Where the Incompetence Lies

The most common explanations for the botched the American scuttle from Afghanistan are (i) Joe Biden lacks the capacity to make competent decisions and (ii) Joe Biden stubbornly rammed through his decisions against the advice of our armed forces and intelligence agencies. Most commentators on the Right side of the blogosphere seem to believe both, reminding me of the left-wing denunciations of George W. Bush for being both too stupid to eat a pretzel safely and a war criminal mastermind.

That President Biden isn’t mentally and physically up to the duties of his office has become glaringly obvious. That he ever was is dubious. That’s not to say that he’s senile. He seems quite capable of carrying out the quotidian tasks covered by senior citizen health assessments. Unfortunately, the Presidency is just a bit more demanding than that. Men thirty years the President’s junior have found it strenuous. It’s a commonplace observation a President’s hair is much grayer when he leaves office than it was on Inauguration Day.

Joe Biden is, then, less than vigorous. But even Presidents at the apogee of their physical and mental powers strain to impose their will on the Executive Branch. The President can’t attend to everything. The information that he receives is filtered through layers of subordinates, not all of whom are devoted to transmitting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Other subordinates implement his policies, not always loyally and faithfully. In brief, I see no reason to assume that the Afghan withdrawal policy that buzzed around in Mr. Biden’s brain can be reliably inferred from what his Administration did.

Joe Biden declared his desire to get out of Afghanistan instanter. He didn’t formulate the plan – such as it was – for the bug-out. The U.S. military did that. It isn’t likely (and no one has claimed) that he ordered our allies to be kept in the dark. Our diplomats and soldiers handled the (non)communications. He expressed a general desire to undo all projects initiated by his predecessor. He probably didn’t even know that the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau existed, much less singled it out for dissolution.

On a more mundane level, Joe Biden didn’t write the falsehood-filled speeches that he mumbled from the Presidential teleprompter last Monday and Friday, nor did he develop the talking points from which he bumblingly drew answers to the questions asked by George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday and by preselected reporters after the Friday speech. Even Ronald Reagan, who could have been a first class speech writer if he hadn’t squandered his talents on saving Western civilization, had a speech writing staff and worked from briefing books.

If President Biden had been comatose for the past two weeks, there’s no reason to believe that the American response to the crisis in Afghanistan would have been better or, indeed, much different. The incompetence lay in the team that the President assembled or, more accurately, that was assembled for him. To the extent that a different Democratic President might have had a different team, it would have been a matter of different faces on the same ideas.

The ultimate source of feeble protection of American national interests is feeble attachment to the America that actually is, as opposed to the America that anti-Americans wish to substitute for it. If you believed that your country was founded to foster slavery, expanded its territory through genocide, imposed its will on the rest of the world in a greedy quest for profits, and today subjugates half its population under the yoke of White Supremacy, how much effort would you put into rescuing the agents of its imperialistic enterprise in a distant Asian land?

Tucker Carlson isn’t my favorite talking head (Where have you gone, Rushbo? The nation tunes its lonely ears to you.), but he was absolutely right when he tweeted, “No country can survive being ruled by people who hate it.” If only our problem were merely dotards and fools!

Further reading: Peter Baker, “Joe Biden ran on competence and empathy. Afghanistan is testing that” (little that will surprise you but interesting because it ran in the New York Times)
Giulio Meotti, “Western Diplomacy: Imploring the Terrorists”

Comments

[Alpheus]

These mirror my thoughts. I cannot fully blame Pretendant Biden, because I'm not convinced he's in full command of his senses. He is supposed to have staff, and that staff is supposed to be competent.

I blame the Democrats first and foremost, for they were the ones who supplied that staff -- and they are the ones who are the staff.

I also blame the military. They knew that the pullout was coming. They should have prepared for it. They could have prepared for it. While the pullout was enevitably going to be somewhat chaotic, there's absolutely no reason, and no excuse, to pull the military out, and to shut down air bases, before civilian Americans, civilian allies, and Afghani allies were taken out first.

And I disagree with Mr. Kriskey that the American people are at fault for wanting to get out of Afghanistan, without being prepared for the consequences. We may have wanted out, but we wanted an orderly, well-planned out, not this cowardly thing that we have done, letting everyone down.

[Neil Ferguson]

To split a hair, Reagan _was_ a great speechwriter. Reference Reagan in His Own Voice: Ronald Reagan's Radio Addresses.

[Ben]

“Where have you gone Rushbo?l”’ ….I had the same thought yesterday. G-d what a loss to us all.
Great column.

[Dan]

As Chief of Staff to SecState Hillary Clinton under Obama, Jake Sullivan engineered the downfall of Libya, which triggered the Islamic invasion of Europe. Then came Benghazi, when Jake Sullivan, Hillary and Obama determined that abandoning and killing the entire American outpost was a good thing. A few heroic American soldiers violated stand-down orders and held the Islamic attackers at bay until they themselves were killed.

Jake Sullivan is now National Security Advisor under Joe Biden and is again issuing stand-down orders to American soldiers and is again abandoning Americans, this time in Afghanistan.

Failure and "fundamental transformation of America" is the desired plan. We are being lead by traitors.

It's possible that Joe Biden will kill more Americans trapped in Afghanistan on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, than those trapped Americans who died twenty years ago in the World Trade Center.

[adjc]

stupid comment: the "consequences" are not from leaving afghanistan, but from doing so incompetently, without a plan. put another way, whether to leave isn't the current issue, it's how the leaving was handled. so don't try to "spread around" the blame, the blame falls on those currently in charge.

[Robo]

Obama was a blank slate upon which (left wing) people saw whatever they wanted to see; Biden is a completely empty vessel (now cracked, if not completely broken) filled with whatever stupidity the corrupt and moronic mediocrities surrounding him think will benefit them the most.

[Michael Kriskey]

The problem is, the American people don't know what they want. We demand that our troops be brought home, then we are appalled at the consequences.

Both Left and Right wanted us out of Afghanistan, and both Trump and Biden were more than willing to cater to their bases. There's plenty of blame to be spread around.