{"id":296096,"date":"2021-07-10T02:19:32","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T23:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/biden-is-badly-fumbling-the-us-pullout-from-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2021-07-10T02:19:32","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T23:19:32","slug":"biden-is-badly-fumbling-the-us-pullout-from-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/biden-is-badly-fumbling-the-us-pullout-from-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"#Biden is badly fumbling the US pullout from Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Biden is badly fumbling the US pullout from Afghanistan<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n

Barely a day passes without news<\/a> of more Taliban gains in Afghanistan. Perhaps the Afghan government and its forces will prove more resilient than many expect, but if the country continues its slide toward chaos or, worse, the Taliban rapidly take Kabul, President Joe Biden\u2019s decision to withdraw a residual US force will look like an amateurish, unforced error by a man who prides himself on his foreign-policy experience and acumen.<\/p>\n

With his top military leadership opposed and credible warnings that Kabul could fall within months after a withdrawal, Biden went ahead with it anyway, on the basis of what an aide has called \u201chis gut.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, indications are that the president would have been better off heeding his military advisers than his viscera.<\/p>\n

The Afghan war has, of course, stretched on for two decades and become a holding action satisfying to no one. But the cost to the United States of sustaining 3,500 troops in the country without losing anyone in combat for more than a year hasn\u2019t been high compared with the entirely plausible downside of Islamist extremists allied with al Qaeda sweeping to power again in \u00adAfghanistan.<\/p>\n

The desire to pull out of \u00adAfghanistan has been an area of rare Biden-Trump agreement. Then-President Donald Trump\u2019s foolhardy cease-fire deal with the Taliban in February 2020 set the predicate for Biden\u2019s withdrawal. It would have taken some determination for Biden to reverse the US promise in that deal to withdraw its forces by May 2021, although the Taliban\u2019s transparent bad faith provided plenty of \u00adoccasion for it.<\/p>\n

Biden says not to worry. The United States will continue to provide \u201cover the horizon\u201d support, i.e., from a distance, for the Afghan government.<\/p>\n

This is likely a pipe dream, and nothing about Biden\u2019s poorly thought-out drawdown lends any more credibility to it.<\/p>\n

The CIA has been struggling to figure out how to maintain intelligence-gathering capabilities in Afghanistan. There will be no targets to strike from \u201cover the horizon\u201d if we don\u2019t have the assets on the ground to find them.<\/p>\n

Ideally, the United States would locate some other base next door to \u00adAfghanistan, but there are no good options in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Conducting operations from the Persian Gulf eight hours away isn\u2019t much of a substitute. In congressional test\u00adimony, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, said the long-distance missions would be \u201cextremely difficult to do,\u201d but \u201cnot impossible.\u201d
The US withdrawal has had other troubling loose ends.<\/p>\n

The contractors who have worked with the Afghan Air Force to maintain its planes are leaving, too, potentially strip<\/a>ping Afghan forces of air support.<\/p>\n

The fate of the Afghans who have assisted US forces is uncertain, although under political pressure here at home, Biden has committed to getting them out.<\/p>\n

Biden wants to provide $3 billion in security assistance to the Afghans, but who will do the training with that money?<\/p>\n

The allies are leaving, with the administration anxious to get the Turks to stay to secure Kabul International Airport, without which we won\u2019t be able to maintain our embassy.
As the bad news has piled up, the Biden administration has tried to provide reassuring signals. One expedient is keeping our top commander, Gen. Austin Miller, in the country a few more weeks. But are the Afghans, and the Taliban, not supposed to notice that nearly all his forces have already withdrawn?<\/p>\n

One justification for leaving is that it will free up resources for us to concentrate on the growing threat from China. It\u2019s not as though the 3,000 ground troops are going to relocate to East Asia, though, and make a difference in the balance of power there.
On top of this, if there is an unraveling in Afghanistan, controlling the fallout will become a consuming issue for the US military.<\/p>\n

Biden has gotten his drawdown. Now, he may reap the whirlwind.<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @RichLowry<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Biden is badly fumbling the US pullout from Afghanistan” Barely a day passes without news of more Taliban gains in Afghanistan. Perhaps the Afghan government and its forces will prove more resilient than many expect, but if the country continues its slide toward chaos or, worse, the Taliban rapidly take Kabul, President Joe Biden\u2019s decision…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":296097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/AFGHANISTAN_CONFLICTS_TALIBAN_SURRENDER.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[111504,4941,70410,991,70376,72318],"class_list":["post-296096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-9-21","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-joe-biden","tag-military","tag-taliban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}