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The Brief

The Brief: Joe Biden is a Profile in Cowardice and Incompetence

Joe Biden

Only an incompetent president would remove our military from a war zone before first evacuating trapped Americans. Only a coward would blame everyone else for his own stupidity, then run and hide.

Joe Biden is guilty of both incompetence and cowardice. As such, he is unfit to serve as President. By abandoning thousands of Americans to the potential onslaught of the Taliban, he committed a gross dereliction of duty as commander in chief. Instead of protecting our citizens, he is endangering them.

In his short tenure, Biden has presided over a witless menagerie of policy failures. But Afghanistan is his most spectacular blunder. Biden’s conceit is now America’s humiliation. Our enemies are the winners.

The sad and uncomfortable truth is that Biden is morally destitute and intellectually dishonest. As president, he has proven himself utterly incapable. The stunning collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban and Biden’s bungling of the evacuation of thousands of Americans has left the world with searing images of chaos and catastrophe at the airport in Kabul. No one will ever forget Afghans clinging desperately to a U.S. military plane and falling from the sky to their deaths.

As a credible and competent leader, Biden is finished. His ill-conceived and impulsive withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan is a case study in recklessness driven by hubris. He was warned by his top military officials that his withdrawal plan was foolhardy and would never work. They cautioned him that events would unfold precisely as they did. But the insufferably arrogant Biden thought he knew better. The man who fancied himself an expert on foreign policy demonstrated that he’s an embarrassing dunce.

Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary in the Obama-Biden administration, was right when he observed in his memoir that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Frankly, that is a generous description.

Barack Obama was even more critical when he confided to a colleague, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.” Obama knew that his VP would be an unmitigated disaster –the kind of guy who can screw up a free lunch. The former president well remembered how Biden urged him not to attack Osama bin

Laden’s compound despite solid evidence that the mastermind of 9-11 was there. Good call, Joe.

Infamous for his chronic verbal gaffes, Biden has now exceeded it with a level of ineptness that is unparalleled in our nation’s history. No one should ever trust Joe Biden again. His mistakes in Afghanistan have cemented his legacy as a feckless and boneheaded president. He humiliated America, alienated allies, and emboldened our enemies. Russia and China are popping champagne corks and toasting Clueless Joe. They can’t believe their good fortune. They will now do as they please, knowing there are no consequences from the feeble American president.

In his haste to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan, Biden had no viable plan. He swiftly pulled out U.S. forces and closed down our military fortress known as Bagram Air Base, and left thousands of Americans isolated, alone, and unprotected. Translators and interpreters who aided our military mission were also forced to fend for themselves as the enemy closed in. They ran for their lives. What kind of idiot orders the military to leave a war zone before civilians are safely evacuated? The answer is simple: Joe Biden.

The Taliban marched into Kabul and sat proudly in the presidential palace while stranded Americans frantically fled to the airport. Where was our commander in chief? Was he ensconced, as he should be, in the Situation Room barking out commands to rescue them? No. He knew what was happening, but insisted on vacationing at Camp David. He couldn’t give a fig.

Only when his lapdogs in the mainstream media unexpectedly turned against him did Biden grudgingly chopper back to the White House to give a shameful speech filled with self-absolution. If Joe Biden had a conscience and an ounce of humility, he would have owned up to his abysmal failure. Instead, he was defiant and unapologetic as he insisted he had no regrets. He placed the blame on everyone else. It was all Trump’s fault. The Afghans were to blame for not fighting hard enough. The Afghan government was responsible. The list went on and on.

Sure, at the end of his senseless speech, Biden muttered the usual salutary quote from Harry Truman, “The buck stops here.” But unlike Truman, Biden didn’t mean it. And everybody watching knew it. Which is why his address drew immediate and near universal condemnation. And then Biden shuffled back onto Marine One to resume his fun and games at Camp David. It was a profile in cowardice.

Great leaders like John F. Kennedy accept responsibility for their mistakes. With uncommon candor, JFK publicly blamed himself for the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. He was contrite and apologetic. He could have blamed the CIA and military generals for misleading him, but he didn’t. Americans respected the new president’s honesty and forgave him. It was a profile in courage.

Biden’s cowardice stands in stark contrast to the courage of thousands of American troops who fought in Afghanistan. His botched retreat is an insult to the memory of the 2,448 U.S. service members who bravely sacrificed their lives and the more than 20,000 who were wounded.

It was despicable for Biden to portray the Afghan military as craven quitters who were afraid to fight. It was another of his brazen lies. Nearly 70,000 Afghan fighters lost their lives courageously battling the Taliban. Biden slandered them without sympathy or remorse. The only reason the Afghans finally laid down their arms is because Biden abandoned them. With no air support they were toast and facing inevitable slaughter by the Taliban with public executions and beheadings.

