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| Biden's Afghanistan Speech |
As Professor Lloyd Bitzer pointed out some time ago, there are situations that call out for speech. The chaotic collapse of Afghanistan’s government is one such case. Was this a foreign policy failure? Of the four presidents who presided over the Afghan policy, who was most at fault? Why did Afghanistan’s military forces collapse? Where should the United States go from here? For the president to say nothing would show weakness. Instead, Biden gave a White House speech yesterday to talk about the situation in Afghanistan. Let’s look at how, instead of focusing on the immediate disaster, he looked at the broader picture.
This was a prudent rhetorical strategy, for the immediate situation Afghanistan is a self-evident calamity. Biden needed to justify his policies. He needed to give the catastrophe a context.
First, Biden reminded us of the original war goals. He said that when the United States invaded Afghanistan about 20 years ago, the purposes were to “get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.” Many wars escalate out of proportion, as the warring parties seek more and more unrealistic results. Biden was wise to focus on the war’s initial purpose. In rhetorical masterstroke, he then asserted that those purposes had been met: “We did that. We severely degraded al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and we got him. That was a decade ago.”
Second, Biden attacked the neocon goal of remaking Afghanistan into a Western democracy. That was a larger purpose, much bigger but far less realistic than stopping Al Qaeda. Biden simply refocused on the war’s original purpose:
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.
“Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.”
Third, although the 9/11 attacks originated from bases in Afghanistan, Biden emphasized that the terrorist threat now extended well beyond that nation. That was also quite clever. The purpose of the Afghanistan war was to suppress terrorism. Fighting in Afghanistan, however, was no longer enough to suppress terrorism:
“Today, the terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan: al Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources.”
Furthermore, I don’t think anybody can blame Biden too much for reminding his audience that former President Donald Trump had already negotiated to let the Taliban take over the country by May 1, 2021, a day long past:
“When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 — just a little over three months after I took office.”
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Earlier Post: President Trump's 2017 Afghanistan Speech
Earlier Post: Mueller Refocused the Agenda on the Russia Investigation
Earlier Post: The Bully Pulpit and Biden's Infrastructure Speech
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I have often remarked that the winner of the debate is usually the side that sets the agenda. So, although the situation in Afghanistan appears to be dire, and much heartbreak is inevitable, Biden diverted attention away from the immediate situation. Instead, he reminded the audience of the conflict’s history, its original goals, and the straitjacket that the former president had tied him into. The speech was certainly not enough to silence Biden’s critics. His critics will only be silenced if his policy succeeds. The speech did, however, take Biden off the defensive. He reset the agenda. He restated the debate on his own ground and in his own terms.
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P.S.: The comparison to the Vietnam War? Here are my suggestions. Don't start a war for careless political reasons. Never think that you can fight a war without heartbreak. Never think that you can make people love you by bombing their homes and shooting their husbands and brothers. Plus, innocent people get killed and the survivors' lives are often ruined.
Research Note: Years ago, I wrote a paper about George W. Ball's attempt to justify American policy in Vietnam. Strangely enough, as we learned years later, Ball did not even believe the things that he said in his speech. How often does rank hypocrisy or double-dealing make it impossible for us to discuss foreign policy in a rational manner? If you have time, read my paper (link below, it's free) and feel free to comment what you think.
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