Joe Biden promised allies 'America is back.' Chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal is making them fear it's still 'America First.' - CNNPolitics
By: Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins (CNN)
Well you got what some here voted for.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Washington (CNN)Visiting Brussels earlier this summer, President Joe Biden was single-minded in his message to American allies.
"America is back," he declared in the lobby of the European Union's headquarters, repeating a mantra he had uttered at nearly every stop of his first trip abroad, during which leaders welcomed him as a salve to four years of Trump-era angst. "It's overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America to have a great relationship with NATO and with the EU," Biden said. "I have a very different view than my predecessor did." Two months later, the same group of allies is now wondering what happened to that Joe Biden. The humiliating end to the war in Afghanistan has fanned lingering concerns over an "America First" foreign policy that some allies fear did not completely disappear with former President Donald Trump. And the chaotic fall of Kabul, which caught American officials off-guard and prompted a major scramble by the US and other countries to evacuate diplomats and Afghans who assisted the war efforts, badly undercut Biden's promise to restore competence to American foreign relations. The Taliban takeover has led to an uncertain fate for Afghan women and girls, leading to doubts over Biden's repeated insistence -- including this week -- that human rights will be at the "center of our foreign policy." Read More And some fear the pandemonium caused by the American withdrawal could provide an opening for countries like Russia and China -- the very places Biden is hoping to refocus US foreign policy -- to sow doubts about American reliability. "China and Russia are having a field day saying: This is your partner?" said David Petraeus, the retired general who commanded forces in Afghanistan and served as CIA director, describing a message coming from Beijing and Moscow meant to undercut American global standing. "European leaders are questioning (the US), despite the successful EU summit and G7 meeting and all the rest of that, because many of them, if not all, wanted to stay."
'That's not the way you treat your allies'
It has all unfolded with scant communication from Biden himself, who waited 48 hours after Kabul fell to speak with any foreign leader. He phoned Britain's prime minister on Tuesday afternoon, and on Wednesday spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The White House said regular calls were going out from lower levels of government focused on logistical or operational matters. But other countries' leaders had still found time to talk to each other -- by Wednesday, Merkel had spoken to the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Nations' high commissioner for refugees. The messy crisis in Afghanistan has taught both Americans and leaders in foreign capitals some new things about the still-new president, whose four decades in public life had lent him an air of familiarity. Some of his most marked political characteristics, like empathy and optimism, have been replaced by a colder realpolitik. His promise of restoring competence to government has been undercut by scenes of chaos and confident predictions that turned out to be wrong. "It's a lack of communications, of honesty, with the American people and with allies around the world who are deeply disappointed with a Biden administration that they felt would be much more multilateral, especially on an issue where the allies have been fighting with the Americans for 20 years now," said Ian Bremmer, director of the Eurasia Group. "The decision on how and when to leave was made unilaterally by the Americans, and that's not the way you treat your allies, frankly."
World leaders question Biden's withdrawal execution
Already irked by the way Biden decided the war would end, leaders in countries who fought alongside the United States are now openly questioning how the withdrawal was executed. "This is a particularly bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and terrible," Merkel said during a press conference this week. Behind the scenes, people familiar with the matter say she has been more critical of Biden's decision, telling members of her party that "domestic political reasons" led him to decide on a withdrawal. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has walked a tightrope, hoping to maintain his close working relationship with Biden while acknowledging the anger from many in his party -- and even within his own government -- toward the United States' withdrawal plan. In Parliament on Wednesday, the Conservative member who chairs the foreign affairs committee offered a particularly impassioned rebuke of Biden's attempt to blame the situation in Afghanistan on the country's defense forces. "To see their commander in chief call into question the courage of men I fought with, to claim they ran, is shameful," said Tom Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan. "This doesn't need to be defeat, but at the moment it damn well feels like it." Following Johnson's conversation with Biden, Downing Street said the prime minister stressed "the importance of not losing the gains made in Afghanistan over the last twenty years, of protecting ourselves against any emerging threat from terrorism and of continuing to support the people of Afghanistan." France's Emmanuel Macron was already a vocal advocate for a European security policy that is less reliant upon the United States. He warned in an address on Monday that "Europe alone cannot assume the consequences of the current situation" and drew ire for saying France must "protect itself from a wave of migrants" from Afghanistan. And Canada's Justin Trudeau, who, like Macron, is facing reelection, has already weathered criticism from conservatives in his country for "abandoning" Afghans in the aftermath of Kabul's fall to the Taliban. He hasn't yet spoken with Biden, but during a press conference on Wednesday he sought to highlight his consultations with another American leader: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "(Clinton) shares our concern for Afghan women and girls," he said, describing a phone call he held with Clinton this week. "She welcomed our efforts and urged Canada to continue our work."
