By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on August 19, 2021
A United States president can do a thousand things right during his four-year term in office, but it only takes one bad executive decision to ruin his presidency. In 2020, Donald J. Trump's mismanagement of America's response to the COVID-19 pandemic ruined his presidency and killed his re-election chances.
Last weekend, Joe Biden effectively abandoned an estimated 15,000 American military contractors and civilians who are trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan in the aftermath of his poorly executed withdrawal of American troops from the country. This executive action has killed Biden's presidency.
Politically speaking, Joe Biden is a dead man walking. No amount of TV talking points or PR spin will breathe new life into what's left of Biden's presidency or his diminishing political legacy.
After 20 years of war, $2 trillion in war-related expenditures by four U.S. presidents (i.e., George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden), and six thousand American military personnel and civilian contractor fatalities in Afghanistan, our declared enemy -- the Taliban -- won the war with the fall of Kabul last weekend. They defeated the United States in the war against terrorism.
Any other PR spin coming out of the White House regarding the heartbreaking outcome of this war is pure "bullshit." The Taliban kicked America's ass! They were willing to shed more blood for their cause -- the exportation of jihad and terrorism around the world -- than we were in the fight to stop them. In war, the most committed combatant always wins.
America's Losing Streak in Wars Continues
America has not won a major war since World War II ended in 1945. We did not win the Korean War in the 1950s; it ended up being a stalemate with American troops still stationed in South Korea today. Cuban President Fidel Castro defeated us during President John Kennedy's Bay of Pigs debacle in the early 1960s. We lost the 12-year Vietnam War that killed 54,000 American troops by the time President Richard Nixon ended it in 1973. We are still in Iraq doing something related to the 2001 Operation Iraqi Freedom military campaign we declared against deceased Iraqi dictator and former U.S. ally, Saddam Hussein, but nobody in Washington knows what it is.
And now, America has embarrassed and humiliated itself in front of the entire world with our stunning defeat in Afghanistan. In the aftermath of this tragic defeat, Commander-in-Chief Biden left 15,000 U.S. citizens trapped behind enemy lines. The Taliban now controls their fate, not Joe Biden. This executive action by a U.S. president is unforgiveable.
Today, America is on its knees begging the Taliban to allow these 15,000 U.S. citizens to leave the country. No sitting U.S. president has ever had to beg a declared foreign war enemy to release 15,000 American civilians from a conflict zone.
As weak and inept as President Jimmy Carter was in 1979, he only had to beg for the release of about 300 American Embassy workers who were held hostage by the Iranian revolutionaries who overthrew a puppet dictator America had installed in Iran during the 1950s.
America has the most advanced military the world has ever known. What our nation has consistently lacked since the end of World War II is a president with the political courage to use the full might of our weapons and superior fighting skills of our soldiers to win victories in war.
Epilogue
As an American who has worked in over 40 countries during the past 15 years, including several Middle Eastern countries, I personally know that American will never be able to live down the images of defeat and disgrace that are streaming across TV screens, laptops, and cell phones around the world. What is worse, the Russians, China, Taliban, and our allies now know that we are a weak-kneed "Superpower." We can never be any stronger than the presidents we elect. Weak presidents make weak nations.
As a nation, we no longer fight wars to win; we fight them to score politically-correct points at election time. Furthermore, we do not protect the allies who shed their blood along side our soldiers; we betray them.
As was the case when Jimmy Carter was humiliated by Iranian extremists in 1979, Joe Biden will spend the rest of his presidency trying to get the 15,000 trapped Americans out of Afghanistan. In the process, Biden has disgraced himself and America with his failed leadership in Afghanistan.
This is a major reason why I have been a political independent since 2001. I do not want to be hopelessly married to failed political leadership, whether it is served up by a Democrat or Republican president. Each president must earn my political support and maintain it by a clear and convincing demonstration of his/her superior job performance. Nothing else matters to me.
Finally, if Democrats in Washington thought they had a realistic chance of maintaining their Congressional majorities in the House and Senate in the 2022 elections, they now need a serious reality check. Joe Biden's executive decision to leave the fate of the 15,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban single-handedly delivered control of Congress to the Republican Party in 2022. It also sealed Biden's fate as a one-term president and ended Vice President Kamala Harris' chances of winning the presidency, should Biden choose to forego running for re-election in 2024.
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