Certainty isn’t Stability
Biden Looks at Afghanistan With Irish Eyes
Jack Hughes says President Biden is hobbled by optimism in Afghanistan. We do not disagree.
by Jack Hughes
Earlier in his presidency, The Experiment suggested world leaders could anticipate how Joe Biden would handle global events by looking at his approach to Ireland. Among the lessons we drew from that Celtic case study were that Biden has a long memory and thinks of current events in historical context; his foreign policy mind is swayed by personal emotions; and he’s a stickler for strict adherence to agreements.
For better or worse, all of these have been in evidence as Biden continues to grapple with the crisis in Afghanistan. What it tells us is Biden is a predictable president who offers a measure of certainty but, as we’ve seen, certainty isn’t the same as stability. Even as Kabul went sideways, Biden has defiantly and unapologetically retained his sense of certainty – which only further proves how rigidly he sticks to his core tenets.
So, let’s look at our Irish Insights in reverse order. In his Afghanistan remarks from the White House and virtually every other public comment Biden has insisted that his hands were tied by the binding agreement signed by Donald Trump: “When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under [Trump’s] agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1st.”
Biden has shown few signs of feeling similarly constrained by other commitments Trump bequeathed to him. Moreover, while he insists his administration had planned for every contingency, there’s been no indication he sought to amend the agreement or seek more favorable terms. Apart from the very briefest of extensions, ostensibly to secure a smoother withdrawal, Biden has complied strictly with the deal as struck.
Biden’s rationale did go further than ‘we gave the Taliban our word and must honor it.’ He’s insisted, repeatedly, that if he had breached the Trump-Taliban agreement it would’ve resulted in further U.S. casualties. Biden believed he would have had to send more troops back into Afghanistan, something he was adamant he would not do – and that takes us to the next of our Irish Insights: For Biden it’s always personal.
Biden’s rhetoric on Afghanistan always starts with the rhetorical question, “How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight…Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not?” While it’s true presidents have often said they don’t want to send U.S. “sons and daughters” into harm’s way, Biden uses those words for a reason that is far more intensely personal.
George Packer’s amazing biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, Our Man, has received a lot of attention for a particular Biden quote from 2010 which Holbrooke put in his diary – more on that shortly – but there’s a second line attributed to Biden worth noting. Holbrooke quotes Biden as saying: “I am not sending my boy back there [Afghanistan] to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights – it just won’t work.”
The “my boy” in question would be Biden’s beloved son Beau – who’d served a tour in Iraq (not Afghanistan) as a JAG officer with the 261st Signal Brigade based out of Delaware. The conversation between Biden and Holbrooke took place while Beau was still alive, and before he was diagnosed with cancer, but it’s easy to think even today that when Biden says he won’t send U.S. “sons” he’s only thinking of his son.
If there’s any doubt about the degree to which Biden is connecting, even confusing, the current crisis with his son Beau look at the answer he gave to ABC News: “Look, that's like asking my deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy captain and then major – I mean, as an Army major. And, you know, I'm sure he had regrets coming out of Afghanista (sic) – I mean, out of Iraq.”
(To close the loop on Biden’s 2010 quote, women’s rights remains as central to the Afghan question today as it did when Biden spoke to Holbrooke – and, what’s more, Biden’s views haven’t changed. As he told George Stephanopoulos: “The idea that we're able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational. Not rational…The way to deal with that is not with a military invasion.”)
As mentioned, Holbrooke’s diary (and Packer’s book) got lots of press for another quote which ties to our third Irish Insight – Biden has a long memory and puts things in historical context. When Holbrooke argued the U.S. couldn’t abandon Afghans who had trusted them, Biden is quoted as having replied: “Fuck that – We don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam – Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
Comparisons between the fall of Saigon and the fall of Kabul, complete with pictures of helicopters leaving U.S. embassies, have been made by far more knowledgeable observers, the point to be made here is simply that when Biden talks about Vietnam he’s doing so from personal experience – Biden was appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1975, the same year that the U.S. evacuated from Vietnam.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Tony Blinken were eleven and thirteen years old in 1975 still attending elementary school. While they might have some vague childhood memories about the fall of Saigon and the final days of the Vietnam War, the same can’t be said of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who wasn’t even born until 1976. On Vietnam, Biden was the only adult in the room.
What were his thoughts back then? Well, in a 1975 interview with the Washington Post the 32-year-old Biden said: “[Kissinger’] actions with regard to the evacuation procedure and withdrawal from Southeast Asia (Vietnam) were incorrect; we took more of a risk than we needed to take.” Fast-forward to the evacuation procedures and withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden isn’t prepared to risk provoking the Taliban.
To truly understand how little Biden’s views have changed, consider another answer from that 1975 interview “When we are talking about commitment of American lives and money, we should be saying ‘What is our self-interest here?’ Not simply an altruistic reason – we’re here to ‘save’ democracy, for instance. We should be asking, ‘How does this affect America and American lives?’.” He said the same all this week.
This brings us back to our central point: Joe Biden is the most predictable president in recent memory if not American history. World leaders might be disappointed in how he’s handled Afghanistan, but they shouldn’t have been surprised. If how he handles two countries as dissimilar as Ireland and Afghanistan are the same, other leaders can be certain that he will do the same with almost any challenge anywhere.
Jack Hughes is a communications consultant based in Canada. His previous contributions to The Experiment include “Same of Thrones,” “Tippecanoe and Agnew Anew,” “Harris / Shuri 2020,” “Bidenfeld,” “Firth and Firthiness,” “The Ballot of Bill McKay,” and “The World Wants ‘The West Wing,’” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” “The GOPfather,” “Porqua, CoQau?” and “Quayle’s Hunting Season.” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
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