President Biden's White House has endangered Americans abroad in Afghanistan and at home on the southern border. Now, to stave off a second term in 2024, a decisive Dem rejection in this year's midterms is vital.
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The Biden presidency stands for more than incompetence, bad governance, and the loss of American prestige around the world. This White House has also demonstrated a willingness to endanger Americans and non-Americans alike in pursuit of its political and ideological goals, particularly in its actions in Afghanistan and at the southern border.
Much of this conduct, under reverse partisan circumstances, would trigger not only media hysteria but, quite likely, impeachment.
Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal resulted in the deaths of 13 US service members at the Kabul airport, along with scores of Afghan civilians. It inflicted historic damage on American credibility, destabilizing global politics, while leaving millions of Afghans to endure oppression and even starvation under Taliban rule. It was also sold with a dangerous, false narrative: that Afghan forces were strong enough to repel a rapidly advancing Taliban in the absence of American troops on the ground. As White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told it, the Afghan forces “have what they need.”
Such spin, offered repeatedly and in coordination by the White House and Pentagon, was worsened by Biden personally, in a July 23 phone call with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.
During the call, the American president encouraged his counterpart to join the deception, and to help undermine clear, observable facts: “I need not tell you,” Biden said to Ghani, “the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan . . . is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need, whether it is true or not . . . to project a different picture.”
This is just what Biden did during a July 8 press conference, when he proclaimed, in defiance of US intelligence, that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Biden and his administration perpetuated their false narrative not to guard classified secrets or to ensure American national security. They did so, instead, to sell their withdrawal plan. Crucially, Biden’s false narrative represented a life-threatening fraud on US citizens and America’s allies inside Afghanistan.
These individuals, with their lives on the line, were entitled to the truth from the American administration, rather than continual, baseless reassurances. Taking the administration at its word, they could believe that time was on their side. As they became trapped in the ensuing chaos in Kabul, they learned that it was not.
After the Aug. 26 Islamic State bombing at the Kabul airport, which took the lives of our service members, Biden promised vengeance against the terrorists responsible. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he declared. On Aug. 29, mistaking humanitarian worker Zemari Ahmadi for a terrorist and a threat to the airport, the US launched a drone strike against him. The strike killed not only Ahmadi but nine members of his family, among them seven children.
Whatever the good intentions of US forces trying to prevent another bombing, the attack cannot be easily divorced from Biden’s political objectives: his desire to look strong and, possibly, create a “wag the dog” style distraction. The president’s Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline also left little time for any planned retribution. We are, therefore, left to wonder: Was the Pentagon pushed by the administration into making an avoidable and terrible error, all to fit a political rather than military-strategic timeline? Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has suggested as much, observing, “it looks like they were in a rush. . . . You could see the political pressure.”
As for the US border, the president continues his steadfast refusal to enforce immigration law, and to deadly effect. It is impossible to know how many deaths have actually been suffered on the dangerous journey to Biden’s open border, though even the Washington Post noted they have reached their “highest point since 2014,” with the International Organization for Migration putting the number of dead at more than 650 during 2021.
It is impossible, too, to know how much money has gone to human traffickers and drug cartels, the gatekeepers to so many who seek illegal entry into America. We do know that vast numbers of drugs are crossing the border, contributing to the most overdose deaths in a 12-month period in US history.
The Biden Administration has appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to deal with the “root causes” of illegal migration. But the administration’s policies only compound these root issues, giving several governments to our south an easy solution for their own problems. With the Biden open border, these governments can simply let people leave for the US, instead of working to improve their citizens’ living conditions.
In these areas and more, the Biden Administration has placed politics and ideology above the interests and lives of American citizens, not to mention Afghans and migrants. Of course, the mainstream media and congressional Democrats will never truly hold this White House responsible for its actions. In this midterm election year, it falls to the American people to do so. By ousting Biden’s elected supporters, voters can begin to turn the page on his disastrous presidency.
Augustus Howard is a columnist focusing on national politics and foreign policy.
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