Analysis: US war in Afghanistan is over, but the battle for Biden’s legacy has only just begun

By Gregory B. Raulston Last updated Aug 31, 2021

Despite the heroism displayed in the massive airlift effort, the departing troops left somewhere between 100 and 250 Americans, tens of thousands of Afghans entitled to the protection of former American comrades, and an entire nation to their fate under the fundamentalist Taliban regime – with an even more extreme faction of ISIS.

But any sense that the United States is exempt from the consequences of a war in which it has bled for 20 years is belied by the history of a country that demands a fierce price from its former occupants. And the trauma of the two weeks since the fall of Kabul has already left an indelible mark on Joe Biden’s presidency, Washington’s bitter policies and America’s reputation among its disappointed allies.

Biden can claim to have the courage to finally end a war long lost but which has survived the presidencies of three predecessors. This may resonate more widely in the future among voters than Beltway’s criticism of his withdrawal might imagine. And the crushing of other national challenges, including a worsening pandemic, may soon redirect the scarce spotlight of what was until a few months ago often referred to as the “forgotten war.”

But the US retirement pandemonium – an exercise in humility that confused everything Biden had promised regarding a stable and honorable US exit – has tainted the aura of competence he sold to the country in the last election and has raised questions about his leadership, candor and ability. move forward to appease the nation’s multiple crises. While his supporters claim he has been unfairly blamed for two decades of strategic failures in Afghanistan, the president surely wrote his own postscript of incompetence and failed to predict the incredibly rapid collapse of the state. and the Afghan army.

The president attempted to make his own favorable account of the end of the war in a speech to the nation on Tuesday afternoon. Biden touted the evacuation effort, pointing to the 120,000 evacuees from Afghanistan, saying: “No nation has ever done anything like this in all of history.”

“The extraordinary success of this mission is due to the incredible skill, bravery and selfless courage of the US military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals,” said Biden.

But it was perhaps revealing that he left it to General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who heads the United States Central Command, to announce the end of the war, and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken d ‘explain how the United States would still seek to save the remaining Americans left behind. Biden, seeking to repair a supposed reputation for a stable pair of hands, instead sat in front of a bank of TV monitors earlier in the day as he gathered local officials who faced the aftermath of the Hurricane Ida.

The upcoming showdown in Washington over the war

Biden’s Afghan miscalculations, which left US troops to rely on their 20-year-old enemies in the Taliban to secure the evacuation and effectively led to the deaths of 13 US soldiers in a suicide bombing last week , allowed Republicans to construct a tale of misfortune and to neglect them. will lead to midterm elections next year.

The GOP’s accusation that Biden left Americans behind could be inflammatory, given that their chances of leaving safely and freely appear remote under the Taliban. And the risks inherent in the ‘on the horizon’ counterterrorism strategy promised by Biden were highlighted by the death of a young Afghan family this weekend in a US strike against what the US military has claimed. be a vehicle bomb bound for Kabul airport.

Yet recent weeks have also highlighted the hypocrisy of the Republican Party, which ignored its complicity in ex-President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban, a withdrawal that paved the way for the current debacle. The usual torrent of disinformation spread by the conservative media – as US troops were stationed on a dangerous foreign battlefield – has shown that the threat to the truth posed by the previous presidency is far from over, and is the latest a sign that Biden’s pleas for unity will not be realized.

GOP lawmakers who have apologized and allowed the former president’s historic attack on democracy have demanded Biden’s impeachment or resignation. And Trump’s own staggering inconsistency about the war he bragged about forcing Biden to end shone on Monday in a statement in which he appeared to suggest the United States should re-invade to retrieve material already destroyed by the army.

The heroism of the fallen troops

But the retreat also highlighted American might.

This latest departing American jet followed dozens of previous flights that brought out more than 123,000 Americans, Afghans and citizens of allied nations from Afghanistan, in an extraordinary operation that seemed impossible just 10 days after the collapse of the Afghan government.

The 13 American soldiers who died in an ISIS-K attack perished while giving Afghans and their descendants a chance at life in the United States and beyond that will be played out over generations.

