In an attempt to soothe a worried nation, President Biden made promise after promise.įirst, he promised that American troops would not leave Afghanistan until every single American who wanted to depart was evacuated. I also received thousands of pieces of mail from everyday Americans fearing what may come from the fallout. “We’re seeing all of this, you know, anxiety, and we can’t do enough.In the days and weeks following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul last August, I heard from veterans across the country questioning their service over the previous two decades and there was outrage from military families who had lost loved ones in the Global War on Terror. “The hardest part is just the sense of helplessness,” Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell told the Associated Press last week. But Biden has remained resolute, and the administration has shifted focus from evacuations to completing the exit, as Politico reported Monday. “We must complete this mission, regardless of any arbitrary deadlines,” Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire said last week. Some have urged the president, who acknowledged last week that it may not be possible to rescue everyone before the exit date, to remain as long as it takes to finish. But of course, what’s playing out right now in Afghanistan is far more than a political problem it’s a humanitarian crisis 20 years in the making that has the administration, lawmakers, and others scrambling to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies as Tuesday’s withdrawal deadline approaches. Over the last two weeks that’s gone as one would expect, with high-profile visits knocked off front pages and TV news coverage of the events reframed around Afghanistan coverage.Īll this presents a problem for Biden-and potentially for his party-as midterm elections approach. In early August, a White House official touted to us “a massive push throughout the month to promote President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and highlight the success of the President’s first six months in office.” Cabinet officials would be fanning out across the country to sell the plan. “Our troops deserve nothing less than a complete and unvarnished account of the truth,” she wrote. But Wild made clear in her statement last week that she expects the Biden administration to answer for “what went wrong” in the withdrawal. As Axios reported Sunday, Wild, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has made a point not to blame Biden entirely for the collapse of Afghanistan, as some Republicans have indeed, the unraveling is the result of decisions made by four presidents now. That has presented a political problem for some Democrats, particularly those like Wild in swing states and districts. But a grim mood has gripped the country in the final weeks of summer, and what appeared to be stable approval ratings have been shaken by several twining crises. leadership after four tumultuous years under Donald Trump. “At the same time, it appears that the evacuation process has been egregiously mishandled.”īiden entered office with strong overall approval and maintained it through the first months of his presidency thanks to a series of early policy wins, an accelerated vaccine rollout that temporarily brought the pandemic to heel, and a return to more traditional U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and that we could not continue to put American servicemembers in danger for an unwinnable war,” Pennsylvania Representative Susan Wild said in a statement last week after a terrorist attack in Kabul left scores dead, including thirteen American troops. “It is clear to me that it was long past time to end the U.S. Of course, Biden does bear responsibility for the chaotic conclusion to America’s two-decade war in Afghanistan, which has led even some Democrats to distance themselves from him in recent days. But the confluence of events has created a pivotal moment for the president as his administration scrambles to balance its priorities. Not all of the crises playing out on his watch are directly his fault the pandemic in particular is being prolonged not by Biden administration mismanagement, but by the rise of a more infectious coronavirus mutation, vaccine holdouts, and the culture war politics of Republicans like Ron DeSantis. And his approval ratings are slipping, with the president now polling at an average of 47 percent. A hurricane-now tropical storm-is bearing down on Louisiana with devastating consequences. His withdrawal from Afghanistan, while broadly supported, has been a poorly-executed fiasco. To call Joe Biden’s last few weeks a rough stretch would be an understatement.
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