Here follows, reprinted in full, CNN’s account of what we should call the Biden-Blinken apologia related to his conspicuous failures in withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan:
Blinken: "We
inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan" on withdrawing US from
Afghanistan
From CNN's Ellie
Kaufman
Secretary of State
Antony Blinken said the Biden administration “inherited a deadline, we did not
inherit a plan,” referring to former President Trump’s May 1 deadline for the
US to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Here's how the
exchange between Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, and Blinken unfolded
in today's hearing:
Sherman: Did the Trump
administration leave on your desk a pile of notebooks as to exactly how to
carry out that plan? Did we have a list of which Afghans we were going to
evacuate? Did we have a plan to get Americans from all over Afghanistan to
Kabul and out in an orderly way? How meticulous was the planning for the Trump
Administration declared May 1 withdrawal?
Blinken: Thank you
congressman, we inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan.
Sherman: So no plan at
all. It’s amazing that it wasn’t much, much worse.
Some more context:
President Biden in remarks last month said he takes responsibility for the
decision to withdraw at the end of August, but he also blamed his predecessor
for signing on to an earlier agreement with the Taliban for a US withdrawal on
May 1.
"My predecessor,
the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove US troops
May 1, just months after I was inaugurated. It included no requirement that the
Taliban work out a cooperative government arrangement with the Afghan
government," Biden said.
"But it did
authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the
Taliban's top war commanders, among those that just took control of
Afghanistan. By the time I came into office, the Taliban was in its strongest
military position since 2001."
CNN's [BIDEN
APOLOGISTS] Maegan Vazquez and Kevin Liptak contributed reporting to this post.
Most of the propositions detailed in the CNN report are
objectively factual, but the larger truths here lie outside the facts. The
centerpiece of the Trump “plan,” abandoned by Biden, was conditioned upon an
agreement that the government of Afghanistan should be shared between the
Taliban and the American supported regime, a condition undermined by Biden’s
withdrawal of intelligence and military support of the Karzai-Ghani government.
Like Trump, Karzai, who remained in Afghanistan
after Ghani left, also wanted a fusion government.
Taken as a whole, the apologia is profoundly silly. The
Biden-Blinken chief underlying plea, which stands out like a mashed, purple
thumb, is that Biden inherited from Trump a “plan” that Biden, Trump’s
successor, was bound to accept “as is.”
This is a profoundly silly view of unfolding events.
Almost immediately upon achieving office, Biden – and
Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi, and leader of the U.S. Senate Chuck
Schumer – began repealing most features of the Trump presidency.
Biden’s immediate repeal of Trump's border policy entailed,
even CNN may agree, “troubling” consequences. And Biden’s attempt to pass
through an almost evenly divided Congress what should properly be regarded as a
Bernie Sander’s budget will carry in its wake equally “troubling” economic
consequences.
The U.S. economy is now poised on the edge of a “troubling”
recession, owing to policies pursued in many states by governors who had shut
down businesses for more than a year. A recession is a slowdown in business
activity that produces a predictable scarcity of goods and services. Such
scarcities are ineluctably followed by higher prices, which many people in the
United States may not be able, in a post-Coronavirus economy, to absorb into
their household budgets.
Facing the prospect of a deepening recession, the Biden-Sanders
proposal to increase taxes on profitable businesses and millionaires --
reversing the regulatory pull back and tax cuts of the Trump administration –
is an arrogant but populist attempt to repeal the laws of economics. Of course,
Sanders’ economic laws, which dovetail with those of failed autocratic states
everywhere, are socialist in intent and nature. It is not at all surprising
that a socialist Senator should embrace an economic policy that runs athwart
the policies of John F. Kennedy, not to mention Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations.
Really, a President and his advisors who can repeal age-old
sound economic prescriptions, not to mention Trump’s economic policies, can do
anything, no?
Reversing an understanding – not a “plan,” even the brights
that surround Biden have agreed – should have been a walk in the park for a
President who styles himself as the latest incarnation of Franklin Roosevelt.
The unacknowledged problem is this: Biden and his Democrat associates are
arguing 1) we were forced to accept the terms of the Trump plan, and 2) there
was no plan.
We should, as far as possible, take Blinken-Biden at their
word: “Blinken: Thank you congressman, we
inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan.”
Sorry, many apologies, but if Biden inherited from Trump no
plan, he and Pentagon generals were free, over a six month period in which
Biden was President, to construct a plan of withdrawal that would have assured
a safe exit of all Americans in Afghanistan, as well as Afghans, numbering in
the thousands, who had helped Americans prosecute a twenty year peace that had kept
Taliban wolves from the door? Why was such a plan not pulled off the drawing
board and made available long before Biden’s precipitous and ill-fated
withdrawal?
Or -- was such a plan proffered by the Pentagon and rejected
by Biden because he did not wish to miss the arrival of the 9-11 bus
commemorating the 20 year old Salifist attack on the homeland, so that he might
ring a campaign tocsin and announce that Democrats were able to end America’s
forever war?
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