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"I Was With Biden In Kabul In 2002" -- Thomas Friedman On The Afghanistan Pullout
Last edited Wed Apr 21, 2021, 09:21 AM - Edit history (1)
The title above is in the print version of The New York Times Op-Ed section today.
By referencing quotes from his diary then, Friedman enlarges our view of the policy frame of our military occupation of Afghanistan.
...
The diary: “Getting out of Afghanistan turned out to be harder than getting in (which I hope will not be a metaphor for U.S. operations there generally). When the U.S. military transport that Joe Biden and friends were supposed to fly out on arrived at Bagram, the U.S. Army captain running the control tower informed the senator that orders had come down from the Pentagon that no civilians were to be allowed on military aircraft. Throughout Biden’s trip, the Pentagon, presumably under orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, had denied Biden any help, even though he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. No planes, no military tours, no nothing. This seemed to be the last straw. Biden was very cool, didn’t throw a tantrum, but was quietly pissed.”
Our leaving may be a short-term disaster, and in the longer run, who knows, maybe Afghanistan will find balance on its own, like Vietnam. Or not. I don’t know. I am as humbled and ambivalent about it today as I was 20 years ago, and I am sure that Biden is too.
All I know for sure are [sic]:
1) We need to offer asylum to every Afghan who worked closely with us and may now be in danger. 2) Afghans are going to author their own future.
3) It is American democracy that is being eroded today by our own divisiveness, by our own hands, and unless we get that fixed we can’t help anyone — including ourselves.
The diary: “Getting out of Afghanistan turned out to be harder than getting in (which I hope will not be a metaphor for U.S. operations there generally). When the U.S. military transport that Joe Biden and friends were supposed to fly out on arrived at Bagram, the U.S. Army captain running the control tower informed the senator that orders had come down from the Pentagon that no civilians were to be allowed on military aircraft. Throughout Biden’s trip, the Pentagon, presumably under orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, had denied Biden any help, even though he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. No planes, no military tours, no nothing. This seemed to be the last straw. Biden was very cool, didn’t throw a tantrum, but was quietly pissed.”
Our leaving may be a short-term disaster, and in the longer run, who knows, maybe Afghanistan will find balance on its own, like Vietnam. Or not. I don’t know. I am as humbled and ambivalent about it today as I was 20 years ago, and I am sure that Biden is too.
All I know for sure are [sic]:
1) We need to offer asylum to every Afghan who worked closely with us and may now be in danger. 2) Afghans are going to author their own future.
3) It is American democracy that is being eroded today by our own divisiveness, by our own hands, and unless we get that fixed we can’t help anyone — including ourselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/opinion/joe-biden-afghanistan-2002.html
For the record, I've never respected Friedman's sales pitch approach to austerity economics; his style has done more harm to cover up ugly truths about his right wing economic beliefs. So I'll probably never post a Friedman essay again; but I appreciate his outlook in this essay because his agreement with Biden's decision seems honestly grounded in concrete lessons learned, rather than Republican story frames. His use of ambivalent is one indicator of why Biden is president, now, and his party's man is not.
