationed there for a few more years, a fraction of the 100,000 troops stationed there in 2010–11. Even before the 2020 peace deal, US casualties in Afghanistan had been extremely low for years, with fatalities averaging in the low double digits since 2015. A small US force would have been more than enough to keep the Taliban out of total power.
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SubscribeI just want to state for the record that I don’t know a single American who really gives one flying f*** about what happened on Jan 6. All these oligarchs clutching their pearls about it years on (while the prisoners of that saga remain rotting in solitary confinement) is an image that frankly just makes them want to tear the whole thing down.
I do. It was a riot and not an insurrection. But the elite pearl clutching is spot on.
Compared to other “riots” in the US in the last couple of years, a friendly one judging by the number of Selfies with ‘rioters’ and ‘Cops’ beaming at the cameras. Yes, I know that there were some nasty moments from both sides but with sheer numbers the intruders, if so minded, could have taken the whole building apart.
I disagree. And the violence was there. And people were killed. And we’re damn lucky, this time, that it didn’t get worse.
The Secret Service were praying and saying their goodbies. That should close down this kind of nonsense chatter.
Only one person was killed during the riots–Ashley Babbitt–an unarmed rioter and former USAF airman, who was shot by a capitol police officer while climbing through a window. Other deaths occurred after the riots but were not from injuries inflicted by rioters.
They stormed the capitol and invaded it. Would you say the same thing if the national cathedral was stormed and decrated? How about the Holocaust Museum? This is sort of minimazation is astonishing.
Ah, so apathy and ignorance among your circle of friends becomes its own justification, does it? “Me and my mates don’t care about it, so it doesn’t matter.” Good to have that “on the record” lol.
I watched livestreams of Jan 6 as it happened, and of CHAZ as it happened. A disorderly mob of right wingers and everyone thinks it’s the Kapp Putsch. Meanwhile an entire section of a U.S city is ceded by the state to anarchists and it goes down the memoryhole. What a joke.
Let’s not go to teh “whataboutery” defence, both are to be condemned.
Yes, but one WAS condemned by the federal government and one was not. “Whataboutery” is a legimate way to expose the double standard.
“Whataboutery” is just another way of saying “how dare you point out my hypocrisy!”
There’s a difference between occupying a couple of blocks in Seattle, including an abandoned police station, and occupying the nations capitol, smashing it’s windows, searching the building for the Majority Leader of the House and the Vice President of the U.S., and erecting a gallows on the grounds. Pu-leeze !
This silly term is an attempt to dismiss comparisons, like the “yeah, but” condemnations of a few years ago. It is obvious to any honest person that if one’s politics are in the approved category, crimes are met with a public shrug and a private wink. The non-approved, “deplorable” brand gets lawfare and media-frenzied persecution. What about that?
Can you repeat it in ordinary English?
Jason, do you know that what you said was an argumentative fallacy? At the very least, you need to change your circle of friends.
I do and I know many, many people who are extremely anxious about January 6th. I suggest you mix your mingling a little.
@Jason And you probably don’t know anyone that voted for Biden so the election must have been stolen. Right?
Amen!
“That such a potentially destabilising step could be taken without Biden’s knowledge is almost literally unbelievable.”
Sounds believable to me. As a Brit I am in no position to crow, but your man doesn’t appear to be the full ticket. He even goes around claiming that he is Irish. Next week, perhaps, he will claim to be Napoleon Bonaparte.
While America is seeking all kinds of competitive races to the bottom from various social, cultural, and political vectors, it’s not like we didn’t see President Brandon not only get a false start off the starting line, but he did it running backward and 100 yards behind while falling, stumbling and bumbling his way through the presidency. And people are just getting out of his way. The man doesn’t know where he is, where he’s going, what he’s doing, what he’s saying. This country is being led by a series of puppet masters and other offal imbeciles who like literal bowel movements have somehow managed to float at the top of their particular toilet bowls. They keep getting wealthier off the insider trading and Ponzi scheming (See Hunter Biden’s laptop and Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s insider trading) to passing unknown laws and taxes to extract our hard-earned labors while out of the other side of their mouths calling it inflation reduction.
This political nosferatu have outspent the last 20 years with money tree glee from the treasure and productivity of the American Citizen and have been gaslighting everyone claiming that very spending will bring down the inflationary mistakes they’ve made. Now we have 2 successive generations of imbeciles who believe everything they say hook, line, and sinker because radical Marxist intersectional SJW indoctrination has removed their abilities to critically think and instead become part of the groupthink parade.