The US 'created the conditions for the NATO decision' to leave Afghanistan
Biden is set to face the G7 again next week during a virtual meeting that Britain, which is currently leading the group in line with its rotating presidency, scheduled as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated. Two other major global conferences are scheduled for the fall: the United Nations General Assembly, which the US is hoping will go mostly virtual, and the G20 in Rome, where Biden will again seek to convey American leadership abroad. The President can still point to a long list of ways he has distinguished himself from his predecessor, from rejoining the Paris climate accord to fully embracing NATO, which Trump viewed skeptically. And Afghanistan, while currently the center of international attention, is hardly the only matter confronting Biden and his foreign counterparts. But even in other areas, Biden has shown a willingness to disregard international input. The administration's announcement Wednesday that booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine will be offered to all Americans this fall was in direct opposition to the World Health Organization's call for all available doses to go to places where even first shots are lagging. "Biden is President of the United States for the American people, but the level of indifference to allies and the average citizen outside the US is starting to really grate on many that have been there with the Americans for a very long time," said Bremmer. Other analysts have downplayed the risk to American standing posed by the Afghanistan situation. "I think there's this notion out there that somehow American credibility has been fundamentally undermined, or permanently undermined," said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and CNN global affairs analyst. "I don't buy that, I really don't. We invested 2,300 American lives, scores of thousands of Afghans, trillions of dollars, and we fought well ... but it was time to depart. And I can't imagine anyone, perhaps with the exception of the Ghani government, is going to hold us responsible over time for this departure." Biden and his team have argued repeatedly that leaving Afghanistan was never going to be easy or clean, but that doing so was still the right decision. And Biden has told Americans that he'll accept responsibility for the fallout, even as he casts blame elsewhere. Still, even before the Taliban took Kabul and the Afghan civilian government collapsed, American allies abroad privately griped they weren't properly consulted before Biden announced he would withdraw US troops by September 11. Some also questioned how security could be maintained in the country when US troops leave, particularly at Kabul's international airport and other diplomatic facilities. During the NATO meeting in Brussels in mid-June, Biden claimed there was a "strong consensus" among leaders about his plans to withdraw. And a senior administration official told reporters there was "an incredible amount of warmth and unity around the entire agenda, including the 'in-together-out-together' aspect of the Afghanistan drawdown." But since then, officials have framed the decision as essentially a forced one by the United States. "It was actually politically impossible for European allies to continue in Afghanistan, given the fact that the United States has decided to end its military mission," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on CNN's "New Day" on Wednesday. "We went in together, and we adjust our presence together, and now we leave together after close consultations among all 30 allies." Pressed whether that meant the US decision had tied NATO's hands, Stoltenberg was clear: "The US decision, of course, framed or created the conditions for the NATO decision."
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I liked the old version of America First myself.
Gotta bring out the old "Trump is off topic" rule. Seems he is being brought up to deflect, deny, and project from Mr. Biden's incompetence a LOT lately.
I would love to see all of them literally turn their chairs around and give Biden their back and then cut him off. Much like the police gave to Lightfoot in Chicago and other cities and mayors.
Biden claimed he wanted America back on the world stage.
He did put America back on the world stage. Unfortunately, it was with Biden acting as the CLOWN.
