Dancing to the Taliban Timetable Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for evacuation is political and could leave many behind..
The ugly, chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan continues despite Biden Administration attempts to spin it as a triumph of logistics and planning. More Americans and Afghans are getting out. But some have been beaten by the Taliban, and the pace is too slow for confidence or safety as President Biden’s Aug. 31 evacuation deadline nears.
The worst humiliation continues to be President Biden’s deference to the Taliban on how and when U.S. citizens and allies can get to the airport. So far he won’t let the Pentagon create corridors into Kabul city where the State Department last week told people to shelter in place, and as far as we know won’t send the military beyond Kabul so Americans around the country can find refuge and escape.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, host Major Garrett asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken : “Someone in our audience might listen to you, Mr. Secretary, and say, ‘Oh, so we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave.’ True or not true?”
Mr. Blinken replied: “They are in control of Kabul. That is the reality. That’s the reality that we have to deal with.”
Yes, but this isn’t the reality the U.S. has to accept. The U.S. military has more than enough force to dictate better terms to the Taliban, but the other reality is that Mr. Biden is too risk-averse to do it. Instead, the U.S. evacuates on the Taliban’s terms. Over the weekend the Taliban put the Haqqani network in charge of security in Kabul. In 2012 the U.S. designated the Haqqani network as a “foreign terrorist organization” because of its attacks on U.S. personnel and close ties to al Qaeda.
Mr. Biden’s deference is especially infuriating on the Aug. 31 deadline. Asked on CBS whether Mr. Biden would extend the date, Mr. Blinken twice ducked the question. On Sunday at the White House, Mr. Biden said there have been discussions about extending the deadline but that he hopes the U.S. will have evacuated everyone by Aug. 31.
The more honest answer may have come on Thursday at the Pentagon, where spokesman John Kirby said an extension past Aug. 31 “would require additional conversations with the Taliban.” So is the Taliban also dictating how long the U.S. can stay to evacuate its people? On Sunday Mr. Biden ducked that question.
This should be unacceptable to an American Commander in Chief. As Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse put it on “Fox News Sunday,” “Number one, we need enough troops to be sure we can evacuate all our people. Number two, we need to damn these deadlines. August 31 was a stupid, arbitrary, politically driven deadline. The Taliban needs to know they don’t dictate the timetable on American lives.”
Aug. 31 was the date Mr. Biden had set for the military to leave when he thought the withdrawal would go swimmingly and they wouldn’t even have to stay until Sept. 11, his original date. So much for that. Aug. 31 is now a little more than a week away. At the current pace, and with the obstacles created by the Taliban, it’s hard to believe the evacuation of Americans, foreign nationals and Afghan allies will be complete that quickly.
A fair question is whether the President simply plans to declare victory on Aug. 31 and assert that everyone is out. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden is humiliating the U.S. and making himself look weak and out of touch with reality.
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