I’m going back to drown my sorrows in loud TikTok videos of heavy-chested women and men doing dangerous and stupid things. I got my bread and circus. How about you?
Have you the faintest idea what a ‘radical marxist’ is?
“Marxist” is the go-to insult of the Right, serving the same function as “fascist” does for the Left, allowing them to say “we don’t have to argue with you, you’re just wrong”.
Patrisse Cullors, real estate mogul.
You referred to President Brandon. I think you meant Biden. Unless, of course, you’re humming that tune about “Let’s go Brandon?”
“I’m going back to drown my sorrows in loud TikTok videos of heavy-chested women and men doing dangerous and stupid things. I got my bread and circus. How about you?” If this is your form of entertainment, then I don’t think what you said is worth remembering.
There is a Biden doctrine. He’ll read it off the teleprompter when his handlers are sure he won’t go off script. Like the new inflation “reduction” act, old Joe will be rehearsed about the title, where to sign, and likely little else. President-in-fact Susan Rice will congratulate him on a job well done, give him a new ice cream cone with his favourite flavor, and send him off for a knap.
Cynical? I’ve never been a fan of Biden, but I feel somewhat sorry for him, though Hunter’s escapades do temper the feeling…
The stain of January 6 isn’t what the left–or perhaps, Ayann–wants you to believe. The 2020 election was rife with shenanigans; the circumstantial evidence plentiful. The damage to the nation was done by the institutions that failed to address the problem.
“The 2020 election was rife with shenanigans; the circumstantial evidence plentiful.”
According to you.
Why don’t you detail them? Set out the details of your allegations, instead of hiding behind generalities and bluster.
And wasn’t it remarkable that over 50 (or was it over 60?) courts, having looked at this vast array of “evidence”, threw Trump’s “case” out on every occasion on the basis that, under “face dye” Jooleeanny, no case had ever been made out.
You lot are worse than the metoo-ers – you seem to think that others should be convicted on the basis of your unsubstantiated assertions.
Please! I’ve made my mind up, don’t try to confuse me with facts. No number of facts will ever change the way some people think, once one has joined the cult, be that “wokery” or “right-wing conspiracy theory”, the tenets of one’s beliefs cannot and must not be challenged.
See M. Cleaveland’s Writing on the subject. The Courts have dismissed the cases on the grounds of a lack of standing, a flimsy excuse.
“ If true, it would mean that the president is barely in charge of his own government.”
Of course he isn’t. He’s barely in charge of his own bodily functions.
And yet, he has been able to push through the most sweeping and impactful legislation in a generation. Imagine what he would have been able to do if he was in charge of his bodily functions?
He hasn’t been the one doing the pushing. Schumer and Pelosi plus other behind the scenes actors have been doing it. Look at any report about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (which will do no such thing). It was worked out between Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, not Biden. You’ll rarely find him actually involved in any of it.
If nothing was passed, it would have been is fault. Now that so much has passed, he gets no credit. In any case, let us hope that he continues to be under-estimated. It might be the very trick to the output that he is delivering.
As always, an intelligent contribution from Ms Ali.
But Hillary’s “lost” emails? And “Trump’s personality made him unfit for office”? Different personalities are required for effective leadership in different times and situations. Trump viewed the DC corruption and hypocrisy as an outsider, and his alerting of the public to it has been a useful education for many. Disruption in governing practices, as in technology, can be useful, and hopefully will lead to voter-driven reform.
The continuing US involvement in Afghanistan was a joke. A particularly nasty one where the American people and members of the US armed services were the punchline. There was no real progress in Afghanistan. Both the State Department and the Pentagon knew this and lied to the public. There seemed to be little focus on changing strategy or even trying to win the war. Most of these details were hidden until the Washington Post got its hands on confidential documents. The Afghanistan Papers showed the stark contrast between what officials were saying to the public and what they were saying behind closed doors. Oh yeah, then we screwed up leaving and gave the Taliban all the hardware they could ever want. If you want to know why much of the American public is skeptical about Ukraine, just ask some jaded Afghan War vets
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
But Matt, would it not have been relativey inexpensive for the US to just keep maintaining a few thousand troops there for a few more years, with only a low-double digit number being killed per annum? Think of all the Afghan women who now can’t complete their master’s degrees in gender studies :'(
“We could barely project any power when we had over 100,000 troops, surely just a couple thousand would work fine.”
