- Jon Sopel
- BBC North America Affairs Editor
Image source,Getty Images
In the famous American female writer Harper Lee’s famous work “Killing a Mockingbird” (Taiwan translation of “Meigang City Story”), Miss Modi once told Jem, “Things look terrible on the surface, but It’s actually not that bad.” But for US President Biden, the current situation looks bad, but it is actually bad.
However, I opened the selection of famous lines in the quotation. Who can write better than the famous British writer Joseph Rudyard Kipling in the poem “If” for his son?
“If you can treat both victory and defeat as false illusions.”
Politicians in history have long been warned that they cannot go back to the past after a disaster, but unfortunately, the disaster has returned.
The chaotic situation of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan can be called the level of a textbook. If such a book is to be written, the title could be “How to Lose It All”. The content includes: No one pays attention to all warnings or has sufficient intelligence; There is neither a thorough plan nor a secure implementation plan.
On the issue of the withdrawal of US troops, there are many things that are worth studying, but let’s look at one thing first.
Is the timing of the withdrawal right?
The time the United States chooses to withdraw troops is the so-called “battle season.” I always find this word awkward: Is the battle in Afghanistan divided into seasons? But in Afghanistan, the fighting season begins in spring, and in winter, when the weather is freezing everywhere, the Taliban will return to their tribal bases.
Has anyone thought that it would be better to order a withdrawal in winter? In winter, the Taliban troops did not gather and could not quickly fill the vacuum state of the U.S. withdrawal.
Although the final result may still be that the Taliban will take over power, it is almost certain that winter will facilitate a more orderly retreat. However, the Biden administration wants an eye-catching date and hopes to complete the withdrawal before September 11, which is an artificial and self-set deadline before the 20th anniversary of the “911 Incident.”
Image source,Getty Images
Taliban fighters patrol the streets of Jalalabad on April 14
Here I would like to quote another famous saying. In 1961, Cuban immigrants attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro’s regime with the support of the US Central Intelligence Agency, launching a defeated “Bay of Pigs invasion.” The then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy once said painfully: “Victory has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan”, meaning that the winners have distant relatives in the mountains, and the losers are not asked on the streets.
Biden is now an orphan. This may have an impact on his presidency; and more importantly, how the rest of the world will view the United States.
Is the United States back?
In order to distinguish himself from Trump during his campaign for President of the United States, Biden sent three key signals: first, he will be more compassionate; second, he will be more capable; third, Trump advertises America first. And his slogan is: America is back again.
But in his speech on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, he did not express much sympathy for the thousands of Afghans who have helped the United States in the past 20 years. As for his abilities, even his hardest cheerleader can hardly deny that the U.S. withdrawal was messed up.
After so many incredible things happened in Afghanistan in the past few days, is the United States really back? How did you come back?
Many people believe that the Afghan troop withdrawal that occurred under President Biden’s eyes is actually continuing the old path of Trump’s “America First” policy, but as some people cruelly pointed out in a cold joke, the organization is not as well organized. What about Trump.
This may cause serious damage.
But as far as the withdrawal policy itself is concerned, Biden does not think there is anything wrong. President Truman once said a famous saying that “should shirk responsibilities and stop here.” Biden followed Truman’s example and made it clear in his speech that all responsibilities should be borne by himself. However, Biden is actually very happy to throw the “black pot” of responsibility on everyone: the Afghan leadership is not conscientious enough, the Afghan armed forces are ineffective, and the withdrawal agreement Trump talks about is too bad.
Biden is lively and lovable, but he doesn’t like being despised. He doesn’t like being questioned, and he firmly believes in his correctness on many foreign policy issues.
Biden has never been a “liberal interventionist”. He does not think that liberal democracy is something that can be exported from Baltimore Port to the rest of the world in a 12-meter-tall container. He believes that the U.S. military should only defend important U.S. interests overseas. With Al Qaeda basically defeated and bin Laden’s death, the United States has completed its overseas work and can go home.
Image source,Getty Images
US President Truman and Kennedy (right)
I should add that this is actually the opinion of millions of Americans. But it is one thing to agree with such a policy, but another to make mistakes in the implementation process. What if a terrorist organization feels confident because of the victory of the Taliban and decides to attack Americans abroad or Americans in the United States? If this is the case, it would be a catastrophe in the political sense.
How does the West view the United States?
Next, let’s talk about how Western leaders view the United States now. Jack Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, just gave a briefing, revealing a small detail that is puzzling. Sullivan revealed that Biden has not spoken to other world leaders since the fall of Kabul.
Given that many other countries, including the United Kingdom, have invested a lot of resources in Afghanistan, is this a bit surprising?
After Sullivan’s briefing, the White House announced that Biden had spoken with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
During the G7 meeting in Cornwall, UK and the NATO meeting in Brussels this year, the prime ministers and presidents of the participating countries all revealed their sincere gratitude to a more outward-looking American president in power.
However, after all this happened, after seeing how the United States was humiliated, and seeing how Biden implemented the withdrawal policy after listening to these leaders’ admonitions, these leaders should now have more doubts. .
Of course, besides the Taliban, who else would feel that they have benefited the most from the U.S. withdrawal? Of course there are Russia, Iran, and China, three countries that are adjacent to Afghanistan. I don’t know if Biden thought of this when he said “America is back” after the inauguration.