With one seemingly arbitrary decision, President Joe Biden has undone his own carefully crafted foreign policy and damaged American leadership in the free world.
One of the most astonishing aspects of Mr. Biden’s tragic Afghanistan withdrawal execution was his failure to consult NATO allies, who have been with us in Afghanistan from the beginning, about the timing. This left them with troops and civilians now in harm’s way awaiting their rescue from an Afghanistan suddenly controlled by the forces they were fighting.
The allied troops were there because of NATO’s “One for all, all for one” pledge. In the alliance’s long history, only once did it invoke its pledge in Article V that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all, and that was when the alliance came to the rescue of the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said, “The West could not continue this U.S.-led mission — a mission conceived and executed in support and defense of America — without American logistics, without U.S. air power and without American might.”
Yet President Biden, in steadfastly denying responsibility for the Afghan disaster, also denies having unilaterally ended NATO’s role. The allies “had a choice” whether to stay or leave, he absurdly told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview.
The American defeat in Afghanistan and our hasty flight from the country not only dismayed our allies but it also emboldened China, Iran, Russia and jihadist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS. Russia rejected U.S. inquiries about establishing military bases in former Soviet republics near Afghanistan, indicating the decline of American influence in South Central Asia. China carried out another simulated attack on Taiwan. Al-Qaida and Islamic State are expected to create bases in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan from which they can plan attacks on U.S. interests and on the United States.
We may be able to forestall such attacks, but it will be a long time before the United States regains the respect it lost with this shambolic evacuation. That will be a difficult task ahead for Mr. Biden, whose rise to the presidency was fueled in part by his pledge to undo damage to American credibility among our allies under President Donald Trump.
One aspect of the debacle demands a careful congressional inquiry. For decades, the United States and our NATO allies have conducted military planning on how to rescue noncombatants from dangerous places where they were about to be trapped. But there is no evidence that such careful planning was brought to bear on the Afghanistan withdrawal despite the presence of thousands of vulnerable people, including citizens of NATO countries.
It would have been wise to keep Bagram Air Base, from which U.S. forces withdrew on July 1, in allied hands because it was the only military base with runways long enough to handle the large aircraft needed for the evacuation of noncombatants. Mr. Biden told the G7 leaders Tuesday that he still intends to meet an Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops, but if the evacuation isn’t completed by then, the president will be forced to make more perilous decisions.
As the internal finger-pointing continues, it’s unclear if the Pentagon gave Mr. Biden a clear warning about the consequences of a hasty withdrawal. Intelligence reports seemed to paint a darker assessment than was publicly acknowledged by the administration. Regardless of that confusion, the buck stops at the president’s desk. Right now, his most critical job is to make the right decisions to ensure that those still trying to get out of Afghanistan can do so safely.
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August 25, 2021 at 04:30AM
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Editorial: Biden's Afghan decision will have lasting effects - Charleston Post Courier
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