Biden’s handlers to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan for four months beyond Trump’s deadline

They say they will bring them home by September. We shall see. What four more months will accomplish in this long, catastrophic, pointless war is not clear to anyone, including those among Biden’s handlers who made this decision. All the four more months will establish is that Biden’s handlers are not Trump, and that they know better than he did, and that the self-anointed, self-congratulatory “experts” are back in the saddle.

The incoherence of these “experts” is summed up here: “If we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest.”

Okay, so we’re breaking it in order to avoid breaking it? Is that how this goes? You “experts” are so experty, it’s virtually impossible for common folk to have any idea what you’re blathering about.

“Biden will withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021,”

by Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, April 13, 2021:

President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, people familiar with the plans said, completing the military exit by or before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that first drew the United States into its longest war.

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has vowed to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline, they made no initial statement in response to the announcement, and it is not clear if the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September.

Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that. There are also up to an additional 7,000 foreign forces in the coalition there, the majority of them NATO troops.

Biden’s decision comes after an administration review of U.S. options in Afghanistan, where U.S.-midwived peace talks have failed to advance as hoped and the Taliban remains a potent force despite two decades of effort by the United States to defeat the militants and establish stable, democratic governance. The war has cost trillions of dollars in addition to the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. service members and at least 100,000 Afghan civilians.

“This is the immediate, practical reality that our policy review discovered,” said one person familiar with the closed-door deliberations who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss policy planning . “If we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest.”…

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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