Biden Apathy Amid Afghan Exit Chaos on Full Display in New Book
Michael Hughes
September 9, 2023
President Joe Biden’s lack of empathy for the people of Afghanistan comes through in vivid detail in a new book by The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer. From annoyance over Hillary Clinton trying to save Afghan women to his disappearance to Camp David when advisers awaited an evacuation order, the book provides a scathing indictment of Biden’s incompetence and moral failings amid the fall of Kabul.
The book, “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,” is the result of almost 300 interviews between November 2020 and February 2023 with administration officials and other sources with intimate knowledge of Biden’s activities. The chapters dedicated to Afghanistan, probably about ten, paint a disturbing portrait of Biden’s mismanagement of the crisis from an author, by the way, who is not unsympathetic to its subject.
HILLARY’S INCONVENIENT OP
Hillary Clinton drew the ire of the White House during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to coordinate the evacuation of women who were allegedly on a Taliban “kill list.”
Of all the world leaders called, the Biden administration seemed most outraged by Clinton’s outreach to Kiev. She asked Zelenskyy’s office to provide military transport from the Kabul airport for the women escaping.
“What are you doing calling the Ukrainian government?” White House National Security Council Adviser Jake Sullivan, a former diplomat, asked Clinton during a call on August 24, 2021, according to the book as quoted by The Hill.
Clinton responded to the reprimand with: “Well… I wouldn’t have to call if you guys would.”
Well, Clinton actually makes a very good point in light of the after-action review of the administration’s handling of the exodus.
The former U.S. secretary of state had already contacted the leaders of Qatar, Canada, and Albania. The Qataris helped usher a bus of targeted women to the Kabul airport while Ottawa and Tirana agreed to accept and house refugees.
To be sure, the unusual move violated an unwritten norm that diplomacy and foreign relations are carried out by the White House and the State Department, and them alone. Yet, the episode to me says less about Clinton’s gall than it does the Biden administration’s obsession with optics.
And, in the end, to her credit – Clinton helped about 1,000 women escape Afghanistan.
CHAOS AND APATHY
The author makes an astute observation about the U.S. president’s approach to the Afghan conflict that gives some insights on why the exit was botched.
“The Afghans were apparently only incidental to his thinking… Scranton Joe’s deep reserves of compassion were directed at people with whom he felt a connection; his visceral ties were with American soldiers,” Foer said in an adaptation of the book published in The Atlantic.
The speech Biden delivered announcing his decision on Afghanistan in April of that year “contained a hole” that few noted at the time, according to the book.
“It scarcely mentioned the Afghan people, with not even an expression of best wishes for the nation that the United States would be leaving behind,” Foer wrote.
Even to the end, the apathy seemed to course through the administration from its leader on down. In Early August, when General Frank McKenzie warned Biden’s team that Kabul would fall within 30 days – a far swifter collapse than anyone predicted – the reaction was somewhat astounding.
“McKenzie’s dire warning did strangely little to alter plans,” Foer said.
The brain trust inside the White House unanimously agreed that it was “too soon” to declare a noncombatant-evacuation operation, or NEO. By August 12, the Taliban were within 100 miles of Kabul which triggered U.S. military chief Mark Milley to urge Sullivan to declare the NEO. If the State Department refused, it was up to Biden.
But, alas, it would be two more days before the president officially declared the NEO, raising suspicions as to what Biden was doing during those 48 hours. Well, on Friday, August 13 at 1:36 p.m. EST, Biden hopped aboard Marine One to head to the Camp David presidential retreat for vacation.
The White House took fire that weekend for tweeting photos of Biden at work alone in Camp David with his cabinet on Zoom. One senior administration official told The Washington Post that, in retrospect, the move was “not particularly helpful.” But it captured the essence of Biden’s handling of the conflict. It was more about optics than doing the right thing.
Credit to Biden for cutting his vacation short. The president returned on Monday to address the nation after not speaking about Afghanistan publicly for six days, just as images went viral of the chaos at Kabul airport, now etched in history alongside Saigon in the vault of America’s most humiliating moments.
In hindsight, it is interesting to see the depth to which Biden was constantly trying to spin the crisis instead of solving it. Biden in every statement at the time either intentionally or unintentionally continued to confuse the political decision to withdraw from Afghanistan with the execution of that decision. Even Democrats who agreed with the political decision were aghast over the manner in which it was carried out.
“I made a commitment to the brave men and women who serve this nation that I wasn’t going to ask them to continue to risk their lives in a military action that should have ended long ago,” Biden said in again explaining his decision to withdraw troops while omitting the reasons behind the poor execution of the exit.
After the address, Biden returned to Camp David.
Not only was he shocked by the rapid progress of Taliban forces, Biden was also somehow surprised that America’s puppet did not sit around waiting for the radical movement’s second seizure of Kabul. On August 15, Biden, when told of Ghani fleeing “exploded,” according to the book.
“Give me a break!” Biden exclaimed.
OPTICS WAR
When the smoke cleared, the Afghan fiasco would ironically provide the worst optics the Biden administration could ever imagine, despite best efforts at perception management. From bodies falling from planes to the terror attack at Kabul airport. Not to mention smiling Taliban hoisting American weaponry.
On the same day that Ghani fled, McKenzie held a tense meeting with Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar at the Ritz-Carlton in Doha. The general threatened that the U.S. would start bombing if any Taliban operated within a 25-km radius of Kabul during the American evacuation.
McKenzie called it “the ring of death.” Baradar, in response, asked the general, “Are you going to take responsibility for the security of Kabul?” The talks ended with at least an understanding the Taliban would not meddle with the exit.
Soon after McKenzie and Baradar ended their meeting, Al Jazeera carried a live feed from the Afghan presidential palace, showing the Taliban were already there. Let alone a 25-km radius.
“They gathered in Ghani’s old office, where a book of poems remained on his desk, across from a box of Kleenex. A Talib sat in the president’s Herman Miller chair. His comrades stood behind him in a tableau, cloth draped over the shoulders of their tunics, guns resting in the crooks of their arms, as if posing for an official portrait,” Foer wrote.