– The Pentagon
As an American I am embarrassed by the utter ineptitude, incoherence, and ideological hubris involved our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Seems to have worked well in South Korea.
They were willing to defend themselves. This makes a huge difference.
The author writes as if the US has ever had a strategy of any sort. When was the last time the United States has had a strategy worth the name? The US doesn’t do strategy at all. The US does tactics, and usually it does them badly. During the cold war, for instance, it had a guiding tenet — which is, my enemy’s friend is my enemy and my enemy’s enemy is my friend — and that was it. There was no strategy. The toppling of democracies, the propping up of dictatorships, the shifts from one treatment to another (Iraq a friend and then suddenly a mortal enemy; the Mujahidins vs. Talibans), the shameless coddling of Saudi Arabia, have all been dictated by that one simple tenet. Never has the US had a strategy. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, etc., all of that can be explained by adherence to that one tenet. And when the tenet is no longer clearly operative, as in Afghanistan now, or Syria, the US moves on to countries where the tenet applies cleanly: for instance, Taiwan, given the US’s new acquired taste for casting China as its current mortal enemy.
‘Tactics without strategy is merely the noise before defeat’ – Sun Tzu
” his vision is blurred by chaos”
I was unaware Biden had any vision. I’m always hugely impressed when he just manages to stumble from one sentence to another, and occasionally even carries off a lurch to a third.
In the USA the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary are (constitutionally speaking) co-equal. Why would anyone think that the head of the Executive should be able to stop the head of the Legislature from visiting another country?
Because they belong to the same party and if Biden really wanted to stop her, he would have done so. But this gave him his cake which he also ate. Again, tactics, tactics, tactics…
I think that only works when the executive has more power than the legislator. Pelosi was leader of the group that installed Biden. She is not at all beholden to him. She largely ignores him.
Ayaan Hirsi Al is an incredible, intelligent, brave woman. Her one flaw is to rock the boat so much that people she wants to help fall out. Keep that in mind when reading her stuff. There’s truth in there, but don’t be oversold.
Now, back to this opinion piece, There is no “Biden Doctrine”, she’s made some constitutional errors. In paragraph eight, “At home, for instance, Biden took office promising to reunite a polarised nation….” The president is in the executive branch of government. The FBI and Justice Department are part of the judicial branch of the American government. According to the American second constitution, these two branches act independently. Biden has no control over the judicial branch, and they don’t have to update Biden. And in this instance, it would be advisable to keep Biden as far out of the loop as possible. You don’t want the impression that he’s involved for obvious reasons. Trump, on the other hand, tried to weaponize it.
In paragraph eleven. Nancy Pelosi is a house representative forming the legislative branch. Again, the legislative branch is independent of the executive branch. The president has no authority to impose on the legislative branch members. It was intentionally designed that way in the 2nd American constitution. Trump tried to weaponize this too.
Trump’s foreign policy battle cry was, “America First!” And it was very apparent during his first year in office he had no policy. I would bet if a president comes in competing for last place as the most successful president in American history, his foreign policy would reflect that. The lists are still developing for Trump. This link will show those lists that have completed their review. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
I would wait till the last year of Biden’s run before making these accusations regarding foreign policy.
If you want to see Biden’s policy so far, see this link.
https://tinyurl.com/2s3erfen
If you want to see what Trump’s policy was, see this link.
https://tinyurl.com/35s95edv
An example of stretching something said to mean something else is an argumentative fallacy. In this instance, in paragraph 10, “and appeared to tell American troops that they would soon be fighting in Ukraine.” The New York Post said this:
Quite honestly, he didn’t say they would go into Ukraine and fight. It could have been after the war was over and time to clean up. The point is Biden didn’t say that they would go in and fight. That’s an important point. And there’s a lot of it in this opinion. Be careful. Use critical thinking.
On the Afganastan issue and pulling out. Jun 13, 2020, Donald Trump West Point Commencement Speech Transcript
Donald Trump was not interested in nation-building and was planning to pull out “… and Afghanistan while agreeing with the Taliban for a conditional full withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. https://tinyurl.com/35s95edv Biden simply kept Trump’s promise.