Speaking of clowns ... Kirby just finished his Pentagon press conference. I lost count of how many times he said, "I don't know". He also said that to date, 7000 Americans had been flown out since August 14 (FIVE DAYS TO DO THAT!!) but then said he didn't know how many Americans were still stranded.
All of this was so unecessary. You don't take troops about before getting our people out, unless your'e clueless Joe Biden who absolutely depended on the Afghan Army.
Bagram Air Force Base should have been left open until the very end and then, with our equipment removed, blown up.
China and Iran already hold Biden hostage. Our allies are suspicious and no longer trust us. So I suppose it's no big deal to him that he caves to the Taliban, too. Obama's "transformation of America" is humming right along.
Well we sure as hell wouldn't call Jimmy Carter and I don't think we can wake up Ronald Reagan.
Clearly it makes no sense to not retain a military presence to ensure all US and ally personnel are evacuated. Similarly, it makes no sense to not keep the full transportation capabilities of Afghanistan open until the evacuation is complete.
Biden is responsible as PotUS, but how in hell did the US military and operational logistics staff allow this to happen? A PotUS sets direction but does not micro manage how initiatives are handled. Either Biden categorically dismissed the advice of his military and civilian expert advisors and micro managed this (not likely) or we are seeing a rather embarrassing and tragic level of systemic ineptness in our government.
Nailed it!
You could get Oliver North to try.
LBJ did during Vietnam.
I think Joe Biden made his mind up in April to get the troops out and he must have been adamant
It is impossible for a PotUS to micro-manage a war. You and I have two very different views of what is meant by the term 'micro-manage'. A PotUS is limited by time and by the fact that s/he is but a single human being. It is not possible for an individual to literally micro-manage initiatives as complex as what we are considering. Biden and LBJ necessarily delegated major initiatives to be managed by a chain of command.
The biggest failure in this withdrawal thus far seems to be horrid planning / execution for evacuation. I will be very interested to see what emerges over the next few weeks to explain this major malfunction of our military and civilian operations involved in this fiasco. Just blaming it all on Biden is naive and partisan. Biden has his personal share of the blame (e.g. possibly pushed the timetable too fast) and as CIC he owns the problem in the large. But we seem to have systemic problems; no nation with the size, wealth and experience of the USA should have executed such a blunder.
Sorry TiG - a fella by the name of Johnson very aggressively "micro-managed" a war I was involved in back in the late 60's - so, yes they can and will if they want.
No human being can micro-manage a war. By micro-manage you must mean making decisions below his pay-grade. For example, pushing the time-schedule far faster than what the experts recommend. That of course can be done but there is a limit. When I speak of micro-managing, given this context, I am talking about making decisions on evacuation plans, logistics, etc. No way on the planet can a single human being deal with that many moving parts. The uber-majority of strategic and tactical decisions were necessarily made by the supporting organizations.
Do you think, for example, that Biden forced the military to tear up their contingency plans? Did he force them to move out and leave the civilians to largely fen for themselves? In other words, is this a failure in operations or are you suggesting that Biden directly forced our military and civilian operations to behave as though we had never undertaken complex initiatives before?
I know for a personal fact that a number of our missions were cancelled and "replaced" by missions sent from LBJ as were the missions of a few of our coordinating forces.
My comment has nothing to do with Biden - just with your statement.
That still is very different from what I was describing. The missions still were designed and executed (managed) by substantial operational staff. Or are you suggesting that LBJ himself sat down and worked out the details for his missions?
LBJ tweaked the controls (more than he probably should have) by making decisions below his pay grade. Just as I wrote. But he did not design; he still was at the big picture level.
A key screw up in Afghanistan is the lack of an effective contingency plan. How did our system, with all of our experience, find a way to (it appears) commit such a basic failure? Forget Biden for a moment, how could this happen given a mature, experienced, funded machine like ours?
Understood, but my comment (the context) is concerned with Biden (and more).
How many decades of assistance and billions of dollars in military aid does America need to dole out to not be branded “America first”?
