In this episode of Try to Control Your Shock and Amazement…
Spoiler: Joe Biden’s ill-advised withdrawal from Afghanistan was Donald Trump’s fault. No, really. Just ask the Biden administration, whose recently completed review of the chaotic withdrawal repeatedly blamed Trump. Shocked? Me, neither — this lie’s even too preposterous for the serial-lying Biden administration.
So, yeah, as reported by the Associated Press, the White House on Thursday released its review of Biden’s disastrous, haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The review repeatedly criticizes the Trump administration for “constraining the conditions” of American withdrawal.
As you know, over the past many months, departments and agencies key to the Afghanistan withdrawal have been conducting thorough internal after-action reviews examining their decision-making processes and execution. Recently, the Secretaries of State and Defense told members of Congress they would provide Congress with access to these reviews by mid-April.
Today, the agencies will give Congress access to those classified reviews, and the NSC will also be releasing a document that provides our perspectives, outlines in broad strokes some of what we learned, and how we have already implemented those lessons in other global challenges.
Uh-huh. And where can we look to find the constrained conditions of the Islamist extremist Taliban, once the virtually unannounced withdrawal began? And, under what constrained conditions were the most terrorist organization on the planet operating?
Nonetheless, the most inept presidential administration in at least modern history publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the so-called “hotwash” of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation’s longest war, taking little (zero) responsibility for its own actions and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.
Not to nitpick, but to accept a review of Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from war-torn Afghanistan from the president’s own administration is tantamount to accepting a review from the Sinaloa Cartel of the activities of the cartel’s current boss, Ismael Zambada García (aka El Mayo).
Here’s more, via AP:
The administration said detailed reviews conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, which were transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and would not be released publicly.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House summary states, noting that when Biden entered office, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”
The report also faults intelligence community assessments about the Afghan army’s willingness to fight and claims Biden followed military commanders’ recommendations for the pacing of the drawdown of U.S. forces.
Let’s revisit part of that last line: Biden followed military commanders’ recommendations for the pacing of the drawdown of U.S. forces.
Just one problem.
Either the White House is lying, or top military commanders repeatedly lied, as reported by multiple sources, in September 2021:
Top generals told lawmakers under oath on Tuesday that they advised President Joe Biden early this year to keep several thousand troops in Afghanistan — directly contradicting the president’s comments in August that no one warned him not to withdraw troops from the country.
[…]
Biden, however, was asked in an interview with ABC News … whether any of his military advisers told him to leave 2,500 troops in the country.
“No,” Biden said. “No one said that to me that I can recall.”
Well, hell — Biden can’t “recall” how to leave a stage he’s been on for less than 30 minutes, so what does his alleged inability to recall anything have to do with the truth? That, or Biden and his administration continue to lie their asses off about the commanders’ recommendations. (I’m going with “b.”)
Congressional Republicans have sharply criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal, focusing on the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport, which also killed more than 100 Afghans.
Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was badly wounded in the explosion, told a congressional hearing in March that the withdrawal “was a catastrophe” and “there was an inexcusable lack of accountability.”
Biden has repeatedly justified the catastrophic withdrawal — which left untold numbers of American citizens at the mercy of the Taliban — as a refusal to prolong a war that had long needed to end.
The Bottom Line
This was never about ending a war that had long needed to end — most Americans have agreed on that, for years. What it was about was how Biden ended it. It didn’t have to end that way.
But, Lyin’ Biden being Lyin’ Biden, the ineffectual Commander in Chief simply blames the whole thing on Donald Trump — and calls it a day.
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