For a fast read on the Afghan War and the notion of nation-building backfiring, read this link. https://tinyurl.com/35z77tzs
There are a few more issues, but I think you see the point. If for anything else, the admirable Ayaan Hirsi Al displayed how much she doesn’t know about America. And the importance for you to use critical thinking.
Hang on, the withdrawal agreement was signed by Trump without the knowledge of the Afghan government. The roots of last years humiliation are there and suggesting that Trump had a better foreign policy as a result is pushing the limits of credulity.
Sad but true.
Except that Trumps exit route was via Bagram (out in the open and easily defended) while the choice by the Biden mis-adminstration was a city airport with all access points controlled by the enemy. I wonder what the US military thought of that if they were even consulted.
Making Bagram the exit point would have potentially allowed terrorists to infiltrate the base while we were still trying to manage things. Not a risk that would have made sense in my book.
And the idea that a few thousand US troops would have been able to do anything to stabilize Afghanistan once the Taliban came to realize that the US was going to violate the withdrawal agreement that Pompeo and Trump crafted is so farcical that it forces one to stop reading the rest of the piece.
The Taliban had stopped attacks on US forces precisely because we said we were going to leave – and they didn’t want to jeopardize our plan. The last year would have been headline after headline of attacks on our military forces, many successful, had we tried to violate the agreement without pumping tens of thousands of troops back into the country.
Of course this outcome … both the headlines and the body bags.. would have provided many conservatives with glee. Instead we get a continuous temper tantrum because Biden didn’t continue to waste men and material on the debacle that Bush started.
And make no mistake.. a lot in the media weren’t happy about it just because, at least until Putin invaded Ukraine, they had no wars to cover. At least the kind of wars that either involved us, or involved people the American market cares about.
Wasn’t the Afghan withdrawal the policy of Trump, implemented to such a degree by him as to be irreversible?
Don’t worry
Aayan, I hope you are well and safe. You are such an inspiration for many issues, but mostly for your powerful voice advocating for women and Islamic reforms. Because you’re not American, you may find it difficult to understand, but most of us are so fed up with being the policemen of the world. Think Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq; the list is long and almost never ending. We truly never changed the direction of any of those countries. We did lose our sacred soldiers and wasted a ton of treasure. No one seems to remember that it was the former President, before Biden, who made the agreement after more than 20 years for the withdrawal of Afghanistan. I’m sure you’re right about the Taliban being a threat today, I don’t doubt it. But it’s nowhere close to what Russia is doing in Ukraine. That’s a worldwide threat that we’ve not seen since WWII. We no longer should continue policies that have failed us for over the past 70 years.
It was Trump who cooked up and signed the secret pullout deal with the terrorists. A deal so secret ad so craven that Trump didn’t even tell the British all about it:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-kept-britain-in-dark-over-deal-that-led-taliban-back-to-power-h5lwd2g89
Biden should of course have reversed it; but he merely was doing what Trump had put in place; though you’d struggle to realise that from this one-eyed article.
As for Trump in office causing Putain to step back, grow up, would you?
First, Trump could barely find his own rear-end in a snowstorm – at one point, he thought that the US was about to invade Ukraine. During an interview with Laura Ingraham, Ingraham said, “We are just learning that US officials are looking at a potential amphibious landing now in Odessa, Ukraine.” Trump then chided Ingraham, as he appeared to think she meant the United States was conducting an amphibious landing rather than Russia. “They should do that secretly, not being doing that through the great Laura Ingraham,” he said. “They should be doing that secretly. Nobody should know that, Laura.”
I mean, please … what an idiot.
There’s a far more likely and logical explanation if you look at policy alignment between Russia and America during the two administrations: With Trump in office, Putin was already getting what he wanted. The election changed all that:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/02/putin-invade-ukraine-trump-00012897
“It was Trump …” Of course! Where would America be today without being able to blame “Trump” for everything. But isn’t it strange that Biden went out of his way to be “not Trump” on every other issue. Which has landed us in a world of un-policed cities, open borders, raging inflation, rampant crime & record fuel prices.
P.S. Trump may have struggled “to find his own rear-end in a snowstorm” but at least he knew it was there!! Biden is blissfully unaware which fairies he’s visiting at any particular moment. And on the few occasions when he does appear to be “with us” you never know which bit of thin air he’ll suddenly try to shake hands with next.