In capitals across Europe, from London to Berlin, the far-reaching disaster in Afghanistan — solely the fault of Biden, regardless of his pathetic attempts at “advanced rationalization” — poisoned the sweetness of the Biden-Europe honeymoon. Again, it’s not that the withdrawal itself has rankled the Europeans; it was the complete lack of coordination or even a heads-up of what was happening when it began — particularly, as noted by the BBC, since at the time of drawdown of U.S. troops, three-quarters of total troops in Afghanistan were non-American, leading to an international scramble to evacuate.

But, hey — as Joe told us, he has no regrets.

Not only has our hapless president not second-guessed any decisions he made; he would make those decisions all over again and do the whole disastrous thing exactly the same way. Now that’s courageous leadership delusional stubbornness for the sake of political expediency.

While I’m hardly the president of the “We Love Europe!” fan club, a bit of perspective is necessary, here. The German deployment in Afghanistan was its first major combat mission since World War II, reported the BBC, so the frustration at how it ended runs deep. Armin Laschet, Germany’s conservative candidate for chancellor ahead of elections later this month, called the US withdrawal “the greatest debacle that Nato has experienced since its foundation”.

Czech President Milos Zeman upped the ante, labeling Biden’s debacle “cowardice,” and adding: “The Americans have lost the prestige of a global leader.”

 Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former Prime Minister, told the BBC that European expectations of Biden proved to be too high.

Expectations were very high when Joe Biden came in — probably too high, they were unrealistic. His ‘America is back’ suggested a golden age in our relations.

But it didn’t happen and there’s been a shift in a fairly short period of time. The complete lack of consultations over the withdrawal has left a scar.

Without actually saying IT, Nathalie Loiseau, France’s Europe Minister until 2019, pretty much told the BBC that Europe is now going through Trump withdrawals.

Many EU countries were in a state of denial. They thought they should wait until Trump was gone and we’d go back to the ‘old normal’. But that ‘old normal’ isn’t alive anymore. I hope it’s a wake-up call for us.

Let’s be honest. A large part of each of us has to love that regret and buyer’s remorse of generally smug European leaders, right? Oh hell yeah, we do.

.@POTUS @VP spoke about repairing relations with EU/UK allies… hmm, how’s that going? #LiftTheTravelBan https://t.co/yFD8u4k58O

— Sebastian Wulff 🇳🇱🇺🇸 #LiftTheTravelBan (@wulffman89) September 1, 2021

So what’s was Europe’s beef with Trump?

Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, and a visiting professor at Harvard, told the BBC that Europe’s problem with Donald Trump was less about his foreign policy and more about “America First” and how he “seemed to get on”  Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.