Biden’s legacy, however, is now at risk of being damaged by events beyond his control. Notably the fact that when it marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks next month, the Taliban – hosts of Al Qaeda in 2001 – will celebrate their renewed control of a failed state once again plagued by terrorists.

There is an argument that Biden was simply reducing American casualties and preventing more bloodshed, heartache and agony by finally ending the war.

But Afghanistan’s flashback also leaves a terrible question likely to be even more acute in the years to come if it emerges as a threat to US security again. After the deaths of 2,461 American soldiers and civilians, more and more Allied soldiers and many more Afghan civilians, what was it for?

Biden’s missteps

In the East Room of the White House on July 8, Biden reported to the country that the US withdrawal “is proceeding in a safe and orderly manner” and noted that due to the way the withdrawal was handled “no one – no one , US forces or any other force have… been lost. ”

By setting this standard for the operation, the president has parked himself in a political corner. His heartbreaking ordeal in the same majestic room last week, after the suicide bombing that also killed dozens of Afghans, shattered a White House attempt to make the withdrawal a victory. The death of American troops means that any political glee Biden might have been tempted to make to end the war would now seem in bad taste.

Here are the groups vying for power in Afghanistan

Even before last week, Biden’s conduct had revealed an unflattering side of his character. He said the money had stopped with him for the chaos after the fall of Kabul, but in fact laid the blame almost everywhere else. Descriptions of a smooth evacuation in Kabul have been revealed to be false by eyewitnesses to journalists there, including CNN’s Clarissa Ward. The president seemed indifferent to the fate of Afghans who had risked their lives as translators and in other positions for US forces and diplomatic efforts.

The reputation of a leader who has run on compassion and always at the level of Americans will take some repairs.

Biden’s defenders have also argued that many of the pundits who criticized the president were former generals and officials whose own strategic failures led to the war earning the epithet “forever.” But accusations that all critics of the withdrawal effort were war hawks have proven that media disinformation is not the exclusive sin of the right.

Waiting for the judgment of history

The coming weeks should offer an even more unflattering account of Biden’s failures than one that happened in real time. Even Capitol Hill Democrats seem to have some interest in finding out what went wrong. Biden’s recent comment that chaos was inevitable when leaving a war is not only believable, but it also conflicts directly with his promises of just six weeks ago.

Among the key questions that remain unanswered:

Why did the president and his administration not so spectacularly appreciate the fragility of the Afghan government and army? The error in judgment laid the groundwork for the chaos of an evacuation that began with the deaths of several desperate Afghans after clinging to the exterior of U.S. planes.
Why were troops insufficient to cover the long planned retreat? The abandonment of Bagram Air Base to concentrate evacuations out of the US Embassy and Kabul International Airport is one of the biggest criticisms from critics of Biden’s GOP.
How did the United States get to the point where its forces found themselves stranded on the small island of Hamid Karzai International Airport, which was highly unsuitable for the installation of one of the largest airlifts in the world? history of humanity?
And why did US troops depend on airport security provided by their enemy, the Taliban?
Why hasn’t the administration moved faster to process special immigrant visa applications given the urgency expressed by veterans groups and multiple lawmakers on Capitol Hill? What effect has Trump’s gutting out of the US refugee claim system had on this?

Biden is lucky in the short term that both houses of Congress are currently controlled by Democrats. While Republicans pledge to hold him to account, their ability to do so in the minority is severely limited. And given the cascade of events that will unfold between now and the midterm elections, it’s not even clear that a Republican-controlled House or Senate can provide punitive traction for events that will have. took place 16 months ago.

Over time, a president’s legacy is defined by a few key highlights, which create a kind of symbolism that illustrates how he is remembered. For Jimmy Carter, it was the disastrous hostage crisis in Iran. For Ronald Reagan, it was his call for the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall.

The role of Biden’s Afghan episode in shaping his own place in history will depend on what happens in the years to come, and whether the newly revealed shortcomings of his own leadership are limited to the disorderly retreat after the longest war of the United States or are reflected in other crisis.

united states

Analysis: US war in Afghanistan is over, but the battle for Biden’s legacy has only just begun

The upcoming showdown in Washington over the war

The heroism of the fallen troops

Biden’s missteps

Waiting for the judgment of history

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