Special to USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned US-based newspaper published on the internet and USAfrica magazine, Houston.
By Chido Nwangwu
It’s been quite a week for U.S President Joe Biden! It has been quite a journey, the stories of past, current and unfolding human tragedies and events in Afghanistan.
The entire world saw the unsettling video of desperation and fear by thousands of Afghanis clinging to and running alongside an American military logistics cargo plane on a Kabul runway — about to takeoff!! Chaos!!!
Amidst the tumult and collapse of the Afghani government of President Ashraf Ghani, hours later on August 16, 2021 from the East Room of the White House President Biden had to address Americans, its allies and the world.
His first core point, in my view: “They (Afghanis) have got to fight for themselves.” No more sending of America’s young men and women to senseless deaths in these wars without end! No more deployments for nation building!
The second most significant thing Biden said regarding the swift collapse of Afghani President Ghani’s feeble government : “We were clear-eyed about the risk. We planned for every contingency. … The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”
In March 2020, former President Donald Trump approved an agreement with the leaders of the Taliban for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by May 2021. Very telling that the Donald chose not to deal with the Afghan government.
Biden had to give the reassurance that even amidst all the confusion and danger to local Afghanis who were interpreters for the United States, he had made the proper decision: to complete the draw down and departure of American forces! The Taliban quickly took over whatever remained of the posturing of a real and serious government. But the most worrisome Implications are showing now, live!!
The respected Soufan Center notes in its latest security advisory that “The Taliban seizing control in Afghanistan is a multi-sector failure of policy, intelligence, capacity building efforts, and diplomacy. Grave concerns are rising for the humanitarian, human rights, and human security impact of Taliban control in Afghanistan, with observers anticipating severe safety risks to civilians and particularly activists.”
For clarity, I’ll like quote, in extended form, President Biden’s point and a divergent view from Matt Zeller, an Afghanistan veteran, former CIA analyst and co-founder of an organization known as ‘No One Left Behind’.
Here’s Biden: “I want to remind everyone how we got here and what America’s interests are in Afghanistan. We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.
We did that. We severely degraded al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and we got him. That was a decade ago. 
Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.”
Zeller dismissed Biden’s claim to “plans we had put in place to respond to every… contingency — including the rapid collapse we’re seeing now” a “bold-faced lie.” He stated on MSNBC that
“I have been personally trying to tell this administration since it took office, I have been trying to tell our government for years that this was coming. We sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. Nobody listened to us. They didn’t plan for the evacuation of our Afghan wartime allies. They’re trying to conduct it now at the 11th hour. The thing they were most concerned about was with the optics of the chaotic evacuation. Well, they got exactly what they were most concerned of by failing to do what was right when we could have done it.
(The Taliban is) making lists of people who used to work with us. We either take them now or these people are going to die.”
Evidently, Biden does Not like the media framing and critical angle to his handling of the dangerous events unfolding in the country of Afghanistan known for its rare minerals, opium, mountains, caves and something of a hide-out residence for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and other Islamic warlords.
But Biden cannot change the pictures we see. Almost every one is now blaming him — including his predecessor Donald Trump and Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who signed the agreement with the radical, jihadist Taliban sometime in March 2020, requiring U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by May 2021).
Today, Trump and Pompeo act and talk like they’ve never seen or heard that name: Taliban! The games and lies politicians and nations play. —— *Dr. Chido Nwangwu, the author of the forthcoming 2021 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, serves as Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He is recipient of several public policy and journalism excellence honors, civic engagement and community empowerment awards and has appeared as an analyst on CNN and SKYnews. He served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. @Chido247
