Jules Witcover

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decision to end the 20-year-old mission in Afghanistan, America’s longest war, has backfired on him, ironically requiring him to press on with it to avenge the loss of 13 U.S. military troops in a terrorist attack during the pullout.

In holding to his critical withdrawal date of August 31 for remaining forces upon the Taliban capture of the Kabul, and his pledge to remove all Americans, as well as many Afghan helpers and their families desiring to leave, the president has had no choice. He had to accept the reality that he must respond to those deaths with U.S. military muscle if he is to maintain his country’s and his personal credibility.

In what appears to be a reopening of the original American effort to destroy the Islamic State that bred Osama bin Laden and terrorized the Western Alliance, Biden now is obliged to lead the effort to finish the job. It may not be too much to suggest the success of his new presidency is at stake should he fail.

The swift turn of events has come as he appeared to be off to an impressive start of his presidency. He was effectively coping with the coronavirus pandemic paralyzing the country and its economy, as he also introduced an ambitious policy to recover from the detour of the unfocused objectives of the Trump presidency.

Biden’s inheritance of his predecessor’s empty deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan was at the core of his current dilemma. He must now attempt to extricate the United States from it, by following through on his determination to end the American trap of endless wars that has dominated our foreign policy in recent years.

The new president was visibly shaken by the sudden turn of events, grimly responding to the bloody attack at the Kabul airport by the so-called Islamic State in Khorasan, also known variously as ISK or ISIS-K. Biden told a televised White House press conference: “We will not forgive, we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” He then called for a long moment of silence, while also declaring: “I bear responsibility for, fundamentally, all that has happened,”

The clear reference was to his decision to set the August 31 deadline for removing all American military forces from Afghanistan, thus ending America’s longest war, just as Taliban terrorists were closing in on their swift takeover of the country. He argued that American lives could no longer be put at risk when the Afghans themselves no longer had the will to fight for themselves. But the end result was those 13 new American deaths and 18 wounded in the retreat.

Once again, Joe Biden spoke of his personal history of family losses including the death of his son Beau of brain cancer. Beau had served a year in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard. His shared grief was again visible as was his own responsibility in the latest outcome.

It did not take long for a few Republicans to call for Biden’s impeachment, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee declared: “It’s time for accountability, starting with those whose failed planning allowed these attacks to occur.” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri added regarding the president: “It is now painfully clear he has neither the will nor capacity to lead. He must resign.”

One Democrat, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a job Biden once held, observed: “One thing is clear: We can’t trust the Taliban with American security,” about which Biden himself has pointedly agreed.

The embattled president stuck to his guns. “I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan, a country that never once in its entire history been a united country and is made up … of different tribes who have never, ever gotten along with one another,” he said. “It was time to end a 20-year war.”

In holding to that line, however, Joe Biden finds himself on the defensive now for having failed to foresee the difficulty in doing so.

(Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcovercomcast.net.)

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