As anyone could predict, the GOP will reflexively wash its hands of any responsibility for the 20-year Afghan adventure begun by Pres. George W. Bush. They’d do the same if somehow their avatar of presidentiality had reclaimed his throne last week. But he didn’t. Joe Biden sits at the Resolute Desk.
E.J. Dionne writes:
Over the decades, conservatives have been enormously successful at selling a parody of liberalism. Liberals are cast as dreamy idealists who think “throwing money at problems” is the way to solve them. They’re painted as hostile to a tough-minded examination of their programs and indifferent to whether they work.
This parody has things exactly backward. In 2021, it’s liberals who want citizens, politicians included, to look rigorously at the evidence.
The evidence against making a nation-state out of Afghanistan was visible to anyone with any sense of history.
Eric Boehlert remarks on the “blame Biden” impulse of the press:
Treating the Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan’s capitol over the weekend as a shocking event in the wake of U.S. troops withdrawing from the war-torn country, the press eagerly jumped into the blame game. In the process, they diligently did the GOP’s bidding by omitting key context in its rush to pin the blame for a 20-year, extraordinarily complex and heartbreaking military and foreign policy failure on a single man who took office just seven months ago.
Turning over their platforms to partisan Republicans and pro-war military experts, the media seemed eager to portray President Joe Biden as one being swallowed up in “crisis,” even as his call to withdraw troops has drawn overwhelming, bipartisan support at home.
Axios laid it on thick. Doubling as a GOP springboard, the news outlet made sweeping factual declarations in its news coverage: “Rarely has an American president’s predictions been so wrong, so fast, so convincingly as Biden on Afghanistan.”
Etc., etc.
“Raise your hand if you remember the predictions President George W. Bush made about invading Iraq, long before the U.S. spent $2 trillion and more than 500,000 people died,” Boehlert writes.
The Washington Post editorial board, which in 2002 and 2003 published nearly 30 endorsements advocating for the invasion of Iraq, howled that the troop withdrawal had been “precipitous.”
That drew a sharp rebuke from Rajan Menon, a professor of international relations at the Powell School, City College of New York:
Precipitous? Is this really an accurate characterization of a military campaign that has lasted close to 20 years and that cost close to $90 billion just to train the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces — and almost $2.3 trillion if all other costs are added in, including $815.7 billion in war-related and reconstruction expenses
A large chunk of Sunday’s coverage simply consisted of journalists recording Republicans’ completely predictable attacks on Biden. “Republican lawmakers are denouncing President Biden’s admin. for the Taliban’s aggressive takeover of Afghanistan,” NBC News excitedly announced on Twitter. What Biden’s Republican critics would do in Afghanistan in terms of ending the United States’ presence was never addressed, nor was any historical context offered.
[…]
When Biden announced earlier this year that all U.S. troops were coming home from Afghanistan, 70 percent of Americans supported the move, including 56 percent support from Republicans.
But now everyone is shocked, shocked that intelligence Biden relied on was so bad and that there was so little time to evacuate allies because Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban so quickly. No one could have seen that coming, right? Much less do anything to stop it.