Thursday 9 September 2021

Should Trump or Biden be blamed for the Afghanistan fiasco?

The more you hear about what the Republicans and Democrats are saying it's clear that the blame game over Afghanistan is going to be a big issue in next year's midterm elections and probably in the 2024 presidential election too. Every sensible person with even limited knowledge about how US foreign policy works should by now have concluded, rightly, that Trump was to blame for rushing through with a hairbrained so-called deal with the Taliban in Qatar on February 29 last year which gave the insurgents everything they wanted with nothing to be offered in return except vague reassurances, and Biden was to blame for changing his mind about the date for troop withdrawals and by hopelessly underestimating what might happen once the withdrawals started, leading to the airlift of more than 120,000 people from Kabul airport and a devastating but predictable Isis terrorist suicide attack. Trump and Biden share the blame. So do all the key figures in their respective administrations. The whole lot of them, secretaries of state, national security advisers, defence secretaries and top military advisers. But to hear them now justifying what they did and blaming it all on others is pretty shameful. But in politics naming, shaming and blaming is all good campaigning stuff and we are going to get a lot of it over the next few months. American voters hopefully won't be fooled but I sense that the Republicans will come out better if only because the last days of the Afghanistan fiasco took place under the Biden leadership.

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