Joe Biden has made a decision about the August 31 deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan and it’s not good.
The Taliban had given Biden a “red line” saying that they wouldn’t agree to an extension of the deadline that Biden had arbitrarily picked.
Suhail Shaheen, a member of the Taliban delegation in Qatar’s capital city Doha said Monday U.S. military continuing to evacuate past this month would amount to ‘extending occupation’ and that is ‘a red line’.
If the US or UK were to seek additional time to continue evacuations – the answer is no. Or there would be consequences,’ he told Sky News in an interview. ‘
‘It will create mistrust between us,’ Shaheen continued. ‘If they are intent on continuing the occupation it will provoke a reaction.’
Imagine that — the Taliban giving the most powerful country in the world a “red line.”
So what is Joe Biden’s reaction to being treated like this by the Taliban?
He’s decided to completely capitulate to them, rather than operating from a position of strength.
Biden has told the leaders at the G-7 that he wouldn’t be extending the deadline after they begged him to, despite the fact that there are still thousands of Americans unaccounted for and thousands of SIVs/allies who are not being allowed into the airport by the Taliban. This was also after the head of the CIA had a secret meeting with the head of the Taliban to beg for more time. Talk about humiliating negotiation and then to come away unsuccessfully anyway.
The G-7 apparently had an agreement that they were just going to tell the Taliban it was going to have to take longer and the Taliban were just going to have to deal with it, but Biden changed his mind and undercut them yet again, saying that he would adhere to the deadline.
WOW: Fox reporting that the G7 had an agreement in place to tell the Taliban the G7 nations would stay in #Afghanistan past August 31, and now Joe Biden has undercut our allies again. pic.twitter.com/tXGoPmA3ln
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) August 24, 2021
“What we’ve done today, the G7, is we’ve … agreed not just a joint approach to dealing with the evacuation, but also a roadmap for the way in which we’re going to engage with the Taliban,” Johnson said after an emergency virtual meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations.
“The number one condition we’re setting as G7 is that they’ve got to guarantee right the way through, through August 31 and beyond, safe passage for those who want to come out.
It’s bad when the G-7 has more of a spine than Joe Biden.
Adhering to the deadline contradicts Biden’s own pledge that he would get out every American who wanted to leave as well as every SIV/ally. There’s no possible way to to do that in that time unless he’s doing pick ups outside Kabul for all the people trapped behind enemy lines and there’s no indication that they intend to do that.
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