![]() ![]() While nothing can repair the damage from the chaos-and, yes, callousness-of the last week, a sustained drive to evacuate all the Afghans who worked for Americans in Kabul, plus all the beleaguered journalists and humanitarian workers, might salvage a smidge of national honor. In the days ahead, the desperation deployment of 6,000 American military forces to Kabul may belatedly organize a much more orderly finale to the nation’s longest war. But, if that were the case, Biden (no amateur when it comes to reading CIA reports) would never have uttered such cringeworthy lines in July as, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.” There will be many self-serving explanations by intelligence agencies that such a total collapse was indeed a possible scenario included in all memos to the president. spy agencies missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, so did America’s intelligence community blunder again over the pace of the fall of Kabul. In all likelihood, there were memos galore about which Afghan political figures would step forward as national heroes in a moment of crisis.īut just as the CIA and all the other expensively intrusive U.S. Amid the thousands (maybe millions) of secret documents destroyed in the panicked last hours of the American embassy in Kabul were undoubtedly endless upbeat and nuanced assessments of the capabilities of Afghan fighting forces. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.”Īll true, but insufficient. ![]() As the president put it, “Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. Then Biden indulged himself with a litany of well-justified complaints about the rush-for-the-exits Afghan government. There was no admission of American strategic misjudgment beyond Biden’s weaselly worded admission, “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” Unfortunately, what was also missing from Biden’s speech was an honest explanation of the colossal intelligence failure that left the White House reeling from the speed of the Taliban’s triumph. But, in truth, Biden praised the American military and ended his solemn remarks with a revised coda, “May God protect our troops, our diplomats, and all brave Americans serving in harm’s way.” The GOP’s sound-bite chorus of neoconservatives and political opportunists will undoubtedly fault the president for not devoting the bulk of the speech to lionizing the American fallen in Afghanistan. Ford invoked the 1815 Battle of New Orleans and quoted Abraham Lincoln as he talked about the need “to regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam.”īiden, to his credit, avoided such rhetorical tricks. ![]() ![]() In April 1975, just a few days before Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, Jerry Ford tried to put a patriotic spin on America’s abject defeat in a speech at Tulane University in New Orleans. And Kennedy responded with the appropriately over-the-top Cold War boilerplate, “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana.” In a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami, JFK was presented with the brigade’s battle flag. There was none of the false bravado that Kennedy displayed in December 1962 when he greeted the returned captives from Brigade 2506’s abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. ![]()
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