Liberal humanitarian wars were once a thing on the left. Biden ended any possibility that Americans will support such a war given the debacle and defeat in Afghanistan.
Hey, you remember the lofty Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine rolled out by the Obama administration to justify intervening in the 2011 Libyan civil war to prevent atrocities against civilians?
R2P said that while intervening for our interests was likely wrong, intervening to save people when we have no national interests is noble. And our duty.
But after Libya, R2P was rejected by Obama as a reason to intervene in the far tougher Syria civil war, even in the face of Assad's chemical weapons use and hundreds of thousands of dead.
And now under Biden, R2P isn't even reason to remain engaged to defend Afghanistan to help Afghans prevent atrocities should the Taliban win.
But Democrats are spinning instead of accepting responsibility for this defeat and humanitarian disaster. Pelosi's talking points on Afghanistan are such BS that only Democratic partisans could believe them.
One, nobody at all was talking about adding thousands of American troops to fight on the ground. That is a straw man alternative to remaining or bugging out.
Two, saying that the administration knew that it was "possible" that Kabul would fall upon our abandonment of the Afghan government implies that the chance of Kabul falling was less than "possible" if we had stayed to help the Afghan government fight . Given it had not fallen up until now, perhaps Kabul was even "unlikely" to fall, eh?
Further, we were not in an "indefinite war" given that it has been more than 17 months since we sustained a combat casualty there.
As for no will to fight? Afghan troops were fighting every day with our help. Nearly 66,000 died over 20 years! I believe the figure is 50,000 over the last 7 years as we turned over primary responsibility for fighting.
But we organized and trained them to need support that we provided. Without our help--and amplified by Taliban bribes to commanders--a panic spread that nobody wanted to be the last to die in a defeat that the Biden administration said was increasingly likely.
If there was a lack of will to fight, it exists within the Biden administration. Worse, it was a lack of will to help other people fight our common enemies.
Ah, Smart Diplomacy.® And here I thought Democrats were the masters at planning post-wars. Heck, Senator Schumer said Biden had "a careful and thought-out plan". Did Biden plan to ef up royally?
The once "good" war, they said of it. The "necessary" war in contrast to the Iraq "war of choice". My contempt for the Biden administration knows no limits at this point.
But hey, no mean POTUS tweets. That has to count for something.
How Biden will be able to sleep in the afternoon after his staff calls a "lid" at 1:00 p.m. at night is beyond me.
All we had to do is help friends kill bad guys. We refused. This is a mark of shame on America.
UPDATE: To be clear, I'm not defending R2P. But for Democrats who say they are morally superior for wanting to intervene to save people, choosing to abandon Afghanistan when staying would have saved people shows their moral superiority is no deeper than a hashtag.
