“I was not going to prolong this eternal war and I was not going to prolong the eternal withdrawal”: Joe Biden chose on Tuesday a very firm tone, almost vindictive at times, to seal the calamitous American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is completed Tuesday after 20 years of conflict.
Tune in as I deliver remarks on ending the war in Afghanistan. https://t.co/G1UGxVpd19
– President Biden (@POTUS) August 31, 2021
The American president, who comes out of this disastrous month of August for the world’s leading military power very shaken, took all his time to express himself, in a solemn manner, on the end of the longest war of the United States. He let pass nearly 24 hours after the announcement of the withdrawal of the last soldiers by the US military high command, before advancing towards the cameras in a living room of the White House.
In his speech, the 78-year-old Democrat, often raising his voice, took up one by one the arguments he has been hammering out for weeks, until this final conclusion: “It is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America. According to him, the United States had the choice between “the withdrawal or the escalation”. The White House wanted to stage an inflexible commander-in-chief, while Joe Biden and his closest lieutenants often seemed helpless in the face of the Taliban’s lightning victory in Afghanistan.
Make Camp David forget
As Kabul fell in mid-August, the American president took refuge for several days in the vacation home of American presidents at Camp David, alone in front of videoconferencing screens, an attitude that will be difficult to forget.
His administration, this machine so well oiled, then tried to regain control, by communicating relentlessly on the air evacuation operation set up by the American army, and especially by hammering that the decision to withdraw was irrevocable.
Sweeping aside calls to maintain a reduced presence or to extend a bit, Joe Biden repeated that in his eyes, it was all or nothing: either “leave Afghanistan, or say that we are not leaving and send back dozens of people. thousands of soldiers in the war ”. And he organized the withdrawal according to his own agenda, “not that of the Taliban,” assured his spokesperson Jen Psaki on Tuesday.
A “capitulation”, according to the republicans
“He did not end the war, he capitulated,” however tweeted Greg Steube, elected Republican in the House of Representatives, expressing one of the great criticisms leveled at Joe Biden. The president also praised the “extraordinary success” of the mission which made it possible to evacuate more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan, where many Republicans accuse him of having abandoned between 100 and 200 American citizens, eager to leave. .
Another argument repeated Tuesday by Joe Biden: the terrorist threat has changed. More diffuse, it calls for a “targeted” strategy rather than massive sending of troops. The American president, who often puts forward his empathy, his compassion, has from the beginning played the colder and more tactical card of political courage with regard to Afghanistan.
Political bet
Tuesday, he sharply criticized his predecessor Donald Trump, recalling that the latter had “made an agreement” with the Taliban for a departure from Afghanistan on May 1. But it was he, Joe Biden, who did the dirty work, at least that was the message implied throughout his speech on Tuesday.
The White House’s bet is this: of course, the Americans were shaken by this humiliating and disorderly withdrawal. Of course, the country was moved by the young faces of the soldiers who fell in Kabul in the attack last week claimed by the local branch of the Islamic State group.
But in the long run, Joe Biden hopes, American public opinion will be grateful to him for ending an unpopular conflict and, in reality, almost forgotten before these catastrophic weeks. For the majority of experts, in the long term, the president will be judged on his promises of prosperity for the middle class and on his ability to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, not on his qualities as a warlord.
And there is no doubt that the former senator, fond of parliamentary negotiations, asks nothing better than to devote himself again to his major investment projects. Joe Biden must convince Congress to finalize, in the coming weeks, his huge infrastructure and social spending program, the cumulative amount of which could flirt with $ 5,000 billion.