Americans can reasonably debate the wisdom of staying or withdrawing from Afghanistan. There are legitimate arguments on both sides. But it was Biden’s blundering exit that drew widespread denunciation. It was the antithesis of an orderly withdrawal that prioritizes the safety of Americans and the thousands of Afghans who rendered vital assistance. Biden largely ignored it in his speech, as if the calamity at the Kabul airport wasn’t happening. But that’s not all.
Biden was flagrantly dishonest about his decision to leave Afghanistan. He falsely framed it as a choice between complete withdrawal and sending in thousands of additional combat troops to battle the Taliban. That wasn’t the choice at all. It was an obvious and disgraceful lie.

With a small force of 2,500 military personnel on the ground, the U.S. was providing the Afghan army with close air support, mission strategy, and intelligence. No American had been killed in 18 months. The Afghans were doing the fighting and had been successful in fending off major Taliban advances. An equilibrium was established, making troop withdrawal unnecessary.

Moreover, safe havens for terrorists like Al Qaeda were diminished. This bolstered U.S. national security and lessened the likelihood of a terrorist attack against Americans. Suddenly, all of that has vanished. America is now exposed and vulnerable some 20 years after our country’s leadership vowed, “Never again!” Jihadists everywhere are rejoicing and coalescing.

Even more dishonest was Biden’s attempt to blame his predecessor, President Trump. This was predictable, of course. Every time Joe screws up (border security, for example) it’s Trump’s fault. Biden lied again when he claimed he was obligated to abide by Trump’s previous agreement with the Taliban to reduce forces. Obligated? What an absurd statement. In the course of seven months, Biden has reversed nearly every decision Trump made during his four years in office.
More importantly, Biden had no duty to honor the deal since the Taliban itself had breached the agreement by resuming its aggression and taking no steps to defang Al Qaeda as it promised. Trump had made it abundantly clear that the deal was “conditions-based.” That is, if the Taliban failed to adhere, the U.S. military would take direct action against them.

Face-to-face, Trump warned the Taliban leadership that if they dared to move their forces beyond the small territory they controlled or if they posed even a remote threat to Americans, he would demolish them with the full force of U.S. military might. The Taliban feared Trump. They knew he would do it because he had done it before. This very real threat held the Taliban in check –until Biden became president and announced a total withdrawal of troops.

The new president set no conditions as Trump had done. Biden simply cut and ran, all but inviting the Taliban to take over the country which was accomplished with lightening speed. As our troops departed on Biden’s order, thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies were stranded and surrounded in Kabul. Billions of dollars in sophisticated military hardware and weaponry is now in the hands of our enemy. It is inconceivable that a commander in chief could be so obtuse.
But that’s Joe –weak and pathetic. He long ago sealed his reputation as the dumbest person in Washington. Ask anyone there. With advanced age, his lack of mental acuity has only grown worse. Anyone paying attention knew it. So, it never occurred to me that Americans would be naïve enough to elect a doddering fool as president. And yet, that’s what they did. It seemed so inexplicable and confounding. I envisioned imminent disaster. It was a short wait. In the course of a scant seven months, Clueless Joe has managed to create one jumbo mess after another.

Biden turned a secure southern border into a miserable wreck with tens of thousands of illegal immigrants flowing into the country, many of them now spreading COVID infections. His own Homeland Security Secretary confessed that the situation is “unsustainable” and that the system came close to “breaking.” But Biden won’t even bother to visit the border. He thinks everything is fine and dandy. Must be nice living in fantasyland.

Under the pretext of climate change, Biden single-handedly killed America’s energy independence by canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline and crushing new oil and gas leases. As a consequence, our oil output dropped precipitously and gas prices at the pumps skyrocketed. He’s now demanding that OPEC produce more oil, but not American oil producers. So, I guess the Arabs don’t emit carbon, but we do. Meanwhile, he gave the thumbs up to the Russians to complete their own natural gas pipeline. We can’t, but they can. Go figure.

Biden’s multi-trillion dollar spending spree (that we can’t possibly afford) has triggered runaway inflation that hurts consumers everywhere and is causing a major drag on the economy. His lavish “Biden bonus bucks” created a disincentive for people to work, leaving jobs unfilled and businesses struggling. On top of that, he aims to raise taxes, which will only deter economic growth. Not surprisingly, consumer sentiment has collapsed, reaching the worst level since 2011.
Despite Biden’s reassurances, the pandemic is back as the COVID-19 case count soars. If he truly cared, the president would have pressured the FDA to cut the bureaucratic red tape on final vaccine approvals. Yet, Biden seems oblivious to the fact that far more Americans would get the shots if only the government would issue final approval. He promised to get all Americans vaccinated, but didn’t. Now we’re back to mandatory masks.

Biden has happily ceded control of the Democratic party to far-left progressives who are determined to establish a growing and permanent welfare state with free college, free child care, free senior care, and…well… free everything.

At the same time, these radical wingnuts continue to champion the “defund the police” movement as crime rages out of control. Everyone is a racist, which justifies cramming “critical race theory” down our throats. If you dare to disagree, you’re a White Supremacist. You know the drill. Capitulate to the woke crowd.
This is Joe Biden’s America, fashioned in his own demented image. The Afghanistan debacle is just the latest iteration. Brace yourself and pop a Valium. You have another 3 years and 5 months to endure the insanity. At this rate, there won’t be much left of the America we once knew.

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