Afghanistan, Biden’s silence under siege at Camp David- time.news

by time news
from Viviana Mazza

Within 72 hours, the relationship of the media and the American political world towards the president changed, with long-lasting implications still difficult to judge

FROM OUR SEND
NEW YORK Joe Biden will be remembered as the president who ended the longest war. It was what she wanted, but she didn’t know it would end like this. The president known for empathy chooses coldness, headlines the Washington Post. Faced with the fall of Kabul and the panic and desperation of the Afghans at the airport, Joe Biden let it be known that he will speak to the nation in the coming days but reiterated in a written statement on Saturday 14 August that he does not intend to leave this war to a fifth president. There Cnn he asks when the president will return to the White House from Camp David, where it seems impossible for him to stay until Wednesday as originally planned and where, sitting alone in a room, he receives national security briefings.

An indelible stain

The criticisms of Biden are mostly not about the withdrawal itself but the lack of planning, the failure of intelligence and that unfortunate phrase about the Saigon comparison: You will never see Americans taken from the roof of an embassy. It is true – as Biden recalled in a written statement – that the initial peace agreement with the Taliban was carried out by Trump, but Biden – after supporting the intervention in Kabul in 2001 – has always believed in the need for withdrawal, already from 2005 onwards. Although Trump had set his retreat in May and reduced troops to just 2,500, the president now Biden and it was up to his team, who moved to 9/11 and then August 31, to organize the exit from the theater of war. . Former ambassador to Afghanistan under Obama, Ryan Crocker, calls this exit from the war an indelible stain on the Biden presidency. Republicans harshly criticize the Democratic president, the parliamentarians of his party remain for the most part silent. During the briefing by Pentagon chief Lloyd Allen, they watched images from Kabul live on cell phones that told a different story live than the one presented by the Administration. Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempts a defense of Biden (the president must be admired for the clarity of his intentions on Afghanistan …) but is completely ignored by the press.

Within 72 hours, President Biden’s relationship with the media, the American political world and foreign policy experts radically changed, with long-lasting implications still difficult to assess, but with an immediate impact on the ability to manage both the crisis and the Kabul that the other internal challenges, writes Politico. The question of whether this harsh blow will have long-lasting effects on his presidency.

The threat of terrorism

Public opinion has long supported the withdrawal from a war that took too many American lives and too much money for twenty years and that no longer seemed to have an impact on security from terrorism after Osama bin Laden’s death. But Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mark Milley now says that estimates of the ability of terrorists to reorganize under a Taliban regime have changed from previous ones taking at least two years.

Antony Blink

The words of the administration’s respected personalities such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken are now being challenged on TV, when it claims that it is absolutely not like Saigon. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explains that the president never considered Kabul’s fall inevitable, his claims that the withdrawal is working are called almost comical by the Cnn. On Wall Street Journal human rights lawyer Kimberly Motley replies that much worse than Saigon. Someone will have to pay for this failure — it is beginning to be said that it will be Blinken and Sullivan. The moment of great tension also due to the fear that the Taliban will not accept that the airport will remain controlled by 6,000 US marines for the next two weeks to allow the full evacuation of American and Afghan personnel. Last night the State Department released a joint statement with allies, including Italy, warning that those in positions of power in Afghanistan are responsible for protecting lives and property.

Saigon e Teheran

In addition to the comparisons with Vietnam, when the American embassy in Kabul was abandoned on Sunday, August 15, Jimmy Carter’s research has gone viral on social media: people are making a comparison with Tehran in 1979, not for the taking of American hostages but for the impact on the Biden presidency. Donald Trump yesterday from New York, with the red hat Make America Great Again, proclaimed: Biden resigns.

August 16, 2021 (change August 16, 2021 | 15:11)

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