The Patriot Post® · Biden: 'Zero Responsibility' for Afghanistan

The situation in Afghanistan is dire, the Taliban is in control, and the country’s future is fraught with uncertainty. But this much is certain: The buck doesn’t stop with Joe Biden. No siree.

“Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility.” That’s what The Leader of the Free World said last year upon being asked whether he would bear any responsibility for an outcome in Afghanistan in which the Taliban “ends up back in control and women end up losing their rights.”

Biden continued: “The responsibility I have is to protect America’s national self-interest and not put our women and men in harm’s way to try to solve every single problem in the world by use of force. That’s my responsibility as president. And that’s what I’ll do as president.”

Well, Joe, that was then. Today, the Taliban is back in control, and they did it on your watch and on your timeline. You may still believe you bear no responsibility, but the first draft of history is already being written. And it isn’t kind. For example, the lefties on the USA Today editorial board are calling it “Biden’s Afghanistan horror,” and the pathetic dead-enders at CNN are going with “Biden’s botched Afghanistan exit.”

No less a leftist and Islamist apologist than CNN’s Christiane Amanpour called it “a shameful day.”

Others are likewise brutally honest. “It is a stain on our nation’s integrity and honor that even just a few months ago, we were not meeting our obligation to the men and women, our Afghan allies who served alongside us,” said Jake Wood, a former U.S. Marine and Afghan war veteran. “We owe them the special immigrant visas. We owe them safety, every bit as much as we owe safety to our embassy workers in Kabul.”

The government our nation stood up and supported for nearly 20 years in Afghanistan collapsed in a single day Sunday. The country’s embattled president fled, the U.S. military scrambled to evacuate personnel, and Taliban fighters rolled into Kabul uncontested and eager to announce a new Islamist state.

All in a day’s work during the Biden administration.

As first-term Texas Congressman and former White House physician Ronny Jackson said, “Remember when Obama’s secretary of defense [Robert Gates] said Biden has been ‘wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades’? It turns out he was spot on.”

Speaking of Barack Obama, whose feckless foreign policy served as the blueprint for Biden’s failures in Afghanistan and all around the globe, it’s worth recalling what he reportedly said to an unnamed fellow Democrat about his then-vice president’s presidential ambitions: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.”

Just where is Joe Biden anyway? We know that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is on vacation, so it’s possible that the Biden White House has had its tongue cut out. Aside from a mealy mouthed statement on Saturday, the American president has been shockingly, outrageously, indefensibly invisible during all this. The Wall Street Journal editorial board summed it up this way: “As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, Mr. Biden sent a confirmation of U.S. abandonment that absolved himself of responsibility, deflected blame to his predecessor, and more or less invited the Taliban to take over the country.”

Mission accomplished, we guess.

“With that statement of capitulation,” the Journal continues, “the Afghan military’s last resistance collapsed. Taliban fighters captured Kabul, and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country while the U.S. frantically tried to evacuate Americans. The jihadists the U.S. toppled 20 years ago for sheltering Osama bin Laden will now fly their flag over the U.S. Embassy building on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t seem to care. Here’s what she said over the weekend:

The President is to be commended for the clarity of purpose of his statement on Afghanistan and his action. The Taliban must know the world is watching its actions. We are concerned about reports regarding the Taliban’s brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls. The U.S., the international community and the Afghan government must do everything we can to protect women and girls from inhumane treatment by the Taliban. As we strive to assist them, we must recognize that their voices are important and respect their culture.

What clarity of purpose? What action? And whose culture are you referring to, Madame Speaker — the barbarian Taliban’s? Because theirs is the only culture that matters now.

While this is no laughing matter, we can think of at least two people who are sharing a few yuks at the expense of American prestige: Vladimir Putin and Jinping Xi. After all, the Taliban has sent them and every other would-be despot a crystal-clear message: You can act with impunity when the American president is Joe Biden.