Whether we liked them or not, one clear mandate for any US President...
Was to uphold, support and defend US imperialism.
Democrats have done this, usually in some “humanitarian” role and Republicans have done it, mostly as a boon to capitalism and American cultural hegemony. But either way, since the onset of American military, economic, political and cultural dominance on this planet, maintaining US imperialism has been the staple of a presidential job description.
Until Donald J. Trump.
Trump, however in his self-serving incompetence, cut the legs from under the mission in Afghanistan, which had been the most egregious example of modern American imperialism.
Let’s not forget that our mission of dropping US boots on the ground in Afghanistan was the culmination of decades of meddling in the region by four presidents prior to George W. Bush; a man who had become the worst president up to that point, yet was someone who was competent enough to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 to make it ultimately serve the means of outright US imperialism.
Trump was so bad at his job that he couldn’t get that part right. His overall scheme to hamstring the government, in order to make it weak enough to submit to his own authoritarianism, meant that he also had to dismantle the outcomes of decades of bipartisan US power and its influence on global moral and political authority.
It was part of his inability to run the government, due to his overall laziness, unwillingness to understand his own basic role as an American president and his self-destructive contrarian nature.
In one way, he cut a leg from under US imperialism, but not as an advocate against it. It wasn’t a surgical cut, it was more like a brutal slash from a blunted, rusty sword. It was done to impose the most pain and suffering as possible, as would some sadistic child would do, who burns creatures to death with a magnifying glass.
Anyone who fails to realize this and excoriates Joe Biden’s exit policy with rhetoric of US Troops ultimately dying for nothing is missing the point.
Our mission in Afghanistan was doomed from the start. There was absolutely no way to achieve victory there. It was a failure of our own hubris that we could forget the lessons of Vietnam and overcome the “Graveyard of Empires.” It was the ultimate testament to our own self-imposed role as an imperial global power that had ultimately made us weaker as a nation and not stronger.
Fortunately, we have a pragmatist as President in Joe Biden, someone who knows when to cut one’s losses. Leaving Afghanistan has to be accomplished, doing it in the most painless and humane way has to be the highest imperative. Given the tenuous circumstances handed to him by Trump’s malfeasance, achieving a mandate to safeguard American and Afghan lives will be an extremely arduous task. It won’t be perfectly done, even in the absence of callous disregard for human lives.
All in all, I’m grateful that we have Joe Biden at the helm at this crucial stage of American foreign policy. So far, he has also demonstrated that he’s an outlier when it comes to upholding the traditional presidential mandate of American imperialism.
He’s not your daddy’s President.
Given what he has done so far while in office is that he’s shown us all that he only wishes to rebuild American infrastructure, safeguard American lives and raise the means of basic American optimism. He’s forging a new path indeed. Part of this means that he has to remove a vestige of American global imperialism in Afghanistan. I support what he’s doing wholeheartedly.
We should all take the time to recognize this important sea-change in US foreign policy, one that relies more on our alliances than it does the brutal exploitation of unilateral hegemony and capitalism.
Trump, with all of his lemons, gave Joe Biden the recipe to make some lemonade. If we have the courage to support President Biden at this important stage of our existence, I’m sure that the outcome will indeed become refreshing.
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