Biden Never Recovered From Botched Afghan Exit
Michael Hughes
February 10, 2024
In these pages in August of 2022, a year after the fall of Kabul, this author suggested the botched Afghan exit may have sent Joe Biden’s poll numbers plummeting “irretrievably.” That may still be true, unless somehow his job approval rating miraculously bounces back between now and the end of his term. The topic is hot again as the “leader of the free world” completely melts down and pundits reflect on his biggest mistakes.
The fact folks are looking back on Biden’s record is a bit ominous. As if an obituary is already being written for his presidency, and in most sane universes, it should be ending. However, the United States is not right now existing in a normal universe. We live in a universe wherein the next president of the U.S. could potentially serve as the nation’s commander-in-chief from a prison cell.
When we look at the history of Biden’s approval rating in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, the chart jumps off the screen. One can pinpoint the moment wherein Biden’s approval and disapproval trends crossed paths, then diverged – never to meet again. And that cross-over moment was in August of 2021.
And what exactly was happening when his poll numbers caved? Well, let me tell you. It was smack in the middle of the most inglorious military withdrawal in U.S. history. A disaster that made the last days of Saigon look orderly. Biden, as of February 9, 2024, now has a negative 15.6% gap in approval vs. disapproval rating. The gap hit a high in late January at 17%, but something tells me new highs are on the horizon.
A writer in The National Interest captured this sentiment almost perfectly in a piece earlier this week.
“Biden’s biggest failure of all was also what truly ended his honeymoon period with the American people: The botched withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021,” freelance scribe Peter Suciu wrote in an article published on February 6.
Based on the Great Approval Rating Crossroads, the honeymoon really did end in the late summer of 2021. However, as observant as Mr. Suciu at first appeared to be, it seems he walked away with the wrong lessons. Suciu saw it as Biden’s biggest failure for the wrong reasons.
The execution of the withdrawal was abysmal and showed Biden as incompetent, aloof, with a complete lack of empathy for the people of Afghanistan. There is no doubt the manner in which Afghanistan was handed over to the Taliban was abhorrent. There were a million ways it could have gone better. It’s hard to fathom how it could have gone worse.
Suciu is not crazy to argue that the U.S. could have at least tried to broker some type of power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the Ghani government. But we all knew once the wheels were in motion, it was simply a matter of time. No Taliban was going to share any power with the puppeteers. In fact, I am surprised Ghani did not flee a lot sooner.
But the problem with the botched Afghan exit was in the botching (i.e., failed execution), not the decision to exit. But Suciu it appears wants us to believe the right decision was for the United States to remain in Afghanistan long-term and continue reconstruction.
“Perhaps nation-building in Afghanistan didn’t work out as some would have liked, but the truth is that the country was on the road to modernization. Women could work, and girls could go to school. Change takes time. Now the country is going backward,” Suciu said.
That Afghanistan is going backwards is indisputable. But what he writes next makes one wonder what universe he was living in since 2001.
“The U.S. should have strived harder to build not just a government, but an economy. Turkey sought to build a housing factory in Afghanistan, and the United States should have pushed for similar efforts. Creating jobs would have created opportunities that could have led to the development of a middle class in the Central Asian nation,” Suciu claims.
Suciu also claims China ends up the “ultimate winner.” The PRC gets to rebuild Afghanistan now.
I say: “Good luck, Beijing.”
The U.S. spent $110 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, and a sizeable portion of the funding was completely wasted. Many reconstruction projects had a paradoxical impact: they made things worse. One of my favorite testaments to this reality is the State Department’s own measurements that indicated U.S. “stabilization” projects actually destabilized Afghan villages where initiatives were carried out.
It all sounds nice on paper, but the U.S. has proven inept at nation-building and king-making. Installing a puppet and/or trying to create a government in places like Afghanistan in America’s own image has failed time and again.