Where in the hell do they get America First? Biden is screwing the US over harder than anyone else.
We can only wish that Biden was putting America First.
With a number of elections coming up in Europe it is of little surprise that current leaders there are ponting at the .. squirrel of the day ... right now that politically handy rodent is Biden.
If you look at the papers from the rest of Europe where elections are due, you will find much the same thing. The xenophobic sections of voters are also railing loudly against the idea of Afghans seeking asylum in their countries ... it is starting to happen up here also and somehow it's all Trudeau's fault.
Afghans seeking asylum should be adopted .. Jon Tester is talking about cities in Montana adopting refugees .. we did it for the Hmong and Laotians in the mid to late 70s
... and if just one of those Afghans is a criminal? I think we both know a certain substance will hit the fan.
Gee, I wonder why that is?
"Coming back from another disheartening trip to Afghanistan a few years ago, a series of missed connections left me in Cologne for the night. To raise my spirits, I walked down to its famous cathedral by the Rhine. It was late December and so I found its annual Christmas Fair huddled beneath the enormous twin bell towers. My memory of that accidental visit is almost idyllic: frosty air, the two great spires above, small stalls selling handmade decorations, unseen carollers nearby and the smell of mulled wine.
This week, when news emerged that more than a thousand men, described by police and witnesses as being of North African and Middle Eastern descent, rampaged through the fair sexually assaulting women, I gave it a jaundiced eye. A story about mobs of Arab men descending on a European cathedral to rape Christian women seemed too much like a bigot’s fever dream, and I expected further reporting would debunk it. Sadly, further reporting merely expanded on the outrage.
Police are now investigating over 500 criminal complaints from that night in Cologne. The majority of those arrested so far are indeed asylum seekers. Other German cities reported similar attacks. Across Europe, more stories emerged. In Sweden, for example, police have been accused of covering up a series of mass sexual assaults committed by gangs of Afghans who groped and molested girls as young as 11 or 12 at a popular music festival.
The Cologne attacks immediately shifted the refugee debate in Germany . Previous supporters of an open border policy began to argue that too many had now arrived, more than one million in the last year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed the hardest among European leaders to accept more asylum seekers, quickly found herself in a precarious position. Demands for her resignation increased as public opinion began to turn. And not just in Germany. Across Europe and North America, from the racist right to the feminist left, people are pointing to Cologne and claiming it’s simply too dangerous to accept more asylum seekers from countries like Syria.
This is the part of the column where you would normally expect me to argue the odds of being raped by a refugee are somewhat lower than being attacked by rabbits, where I might make some reference to instinctive bias, and then suggest everyone should just calm down .
But they’re right. When refugees arrive in Western countries, they bring with them violent and sexist cultural attitudes that contributed in part to the mess they fled. Consider a global survey by the Pew Research Center; when asked if women should have equal rights, only 45 per cent of Egyptian men agreed, compared to 97 per cent of Germans. Similarly, not a single Arab or North African nation makes it into the top 100 counties ranked in the most recent World Economic Forum’s gender-gap report. Those medieval attitudes translate into barbaric actions. Due to reporting variances, tracking sexual assault statistics between countries is extremely difficult, but a large comparative database created by the WomanStats Project ranks Muslim countries among the world’s most dangerous places for women. If you’re surprised that some refugee groups in Europe commit crimes at a higher rate than the general population, you’re either not paying attention or you are lying to yourself.
Nonetheless, Merkel’s push for more open borders remains the right policy for both moral and economic reasons. Germany, like most countries in the EU, must defuse a demographic time bomb as its population ages and the number of taxpayers funding the social safety net decreases. And the humanitarian need of the millions displaced from Syria and other conflict zones is real and acute. Bringing these refugees into Western economies also allows them to send remittances back to the families they left behind, creating a flow of relief dollars that surpasses our aid budgets.
These same reasons apply to Canada. This country was built, decade after decade, by the arrival of new blood and diverse cultures. Canada has thrived in a decreasingly Hobbesian world, where the destitute and the vulnerable are not ignored. There is no question we should take in refugees. But this is not the same thing as saying, “Taking in refugees does not create risks.”
