Yesterday, an opinion writer in the Wall Street Journal compared Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan to Britain’s Neville Chamberlain’s backing off from a confrontation with Hitler prior to WWII. He could not be more wrong.
There is no shortage of resolve in Mr Biden and those who think so will pay dearly if they choose to test him.
That the pullback from Afghanistan has been messy was hard to avoid.
Afghanistan’s fall will not diminish our standing in the world, while here at home there is already a sense of relief.
Afghanistan has little geopolitical importance and given the support the Taliban has had from neighboring Pakistan, the task of containing them was an impossible one.
Mistakes were made, no doubt. But we will learn from them.
The pullback from Afghanistan is a key part of Biden’s move to rebuild our nation.
The WSJ opinion writer does not get that. He does not even mention it.
The omission is reflective of a glaring mistake, that of believing that our country can continue to wage all manner of international missions without addressing the problems we have here at home.
Biden understands the national priorities while he remains attuned to the major international movements that call for a national repositioning, and so he and his team have crafted the Build Back Better program to make us stronger and deal effectively with China.
Biden’s vision is clear. We need a stronger America.
The loud criticisms he’s got, primarily from the political Right, are mostly partisan politics, coming from an opposition party which lacked the vision to plan ahead, got trounced at the polls and then chose to not challenge their president’s assertion that the election had been fraudulent, which led to the unprecedented assault on the Capitol on January 6th.
The WSJ opinion writer just doesn’t get it. We are deep in the midst of a transformative agenda to strengthen America and give everyone a fair chance.
Our resources are not limitless.
Twenty years in Afghanistan is a heck of an investment in another nation.
But it is up to Afghans to stand on their own and make their choices.
Oscar Valdes. Oscarvaldes.net
Oscar Valdes 