Why Biden Is Right to Leave Afghanistan

By Jeremy Scahill, The New York Times

22 May 21

hen Joe Biden assumed the presidency in January, he embarked on a mission to reverse a slew of policies put in place by former President Donald Trump while leaving untouched the elite foreign policy consensus. Mr. Biden issued 42 executive orders in his first 100 days — more than than any other president since Franklin D. Roosevelt — and has waged a methodical campaign against Mr. Trump’s agenda. With one major exception: Afghanistan.

Beginning with his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Trump railed against America’s forever wars and pledged to bring American troops home and to get out of Afghanistan. Despite his rhetoric, Mr. Trump vacillated between winding down some Obama-era lethal U.S. campaigns (in Pakistan and Libya) and expanding others (in Syria, Somalia and Yemen). He loosened the dubious Obama-era restrictions on killing civilians in airstrikes after suggesting, when he was a candidate, that the United States should kill the families of suspected terrorists. He also reauthorized the C.I.A. to conduct drone operations after Barack Obama’s administration shifted those powers to the Pentagon.

Mr. Trump basked in his self-perceived glory when in April 2017 the United States dropped the 21,600-pound “mother of all bombs,” the most powerful nonnuclear weapon, on a village in Afghanistan. In 2019 alone, the United States carried out more than 2,400 airstrikes in Afghanistan.

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