Biden may have ended America’s longest war - but he’s handed lots of ammunition to his Republican enemies

Chaotic exit from America’s longest war may cost Biden in upcoming midterm elections, writes Andrew Buncombe

Biden promised to bring every American home from Afghanistan but failed to do so (AFP via Getty Images)

Joe Biden often gets emotional when he speaks.

When he speaks about the military, or about his son Beau, or about other things that matter to him dearly, he gets particularly animated.

On Tuesday, a day after Biden oversaw the final evacuation of US troops and civilians from Afghanistan and in doing so turned the page of two decades of history, he defended his actions.

His speech from the White House, that nudged past 25 minutes, was his most impassioned defence yet, not only of the decision to bring those troops home, but of the manner in which he did so.

“I was not going to extend this forever war,” he said, wearing a dark navy suit and a pale blue tie. “And I was not going to extend a forever exit.”

Speaking from the White House State Dining Room, he took responsibility for the decision.

“Now some say, ‘We should have started mass evacuations sooner’, and ‘Couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner?’. I respectfully disagree,” he said. “The bottom line is, there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, threats we faced. None.”

If you watched along, there was both an emotional and intellectual consistency to his words. And there was a logic to them as well.

Since at least 2009, when he was Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden has been pushing for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, arguing that it is simply not in America’s interests to keep them there.

He repeated that point on Tuesday, in many ways a starkly honest admission that America’s priorities in that country were never about girls’ education or spreading democracy.

“I simply do not believe the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars a year in Afghanistan,” he said.

Supporters of Biden will have been pleased by this full-throated defence of his actions, even if he sought to heap blame on lots of other individuals - Donald Trump, for signing the deal with the Taliban, and then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani who fled the country.

But these things are not just about logic, or even honesty.

(AFP via Getty Images)

While Biden’s Operation Allied Rescue managed to evacuate as many as 120,000 people, including 6,000 Americans, they were unable to bring back up to 200 US citizens who had wanted to be on those planes that lifted out of Kabul, shortly before midnight local time on Monday.

People can quibble as to the precise number, and he can point out that officials sent 19 messages to those individuals since the spring, advising people on how they could leave.

He can also vow efforts to retrieve those stranded Americans will continue, albeit relying on the cooperation of the Taliban. (We may come to learn, that US officials were told the Taliban would help as long as the Americans were out by Aug 31.)

But it’s safe to say the American public does not like the idea of American citizens, or those Afghans who helped the US military, being left behind. Polls show a strong majority wanted troops to stay until every American was able to step inside the huge belly of a C-17 transport plane.

Republicans see an opening here to attack Biden and the Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms, and some are already calling for his impeachment.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy described his handling of the evacuation as “probably the biggest failure in American government on a military stage in my lifetime”. “We can never make this mistake again,” McCarthy said.

Congressman Michael McCaul said of the gunfire set off by the Taliban once the final plane left: “Now they’re celebrating their victory over the United States of America. It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful. It’s wrong to our veterans so well.”

Senator Ted Cruz, never one to give up an opportunity to attack Democrats, tweeted: This is horrifying. And wrong. America doesn’t leave Americans behind.”

There is another, more sinister element to the attacks of conservatives. Having blasted Biden for failing to more speedily fly people out of Afghanistan, the likes Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and others, are stirring up bigotted, anti-refugee rhetoric in relation to those he has brought here.

“If history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country in the coming months, probably in your neighborhood,” Carlson said this week. “And over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade, and then we are invaded. It is always the same.”

Groups that work with new refugees, fleeing some of the most dangerous places in the world, are already worried about the abuse, and worse, people may face because of words such as Carlson’s. And if the most racist rump of the Republican Party seeks to use this as election tool, that is likely to get worse.

As Biden said, none of this was going to end well, or be achieved easily.

But just as the American military left behind a stash of such as Black Hawk helicopters now being giddily flown around Kabul by their new Taliban owners, by failing to ensure American got out - something he promised to do, including on a recent ABC News interview - Biden he has handed to Republicans some heavy political ordinance with which to attack him.