With the last American cargo planes flying over the peaks of the Hindu Kush, President Joe Biden kept his election promise to end the longest war ever fought by the United States, one he could not win.
But as the war ended with a chaotic and bloody evacuation that left hundreds of American citizens stranded and thousands of Afghans who had collaborated with his army, the president was visibly on the sidelines. He delegated to a high-ranking commander and his secretary of state the task of informing Americans of the last moments of a conflict that ended in a resounding American defeat.
Biden, for his part, praised in a written statement the soldiers who oversaw the air evacuation of more than 120,000 Afghans, U.S. citizens and allies for their “incomparable courage, professionalism and determination.” And he has pointed out that he will have more to say on Tuesday.
“Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan is over,” the leader said.
The discreet reaction is based on a harsh reality: the war may be over, but the problem Afghanistan poses for Biden is not.
The president continues to face the overwhelming challenges of the abrupt end of the war, including how to help lift up to 200 Americans and thousands of Afghans who have been left behind, the relocation of thousands of refugees who do they were able to be evacuated and the next congressional scrutiny of how, despite growing warnings, their government was surprised by the rapid collapse of the Afghan leadership.
During the withdrawal, Biden has been willing to endure what his advisers hope will be short-term problems to withstand bipartisan and international pressure to extend the August 31 deadline to end military evacuation. American. For more than a decade, Biden has believed in the futility of the conflict and has argued that the defeat of Afghan forces by the Taliban was a belated, though unwelcome, claim.
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Turning the page on Afghanistan is a key foreign policy goal for Biden, who has repeatedly turned the country’s attention to the growing challenges posed by its rivals China and Russia, and has sought to put the focus on the fight against terrorism in areas with major threats.
But in his effort to end the war and restore Washington’s priorities, Biden could have undermined an important premise of his 2020 White House campaign: the promise to usher in an era of greater empathy and collaboration. with allies in foreign policy after four years in which former President Donald Trump has put “the United States first.”
“For someone who made a name for himself as an empathic leader, it has seemed (…) quite rational, even insensitive, in the pursuit of that goal,” said Jason Lyall, associate professor of government at University of Dartmouth.
The Allies – including lawmakers from Britain, France and Germany – were upset by Biden’s insistence on clinging to the August 31 deadline as they tried to evacuate their Afghan citizens and collaborators. Armin Laschet, the leading Conservative candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as Germany’s chancellor, has pointed out that it was “the biggest disaster NATO has suffered since its founding”.
In the United States, Republican lawmakers have called for an investigation into the government’s management of the evacuation, and even Democrats have backed inquiries into what went wrong in the last and fateful months of the occupation.
And at the same time, the huge suicide attack on the final stretch of the evacuation – which killed 13 U.S. soldiers and more than 180 Afghans – raises new questions about whether the country will once again become a camp. of cultivation for terrorists.
Biden blamed Trump for tying his hands and repeatedly recalled that he inherited the Republican government deal with the Taliban to withdraw his country forces in May this year. Renouncing this pact, according to the president, would have put U.S. troops – who until Thursday 2020 had been without casualties in combat – until the Taliban’s focus once again.
Presidential advisers also complained that the now ousted Afghan executive, led by Ashraf Ghani, resisted reaching a political compromise with the Taliban and made strategic mistakes by distributing too little to his security forces.
Republicans, and even some Democratic allies, have harshly criticized the White House’s management of the evacuation, an issue the Republican party seeks to use against Biden.
It remains to be seen whether the criticism will have an impact on voters. A poll by The Associated Press-NORC in early August found that six out of 10 Americans said Afghanistan was a war not worth fighting.
Another conducted by ABC News / Ipsos on August 27 and 28 released that about six out of 10 Americans disapprove of Biden’s management in Afghanistan. The poll also found that most said the United States should remain there until the Americans and Afghans who helped them were evacuated. The survey did not ask whether the withdrawal was supported at a more general level.