The collapse in Afghanistan has matured under four American presidents, but it is certainly Joe Biden who pays the price in terms of popularity, although he was the first to speak of the need to close the mission. Here are the errors and uncertainties that the press does not intend to forgive him
Not even the staunchest supporter of Joe Biden it could deny that the failure in Afghanistan represents a disaster for the image of the 46th President of the United States. Yet ever since he was the deputy of Barack Obama Biden himself was the most convinced supporter of the need to abandon the mission as soon as possible. But we are talking about ten years ago and the fact that instead we have continued on a blind track, up to the dramatic epilogue of the last few hours, is certainly not a mitigating factor, but an aggravating circumstance.
Although Biden pushed from the inside for the withdrawal of the mission, it was instead carried out by four tenants of the White House, including himself. Not even the fact that he will also be the last to deal with the issue can be brought to his defense, on the contrary.
Biden has always been convinced that the project to export democracy through the operation “Enduring freedom” was doomed to failure, as the conditions for build a rule of law. Indeed, the presence of Westerners has done nothing but combine the variegated picture of the populations present in Afghanistan against the common enemy, the exact opposite of that divide and rule which for some centuries has inspired the choices of the most prudent politicians.
Biden’s pessimism about the Afghan operation was based on a series of very concrete elements that are now also evident to all, but which had already been revealed two years ago by a brilliant investigation by the Washington Post: the publication of the so-called “Afghanistan Papers” he had announced that there were many in the American government who considered a happy outcome of the mission impossible and also the sweetened version that was being told to the American people. “At war with truth” (At war with the truth) was the effective title that accompanied the publication of the dossier.
Biden evidently was not very effective in convincing Obama, who even intensified the presence of the American military. Then it came Donald Trump, who even assuming the withdrawal ended up getting lost in negotiations with the Taliban and today the bill is presented to Biden, who is not without fault.
In addition to not having planned one exit strategy for what he knew was the mission’s only possible end, the President shot it really big when, just a few weeks ago, it ruled out the possibility of the Taliban regaining power.
A glaring error of assessment? Yes, but according to the New York Times it is even worse, as, writes the prestigious newspaper, Biden was already in possession of a more up-to-date intelligence dossier that provided for the defeat. The Wasinghton Post today he returns to the office speaking of “a debacle of the worst kind: the one that could have been avoided.” Always on his pages there is the only intervention in favor of Biden: that of the expert in geopolitics Fareed Zakaria, who argues that the Americans did well to get out of a situation much less stable than what was being told to the people.
But, precisely because he was the first to understand it, today Biden sees his image heavily compromised and his speech about the need to “stop the deaths of US soldiers for Afghanistan” really sounds like a poor patch. Moreover, it was mended beyond the maximum time limit, with over 2,300 American soldiers dead in the mission and another 19,650 wounded in action.