In the second installment of “How Biden Ruined A Perfectly Good Twenty-Year War,” we take a look at the various ways the past three U.S. presidents have tried to get out of Afghanistan. Spoiler alert: not very successfully.
President Barack Obama, for example, pledged to end the war and then turned around and added 30,000 additional troops in the beginning of his first term. (Then-Vice President Joe Biden, apparently tried mightily to talk Obama out of committing that many troops to the war in Afghanistan.) After surging U.S. forces, Obama eventually began withdrawing them, only to put off completing his planned withdrawal until after his presidency—all the while, keeping up a steady drone war.
When he wasn’t trying to destroy democracy here at home, President Donald Trump tried in fits and starts to negotiate an end to the war with the Taliban, going so far as to push his administration to set up a Camp David meeting with them around September 11, 2019. That plan was scuttled and his administration went on to pull nearly all U.S. troops out before President Biden came along.
After botching the finish of the war in Afghanistan, Biden appears to now be doing everything he can to help people who want to escape the Taliban. It looks like the airlift is going to continue until August 31, at which points all bets are off.