Joe Biden Adds Ignominy to His Failure

If the goal of the West was not to spread democracy, it was just a selfish act.

Not only has U.S. President Joe Biden refused to acknowledge that he himself bears any responsibility for the management of the fiasco in Afghanistan, he has laid the blame on the Kabul government and the Afghan army. He accused them of lacking the will to fight when faced with the enemy, despite the staggering number of casualties suffered by the Afghan soldiers, from whom he withdrew the international coalition’s military support with no advance notice.

But not content with that denial of responsibility, which was really an insult to intelligence, the White House incumbent added ignominy to his failure, the ignominy of conceding that the intervention in the South Asian country, which was conducted under the slogan “Enduring Freedom,” was never intended to export democracy and respect for human rights. Rather, it was intended to protect the United States from terrorism and punish the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. This was accomplished with the capture and extrajudicial execution of Osama bin Laden.

We might well wonder why, once having succeeded in breaking up the power of the Taliban and destroying the major infrastructure of the country, the anti-terrorist mission was prolonged for 20 years. But, above all, why were the Afghans compelled to form an assembly based on universal suffrage and a presidency of democratic origins? It appears that the administration in Washington neither attached the slightest credibility nor accorded the slightest respect to those institutions. And again, above all, why were the U.N. and NATO dragged into a military intervention which was preferentially focused on the security of the United States?

There is an additional problem, which is not insignificant: Millions of Afghans believed what the Western countries said about their good intentions, and fought to establish a democracy. That democracy was imperfect, clearly, and it was costly. To the tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police who died in the war against the Taliban, it is necessary to add the 200,000 civilians who were killed in the crossfire, in bombings or who were assassinated by the insurgents. Biden has made good the accusations of the radical left and the Islamist movements, that Western foreign policy is motivated only by its own self-interest or by revenge. Whatever the case may be, it is an egotistical act that has never taken into account the rights and well-being of the populations of whom the bombs fall.