These risks, however, are manageable. Unlike Germany, Canada can conduct security screens on every refugee before arrival. After they land we have well-developed cultural integration training, designed to explain the law of the land. Once the refugees are settled, our police and legal systems are among the best in the world, strong enough to keep everyone safe.
The trick, though, is we need to be honest with ourselves. We have to admit that an Arabic-speaking Muslim fleeing Aleppo will stretch our social fabric far more than an English-speaking Anglican moving up from Vermont. In fact, we need to go a step further and acknowledge that while it may be ridiculous to criticize race, it is perfectly reasonable to criticize culture.
There is an objective reason people from around the world want to flee to the West. Our society is more attractive because it is safer, more just, more prosperous and more fulfilling. If we want to keep it that way, we are perfectly justified in telling new arrivals they need to change, to become more German or more Canadian.
The social compact we are offering incoming refugees is simple. We will share our prosperity and safety with you, and in return you will respect our laws. It’s fair and should be obvious, and yet we repeatedly fail to enforce this contract. In Canada it is almost impossible to deport a new arrival, regardless of what crimes they have committed. In Germany, Merkel herself has lamented the fact that the Cologne attackers will probably get off with light sentences and cannot be sent back. Her party agrees, and issued a declaration last week calling for stripping asylum status from anyone convicted of even a single crime. This week, Merkel admitted that “all of a sudden we are facing the challenge that refugees are coming to Europe and we are vulnerable, as we see, because we do not yet have the order, the control that we would like to have.”
This is not a new problem. A hundred years ago Irish immigrants were notoriously criminal. There’s a reason why a certain police vehicle is called a “paddy wagon.” More recently, Jamaican and Somali immigrants have wreaked havoc among themselves and the surrounding communities. Instead of talking about tolerance, the implicit racism of low expectations, we need to be talking about responsibilities. New arrivals have a responsibility to live up to our social and cultural standards. If they can’t, we have a responsibility to send them away."
I think I got it, oh, that's what Tucker Carlson was trying to say!
Something like 65k Afghans helped Americans do their jobs and assisted in their survival in a foreign land .. better to save them by a community adopting families and individuals than just some random individual claiming asylum..?
Criminal scriminal .. our government is full of criminals .. : )
Only after fully vetting them.
The EU has been (and still is) suffering the tragic consequences of open borders to Muslim Afghan men.
Agreed .. yet those individuals that came to our aid have been vetted, they are carrying paperwork .. they should not be left in harms way
I'm 'impressed', 13 paragraphs to sneak Tucker in, you should go back over there where he is a topic.
Wow, an opinion article from 2016 about another Arian country that didn't want immigrants.
Color me surprised.
It is not a surprise that "conservatives" dont want Afghans to settle in the US. I made the joke yesterday that if Trump were still president they would all be settled at Guantanamo Bay. Its not really a joke though.
I have been here since January and have yet to flag any comment.
As an aside, you would be happier with:
I don't have a problem with anyone who has been fully vetted.
You win, lol.
Aw crap, not again.
Tucker has been right all along.
Are you saying that Biden is a victim?
Not at all, I'm saying that a number of politicians in Europe are shooting arrows at a target of convenience ... survival of the fleetest from the storm.
Yeah, I realized what you were saying after reading your comment to Jim
Hello razing .. : ) long time no see
Do we really take our liberties for granted? I always thought we did .. now I am not so sure, many are still fighting for theirs and others are seeing liberties being taken away .. this nation is in internal upheaval - Lincoln said 'the only way to destroy this nation is from within' [not a direct quote] .. hope I do not live to see it happen
Bush Jr, Obama and Trump all perpetuated this problem and kicked it down the road.
