Biden’s Afghanistan policy has the loss of interest of war-weary Americans

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden removes criticism of Afghanistan’s chaotic withdrawal from his administration because he and his aides believe the political consequences at home will be limited, according to US allies. White House and administration officials.

Biden and his top aides argue that they are managing an evacuation mission as well as might be expected given the country’s faster-than-anticipated takeover by the Taliban insurgents, and want to call attention to the decision to withdraw troops. Americans of the country. country. Read more

The strategy is based on internal and public polls showing that the withdrawal from Afghanistan had been by far the most popular decision Biden made, although the issue was not central to most voters.

“Public opinion is clearly cursed that Americans wanted to get out of the ongoing war and don’t want to go back to it. It’s true today and it will be true in six months,” a Biden ally said. “It’s not about not worrying or being empathetic about what’s going on there, it’s about worrying about what’s going on in the United States.”

Biden has even faced some criticism from some fellow Democrats for his handling of the crisis.

But White House officials believe Americans’ horror at the graphic images of the chaos in Kabul and the pleadings of Afghans who fear the Taliban will kill them will turn into support for the president’s decision to withdraw troops from the country. on August 31 after a 20-year war.

They hope that the history of Afghanistan will backfire, replaced by the resurgence of COVID-19 cases, economic recovery and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Biden is scheduled to deliver statements on Afghanistan at the White House at 1 p.m. (5 p.m. GMT). White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield in an MSNBC interview on Friday did not say whether the president would take questions from reporters.

Biden’s aides perfected the discussion points weeks ago to use them even in the worst cases of withdrawal, some of which have occurred, including stressing that leaving Afghanistan was the decision. correct.

“The idea that somehow there’s a way out without chaos, I don’t know how that happens,” Biden told ABC News on Wednesday. “There is no good time to leave Afghanistan. Fifteen years ago would have been a problem, in 15 years. The basic choice is to send your sons and daughters to war in Afghanistan in perpetuity?” Read more

In recent days, Biden has also attacked the Afghan army for not fighting, denounced the now ousted Afghan government and said it inherited a bad withdrawal agreement from its Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

According to political experts, the strategy has obvious risks.

“The concern is that it will diminish his credibility as commander-in-chief,” said Jim Manley, who was a senior aide to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “If the Taliban go back to what they have done in the past and I guess it will be like that, there will be a lot of bad images coming out of this country.”

INADEQUATE ANSWER

Afghanistan’s messaging is increasingly at odds with the emerging consensus of the administration that the White House, the Defense and State departments, as well as the planning of the U.S. intelligence community for the current situation was inadequate and needs to be completely revised once the mission to evacuate the key has been completed. the people of Afghanistan are complete and the 5,200 American troops now in Kabul have disappeared.

“We’re at the Pentagon and we even know it could have been better,” one official said. “Much better”. Members of the U.S. Congress also plan to investigate what went wrong.

Public opinion, at least for now, is mixed. Most Republican and Democratic voters say the rapid collapse of the Afghan government “is proof of why the U.S. should come out of the conflict.”

According to Reuters / Ipsos polls this week, 31% of American adults agreed that the United States should continue its military operations in Afghanistan, compared to 25% who heard the same in a 2012 poll. month

However, Ipsos polls conducted on Monday also showed that less than half of Americans liked the way Biden had led the U.S. military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan this year. They currently value his performance worse than the other three presidents who presided over the longest war in the United States, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump.

Biden’s general approval sank 46% of American adults in Reuters / Ipsos polls, the lowest recorded in weekly polls since he took office in January.

Republicans, including Trump, have begun to arm the withdrawal as a problem to undermine faith in Biden as commander-in-chief.

It is likely that a majority of Democrats will accept public support for the withdrawal decision, and that the issue should be exhausted before the November 2022 election, said an adviser who worked on Democratic Congress campaigns.

However, he added: “The Biden administration will probably have to defend all the negative headlines coming out of Afghanistan during its tenure, so it is a real mystery.”

Reports by Trevor Hunnicutt and Idrees Ali; Additional reports by Jarrett Renshaw, Patricia Zengerle and Chris Kahn; Edited by Heather Timmons, Peter Cooney and Mark Heinrich

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