Vice President Biden and President Hamid Karzai at the Presidential Palace in Kabul in 2011. Photo Credit S. Sabawoon/Agence France-Presse
New York Times: U.S. Troops Are Still Leaving, but Afghans Hope Biden Will Help
Afghans fear the Taliban are subverting the peace process, and hope a Biden administration will bring more accountability.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Three U.S. presidents and 19 years later, it is President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s turn to inherit the American war in Afghanistan. The question that is leaving Afghans hanging is just how quickly he will remove troops.
It is a desperately difficult time for Afghanistan. American troops, honoring President Trump’s deal with the Taliban, are still on their way out of the country, despite the stalling of peace talks between the insurgency and the Afghan government, and a wave of intensified Taliban offensives near important cities.
Officials in Kabul are very aware that Americans are tired of the war — a fact made clear by a near absence of the issue in presidential debates, and by Mr. Biden’s seeming agreement with President Trump’s desire to get out of Afghanistan.
“It is past time to end the forever wars, which have cost the United States untold blood and treasure,” Mr. Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year. “As I have long argued, we should bring the vast majority of our troops home from the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East and narrowly define our mission as defeating al Qaeda and the Islamic State (or ISIS)."
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WNU Editor: The problem I now have when I read posts by main stream publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post when it comes to Joe Biden is that they are all making their analysis and assumptions based on the man that they knew years ago.
But he is no longer that man.
His physical and cognitive decline makes me question if he has the focus and energy to formulate and articulate important policy decisions like Afghanistan. What does not help is how his entourage is handling him when he is in public. He reads from a teleprompter, never answers questions, and when questions are asked, limited and brief.
So who will make the decisions and policies when it comes to Afghanistan? I suspect the same people who have been involved in Afghanistan for years. And if they is one thing that I have learned when it comes to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The people in Washington who have handled this conflict have been a complete disaster.
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