Biden and Afghanistan

I won't pretend to know all there is to know about the recent implosion in Afghanistan. But I will say that Biden blaming Trump is specious at best.

He claims he's only following up, out of necessity, on a deal President Trump made. Maybe so, maybe no. Again I don't claim to understand all the ifs, ands, and wherefores. Without knowing all Trump did or did not promise I can't say what is or is not his fault, although for the sake of argument he may well hold some of the blame. But two things occur to me which make it difficult to accept President Biden's claim that it's all the fault of his predecessor and that his own hands were tied.

The first is that it happened amazingly fast and after Biden had been in office eight months. Was his intelligence so faulty that he didn't see this coming? Such a spectacular victory as the Taliban appears to have won could not have happened overnight, and eight months is one long night.

Secondly, the current President had no qualms about countermanding a great many things the former President did. We all saw the plethora of executive orders; Biden handed them out like candy. Yet this One Big Thing he could do absolutely nothing about? Call me skeptical.

Perhaps Biden has done nothing wrong. Yet I doubt that's the case. Things of the magnitude of what happened in Afghanistan generally don't happen without a spectacular failure on someone's part. That might be Trump alone; it may even be the fault of the Afghan people alone. Yet as with all too many too convenient excuses, methinks the President is just running for cover.