In Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War, Robert Gates wrote that [Obama’s National Security advisor Tom Donilon] characterized the United States military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.” The attorney, who had never been in the military, “bridled” when Gen. McChrystal announced a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. As Gates explained, “troops risking their lives need to be told that their goal is to ‘defeat’ those trying to kill them. But such terms were viewed in the White House as borderline insubordinate political statements by generals.”
The composite character president formerly known as Barry Soetoro, whose Dreams from My Father was a novel, contends that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” In a military conflict with the Taliban, a belch from the ninth century, America must not be seen as an outright victor*. This creed authorized Joe Biden to hand over billions in high-tech military gear, and an entire airbase, to the Taliban. The 13 American dead and Americans allies left behind were written off as collateral damage, and according to Biden the whole operation was an “extraordinary success.”
Additionally, as a Democrat who came to power during the Watergate era, Biden believes that the helicopters bugging out of Saigon in 1975 was a fitting end to the Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan debacle was Joe coming full circle with his imagined past self, bravely going to war — with that steely military tactician, Gerald Ford:
During a 2012 eulogy for George McGovern, Joe Biden recalled a confrontation he had with President Gerald Ford over pulling troops out of Vietnam. Ford had agreed to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which included then-freshman Joe Biden, to discuss the administration’s military funding requests during the fall of South Vietnam on April 14, 1975.
According to Biden’s account: “I said, ‘Begging the president’s pardon, but I’m sure if the president were in my position, the president would ask the president the following question.’ I swear to God, it’s in the transcript. And Ford looked at me very graciously, and he said, ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, you haven’t told us anything.’ They were talking about Sector 1, Sector 2, Sector 3, and with that the president turned and said, ‘Henry, tell them.’ And that was the first time it was decided that we were not going to try to sustain our presence [in Vietnam],” said Biden.
But Biden’s alleged statement, and the response from Ford, do not appear in the classified minutes of the meeting, which have been released by the Ford Library Museum. According to the transcript, Biden did speak up at the meeting to oppose military aid to help evacuate South Vietnamese allies alongside the U.S. troops. “I am not sure I can vote for an amount to put American troops in for one to six months to get the Vietnamese out. I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out,” said Biden, according to the transcript.
Found via Fred Bauer, who notes, “Biden has never made any secret of his tremendous admiration for McGovern, whom he views as a transformational and inspirational figure.” Which brings us to this month in 2021:
* See also: Obama effectively bugging out of Iraq for a second term talking point. As Glenn wrote in 2013, “Ideology required that the Iraq War be a failure, even if it needed a nunc pro tunc effort to make it so.”