We have a country where the majority is in fear, consciously and/or unconsciously of having their "heritage" as Americans "replaced" by people of another skin color. This is a traumatic experience that has been going on , in full force, since it became clear that Barack Obama was a real threat to become president of the United States. Around the same time social scientists began to predict that whites would become a minority group by around 2040 ( the exact year wavers) . All the social turmoil since 2008 is related to this fact in one way or another. And certainly the ability of a known liar, crook , bigot moron and cheat to get tens of millions of people vote to make him our national leader is related to this fact, (he retweeted white supremacists numerous times in 2016. )
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Indeed it is .. I dropped out for awhile, it was easier than yelling at the TV every time I watched the news .. however I also learned that ignorance is not bliss, I cannot just ignore what is happening - it may not affect me directly, but still we have to be aware of what is happening to and with our fellow humans...
Peace ... what an illusive concept it is!
Biden is a total loser in all this…
His lawless, feckless administration has wreaked incredible damage to the nation in 7 months time. It's the kind of damage the country can't easily bounce back from.
A former president once told us that elections have consequences. Never more so than 2020!
Thats what people were saying [deleted in February of 2017.]
[sigh] what exactly is wrong with American government putting Americans first .. Biden is a career politician that views himself as a foreign affairs expert - think we are seeing that he is not.. Afghanistan exit is a disaster.. think it is natural that Biden is defensive and tuck tailed at the moment .. think he honestly thought that after a Trump presidency a Biden presidency would glow in the dark - yet the Biden administration have been ignoring and brushing off problem facing his administration from the start ..
Once again something that can be ignored when it is convenient to ignore it .. human rights! Biden has made promises to protect women, they are words that make him look good, not words he will nor can live up to .. Afghan soldiers died fighting side by side with American soldiers, yet Biden blames them for not being willing to fight .. There is plenty of blame to go around and only part of this is Biden's fault .. he needs to accept his role in the chaos that has ensued .. does not seem as though he will. The interview with George Stephanopoulos is not a confidence builder for Biden's competence...
In 2019, Robert Gates, Obama's defense secretary, warned us that Biden has ...
We should be America first
Any country that does not put itself first is not true to it's citizens
Agreed charger .. I keep hearing 'we' are not the worlds police .. yet the American tax payer is the worlds bank? 'We' have our own poor, our own people living in fear of gang violence, our own homeless .. the list goes on ..
I only mention Trump because Trump announced last October he wanted to withdraw the remaining 5,000 troops by Christmas, 2020. Trump did withdraw 2,500 troops before he left office.
NATO was not blindsided by United States' plans to withdraw from Afghanistan. And surely NATO could scrape together a fighting force of 2,500 to replace US troops. NATO wanted out of Afghanistan, too. NATO's pointy little fingers are just CYA.
If European countries are concerned about security of their embassies in Kabul then those countries should beef up their security forces. The United States military isn't rent-a-cop security.
Europe is only griping because the US withdrawal forces Europe to do something. The remaining US presence in Afghanistan wasn't that large. Europe could have easily taken the lead if they wanted to. It's always easier for Europe to snipe from the peanut gallery than to actually do something. European politicians expressing disappointment in Joe Biden or the United States only serves to hide their own lack of leadership ability.
Where's Europe's plans to extract and resettle Afghans? Or are Europeans incapable of planning? 'Just leave it up to the Americans' isn't leadership.
Since politics seems to be almost the only thing on the Home (Front) Page, with comments being a sparring contest between liberals and conservatives, we all have little choice if we want to remain active on this site but to jump into the cesspool. So here goes:
Take note of these words, America's mantra, repeated often (especially, as I have noted, by Blinken): "in the interest of the United States of America" because NOTHING is done unless it is "in the interest of the United States of America". Maybe that's why America's "friends" might not be so totally devoted to the USA, at least not so much as the nations that owe the USA for "defending" them, and now even they might just start getting a little queasy. Maybe sometimes taking into consideration the interests of other nations just might be a beneficial direction to take, and can lead to benefits that would be "in the interest of the United States of America" as well.
What was on my mind, and what I didn't make clear, was that it would be nice if the mantra were to be "in the best interests of both, or of all", rather than only in the interests of America.