Biden mocked internationally for botched Afghan withdrawal
Thomas McDonald
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America’s international allies are mocking President Biden for his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the swift takeover of the Taliban.
“Whatever happened to ‘America is back’?” Asked British MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defense Committee in the British Parliament.
“People are bewildered that after two decades of this big, high-tech power intervening, they are withdrawing and effectively handing the country back to the people we went in to defeat,” Ellwood added. “This is the irony. How can you say America is back when we’re being defeated by an insurgency armed with no more than [rocket-propelled grenades], land mines, and AK-47s?”
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Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, said that German lawmakers are furious with the decision of Biden’s administration.
“The Biden administration came to office promising an open exchange, a transparent exchange with its allies. They said the transatlantic relationship would be pivotal,” Clüver Ashbrook said. “As it is, they’re playing lip service to the transatlantic relationship and still believe European allies should fall into line with U.S. priorities.”
Riad Kahwaji, a United Arab Emirates security official, said Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan “is raising alarm bells everywhere.”
“The U.S.’s credibility as an ally has been in question for a while,” Kahwaji said. “We see Russia fighting all the way to protect the Assad regime [in Syria], and now the Americans are pulling out and leaving a big chaos in Afghanistan.”
President Biden addressed the nation from the White House on Monday regarding chaos taking place in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the Taliban quickly took over. Biden’s speech was blasted by those on both sides of the aisle as defecting blame for the botched withdrawal.
“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor, which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019, that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on US forces,” Biden said, placing blame on former President Donald Trump.
“Shortly before he left office, he also drew US forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500,” Biden continued.
A former senior advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, said Biden’s withdrawal is a “disaster.”
“You cannot defend the execution here,” Axelrod said. “This has been a disaster, and everybody, anybody with a beating heart, watching these scenes of people desperately swarming the airport trying to get out ahead of the slaughter that they anticipate from the Taliban, you know, it is heartbreaking. It is depressing. And it’s a failure.”
“He needs to own that failure,” he added. “He’s the commander in chief.”
“After the disastrous events in Afghanistan, we must confront a serious question: Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office, or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?” Said Florida Senator Rick Scott.