The power vacuum created by the United States’ hasty withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has started yielding drastic consequences.
The latest series of attacks at Kabul airport is the epitome of this vacuum, as different factions have started engaging in a power tussle that can be the genesis of bloodshed in the war-torn country.
Thirteen American military personnel, along with 170 Afghanis, died in the latest bomb blast in Afghanistan, which has once again invoked the US to use its drone strategy against rebellions, which the US fashioned under the Obama administration.
As ISIS-K, a warring faction of ISIS, claimed responsibility for the terror attacks, the US launched a drone attack on the organization, claiming to kill the mastermind of Kabul blasts.
Not Engaging Experts in Settling the Dust in Afghanistan: Biden’s Biggest Blunder
Despite the fact that now American soldiers have died in blasts, President Joe Biden is still reluctant to own the withdrawal process.
He is still failing to accept the debacle of Afghanistan even at times when military strategists and former soldiers warned him of dire consequences in case of an unplanned withdrawal.
Biden’s decision to withdraw is being compared with the Bay of Pig’s invasion of 1961. When it turned out to be a failure and proved detrimental for the US soldiers’ lives, then-President John F. Kennedy took complete responsibility for the disaster.
He owned his decisions and apologized. However, Biden is nowhere near to an admission of guilt. This is why military strategists and former personnel are offended and for all the right reasons.
Leon Panetta, former US Secretary of Defense and a Democrat by inclination compared the two events and blamed Biden for his ineptness, saying,
“President Kennedy took responsibility for what took place, and I strongly recommend to President Biden that he take responsibility [and] admit the mistakes that were made.”
(Leon Panetta)
Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, also pushed Biden to keep the force of at least 2500 security and military personnel in Afghanistan to save the imminent instability. Nobody was asking him to send additional troops in the country.
Biden inherited that much force in Afghanistan from former President Donald Trump, which helped them control the situation in the landlocked country.
Had Biden acted on the expert opinion of Mark Milley, a thoughtful decision would have been made to save many precious lives of Afghan nationals and US soldiers.
Similarly, Lloyd Austin, the serving Defense Secretary and the former commander, also advised Biden against emptying Afghanistan from US forces.
Not only this, but Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken also foresaw the Afghan Taliban takeover and the internal power tussle, but none of them was entertained by Biden as he took a sweeping decision all alone.
This is not a good precedent in an exemplary democracy where all the experts, advisors, and former masters are being ignored by the president just to take a unilateral decision.
President Biden is losing the war of public messaging due to his undiligent approach towards the matter. There is no second thought to the fact that Biden, solely, is not responsible for the crisis as the situation unfolded under three other presidents as well.
But if he fails to own the mistakes, it is a matter of time before he will be blamed for the blunder he did not commit.
Biden’s Unilateral Approach is the Worst Form of Autocracy
Biden’s approach towards Afghanistan is disastrous, to say the least. It has made the US’s role as a superpower questionable.
The way he unilaterally took decisions one by one has also warned the US global allies to act judiciously in any future adventure.
When Biden announced “America is back” after winning the elections, it was expected that he would entertain almost all the allies and their concerns in his Afghanistan’s withdrawal. However, as the situation unfolded, this is not the case at all.
Biden also portrayed the notion that the US role in Afghanistan was never “nation-building.” This is also adrift from his past policy approaches when he pushed for nation-building in Afghanistan as a Senator. He even criticized Republicans for not using the term nation-building for the troubled country.
Not building the nation is one of the reasons why anti-American sentiments are rising in Afghanistan, which also contributed to perpetuating the deadly attack on the American soldiers.
Final Thoughts
All the military experts, strategists, and advisors work on data, and they advise presidents what data tells them. This is primarily the reason why everyone foresaw the events, but Biden did not. His allergic attitude toward data will lead him nowhere in his presidency.
Seeing all the data and historical perspectives, our site Mshomi.com also predicted the Afghan Taliban take over and the creation of a power vacuum. We reiterated countless times that the Taliban could take over the Afghan military forces in a matter of days.
Even after it all happened, Biden’s failure to accept the crisis portrays a poor statesman show. If Biden is up to making sane decisions, he must give up his habit of “I know it all” syndrome or the misery will continue hitting him up.
Now, when the civil war has already kicked off in Afghanistan and is going in a dangerous direction, President Biden needs to understand the importance of intelligence if he wants to make his decisions sensible.
The intelligence is already warning about more attacks on the American troops in Afghanistan, which needs to be avoided at any cost before it’s too late.
Eli is a Political Data Scientist with over thirty years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics, and Digital Marketing. Eli uses his expertise to give the latest information and distinctive analysis on US Political News, US Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, and Racial Justice equipping readers with the inequivalent knowledge.