President Biden and his foreign policy team, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, are trying to convince us that the Taliban, the brutal international terrorist organization that chased us out of Afghanistan, will now cooperate to help us rescue hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan friends left behind when we abandoned them last month. I don't believe Biden, Blinken and Sullivan, and neither should you.
"A new chapter of America's engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It's one in which we will lead with our diplomacy," Blinken announced recently with a straight, diplomatic face. Well, good luck with that because the Taliban isn't noted for its diplomacy. Rather, it's noted for torturing and killing its opponents, and treating women and girls like sex slaves.
"The Taliban, the sponsors of Osama bin Laden and killers of Americans for 20 years, have overnight turned into a courted U.S. partner," the Wall Street Journal opined in an editorial headlined "Our Friends the Taliban," adding that "Biden is relying on a group with ties to al Qaeda."
"The U.S. will be counting on the Taliban to help with counter-terror operations since the CIA no longer has listening posts in the country," the Journal continued. "Meanwhile, the Taliban are entwined with other jihadist terror groups" at the same time that Biden, Blinken and Sullivan are talking about practicing "diplomacy" with the Taliban. Please! How stupid do they think we are?
"The White House would prefer that all this go away so it can think 'happy things,' as Mr. Biden put it not long ago when asked about Afghanistan," the Journal concluded. "But he (Biden) can't duck the reality that his failed Afghan withdrawal has put the U.S. in this precarious position."
Once again, we're reminded that ex-President Obama's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, a highly respected career diplomat, told us that "Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue over the past 40 years." And by approving a chaotic, precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan that took at least 13 American lives, Biden was wrong again.
For his part, Blinken claims that "the international chorus on this (Afghanistan) is strong, and it will stay strong," but many of us aren't buying his optimism. "If there is a signature phrase of the wooly-headed internationalism that permeates the Biden administration, it has to be the 'international chorus,'" the Wall Street Journal commented. I couldn't agree more.
One of my concerns is that Blinken's "woke" State Department was paying so much attention to "diversity and inclusion" before the Taliban offensive that it took its collective eye off real high priority foreign policy and national security issues. For example, our professional magazine, the "Foreign Service Journal" (FSJ), devoted its July/August issue to diversity and inclusion, not foreign policy. FSJ Editor Shawn Dorman told her readers to devote "intense, unprecedented attention to the problems of racism, diversity, equity and inclusion." OK, but what about Afghanistan, which she forgot to mention?
In that recent issue of FSJ you can read about "achieving parity for women in the Foreign Service" and about "three myths that sustain structural racism at State." You can even read about how to deal with "micro-aggressions, micro-assaults and micro-insults," but you can't read about Afghanistan. I'm sure that State's Chief Diversity Officer, Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, will be shining a spotlight on real and imagined micro-aggressions, but I have an important question: Does State have its priorities straight as Biden's ineffective, weak foreign policy implodes in full view of American taxpayers and foreign friends? I don't think so. How about you?
Guy W. Farmer, a retired diplomat, is the Appeal's senior political columnist.
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