Comment
by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay
A Chaotic US Exit from Afghanistan: American Emperors have no clothes
Monday, August 16 2021
The Afghanistan war was a botched operation from day one, when George W. Bush invaded that country, in October 2001, "because something had to be done after the 9/11 attack on the United States". Then, George W. Bush sealed the issue for the future when he withdrew a large number of U.S. troops from Afghanistan to invade the country of Iraq, in March 2003, with his big lie about "weapons of mass destruction" in that country.
After terrorist Osama Bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan, on May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama could have called for the end of the Afghanistan military adventure and declare victory. He did not, because he knew full well that without U.S. military support, the puppet Afghan government would collapse, and he would have to take full responsibility for the disaster.
And in February 2020, then President Donald Trump made an ominous 'deal' with the Islamic taliban, in Doha, Qatar, fixing the date of May 2021 for a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Even though President Joe Biden extended that date to late summer 2021, he more or less followed Trump's plan of withdrawal, no matter what. N.B. : The Trump-taliban agreement was to be implemented after the November 2020 election, which Mr. Trump expected to win.
Now, President Joe Biden is likely to be the only one bearing the full political cost of twenty years of a bad American foreign policy by previous administrations.
Granted, the Biden administration should have better anticipated the chaos to follow a precipitous American withdrawal from Afghanistan and better planned in consequence. The images of sheer chaos seen around the world will follow the United States for years to come.
That will make it easier for Donald Trump and Republicans in the U.S. Congress to dump the entire responsibility for the disaster on the sitting president, on his Security advisor Jake Sullivan and on his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Who says that politics is a fair and honest game?
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