{UAH} AFTER EPOCHAL DISASTER IN AFGHANISTAN, THE FRAUDLENT HAS TO RESIGN IN DISGRACE

After epochal disaster in Afghanistan, Biden should step down

by Quin Hillyer, Commentary Writer | 

August 18, 2021 04:00 AM

President Joe Biden should resign in disgrace.

Seriously. As I have argued for decades , it is long past time for American politicians to adopt the Asian cultural model of resignations, as a matter of honor, for gross failures or derelictions. A “culture of shame ” would do much to restore faith in our institutions by reasserting a sense of personal responsibility to a political culture most see as being more about personal aggrandizement.

In Biden’s case, there is more than enough to be ashamed of.

As of last Friday, I already was preparing a column on why Biden, after six months, is on track to be the worst president of my lifetime. (I’m 57.) His outlandish spending, his inducements for inflation, his leftist culture wars, his failure to support protesters in Cuba, his border disaster, his abandonment of U.S. energy independence in favor of fuel development by Russia and OPEC, and his extravagant abuse of executive authority in constitutionally dubious ways all give evidence of Biden’s unsuitability for the job.

Still, bad policies and generic lack of competence aren’t in themselves worthy of ritual resignation. They just require the nation to muddle through the leader’s errors until, through constitutional processes, it can elect a replacement. Shame-based resignations for the sake of honoring the broader civil society are merited only for more serious breaches of ethics or character or for negligence or dereliction so gross as to stain the office or the nation itself.

Biden’s handling of Afghanistan is just such a dereliction.

There will be plenty of time to review how three prior presidents, especially the horrendous former President Donald Trump , laid the groundwork for the disaster in south-central Asia. Yet, even with all of Trump’s emetic fawning over the Taliban, Biden was not obligated to take Trump’s gross mistakes and make them geometrically worse. But that’s what Biden has done.

Biden was not duty-bound to abide by Trump’s determination to abandon Afghanistan. After Trump left office, the truly bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group , a distinguished panel without notably preconceived biases, concluded that the mission was accomplishing important objectives, that a continuing force of 5,000 U.S. military personnel was warranted, that withdrawal would likely lead to outright Taliban supremacy in the country, and, most important, that withdrawal would make a terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland “likely” within 18-36 months from a Taliban takeover. Biden completely rejected the Study Group’s wise advice and major warnings. He likewise ignored intelligence warnings of looming catastrophe.

Moreover, even if he did insist upon complete withdrawal, Biden could have secured evacuation of nonmilitary personnel and of proven Afghan allies before continuing the troop drawdown, not after. Observers from across the spectrum repeatedly and increasingly urgently implored him to grant the visas of and begin voluntary expatriation of as many of the 88,000 Afghans who had requested asylum as possible, or at least of the tens of thousands whose bona fides as friends of freedom could be readily determined.

Rather than bugging out of the extremely valuable Bagram Air Base a full month before completing withdrawal, Biden should have kept it operational until the end. Indeed, he should have sent in more troops during the transition to provide extra support for an orderly transition. That temporary troop augmentation should have been instituted before the U.S. exit while the Taliban were still at bay. Instead, we are now belatedly bolstering troop strength to 7,000, nearly three times as many as were there before the withdrawal began — but only after the Taliban have taken over most of the country, begun instituting horrific reprisals, and created the scenes of abject horror we have seen in Kabul.

As it is, not only will tens of thousands of directly friendly Afghans (not to mention millions of innocent Afghan bystanders) be left at the mercy of the Taliban , but now we learn that some 11,000 Americans remain somewhere in the country, with no guarantee of, and diminishing hopes for, timely escape. Yet, this outlandishly feckless administration now sends word that while flights back to freedom are available, “please be advised that the United States government cannot guarantee your security ” en route to the airport.

With all this going on, this poor excuse for a leader, this abject moral coward, dared claim in his blame-casting national address , after days of hiding out at Camp David, that “we planned for every contingency.” Well, if he doesn’t consider the lives of 11,000 American civilians a “contingency” worth including in his planning, he isn’t fit to spend another minute in office.

Biden inherited a strategically useful stalemate in Afghanistan. Through his own choices, he has produced an abject defeat, a diplomatic and humanitarian disaster, and an open invitation for our enemies to cow other allies into submission by telling them the U.S. is not to be trusted . Every bit of this was predictable, and every bit was avoidable.

For his disgraceful lack of competence and especially of character, the already doddering Biden ought to leave office. Resign now, before he does further, irreparable damage to these United States.

EM         -> {   Gap   at   46  } – {Allan Barigye is a Rwandan predator}

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"