Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
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Thursday, in a staggering display of upside-down arithmetic, the Biden administration took full responsibility for Donald Trump’s handling of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which occurred during the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency.
While tongue-in-cheek, the point made in the previous sentence is nonetheless accurate.
In a summary of reports gathered from the Department of Defense and State Department, the White House admitted to numerous mistakes that were made during the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but somehow managed to not point to any examples of times Joe Biden did poorly.
“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the summary reads. “The outgoing administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans or Afghan allies.”
It is important to note that Biden became president in January of 2021 and the most controversial part of the Afghanistan withdrawal happened in August of that year.
Although he is well entrenched in a well-documented legal case, former President Donald Trump was informed of the White House’s report.
“These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing – Blame ‘TRUMP’ for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military FIRST, GIVE $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind. Biden is responsible, no one else!”
KIRBY SPINS HIMSELF INTO A DIZZY
John Kirby, Biden’s national security coordinator for strategic communications and hatchet man for this particular sales task, told reporters gathered for a press conference that the summary of reports represented Biden administration personnel’s “perspectives on the withdrawal and outlines in broad strokes some of what we learned.”
It is a good thing that Kirby used the word “perspectives” because what he shared was in no way commensurate with how the American people understood the withdrawal.
By the end of the presser, Kirby had managed to disagree with reporters who called the withdrawal chaotic — this despite ample video evidence to the contrary and the deaths of 13 U.S. military personnel at the Kabul airport — and to give credit to Biden for choosing to end the war, which was a decision made by Trump prior to leaving office.
He also referred to the summaries, which were conducted by departments under the leadership of members of the Biden cabinet, as independent.
Most of all, though, Kirby painted a picture of Biden as a man incapable of doing anything more than he did because of the actions of Trump.
“President Biden’s choice was stark: either withdraw all our forces or resume fighting the Taliban,” Kirby said. “He chose the former but, even in so doing, secured extra time to conduct that withdrawal, stretching it out to August.
“And that’s the second point worth making. Despite having his options curtailed, President Biden led a deliberate, rigorous, and inclusive decision-making process that was responsive to facts on the ground. He focused keenly on the need for proper planning. In fact, President Biden directed his top national security leaders to begin planning for a withdrawal even before he had made the final decision to leave Afghanistan.”
When a collection of reporters referred to the chaos that occurred, particularly in the last days of America’s time in Afghanistan, Kirby responded, “For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it!”
John Kirby on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan:
"For all this talk of chaos, I just didn't see it!" pic.twitter.com/UYOkkZubq6
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 6, 2023
REPORTERS POUNCE
Reporters leaped to point out the folly of Kirby’s statements, with one asking why the president was “helpless” to perform better, especially given that military leadership also had access to intelligence.
“The President was anything but helpless,” Kirby said, later adding, “He repeatedly … pulsed his national security team and senior military leaders about the conditions on the ground, asking tough questions, and getting answers and getting responses. And he acted on the best military judgment and the best assessments from the intelligence community as he could, as he made these decisions going forward.”
Kirby did admit, and this is reflected in the summary, that there were shortfalls in intra-agency communication and planning, but on multiple occasions stated that the report was not meant to bring about accountability only to document lessons learned.
And that lesson was that it was mostly Trump’s fault, a reality that reporters throughout the room noted.
“You assign so much accountability to the Trump administration and very little, comparatively, to your own,” one reporter observed.
Kirby replied,
After-action reviews are done to — and it’s very common practice that they are not investigations … They are studying … the conduct and the execution of operations or policy. And in this case, both State and DOD have now conducted these in a classified way. The idea is to learn from them, to — to apply those lessons learned as needed.”
REPUBLICANS RESPOND
Unsurprisingly, responses to Kirby’s remarks on the right were as passionate as they were swift.
“Joe Biden left hundreds of Americans behind to the enemy and watched thirteen service members get killed — but he won’t take an ounce of responsibility or hold anyone accountable. He’s not fit to be President,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tweeted.
Joe Biden left hundreds of Americans behind to the enemy and watched thirteen service members get killed – but he won’t take an ounce of responsibility or hold anyone accountable. He’s not fit to be President https://t.co/U7mYERoOso
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) April 6, 2023
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted that the Biden administration was engaging in a “brazen whitewashing of their failure in Afghanistan,” which McCaul said was “disgraceful, unjust, and flat-out insulting.”
He added,
It’s insulting to our veterans who served so bravely; to the Afghan women fighting for their educations and even their lives; to the U.S. citizens and allies left behind under Taliban rule; and to every American who watched videos of the withdrawal with their own two eyes.