The Biden administration produced a disgraceful debacle with its exit from Afghanistan. We live with the consequences around the world. Our enemies hold Biden in contempt. The authors of the debacle have suffered no impairment of their self-regard, let alone any detrimental effect on their career. Merrily they roll along.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the debacle yesterday. Retired Army General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, ex-leader of US Central Command, appeared before the committee as witnesses. They agreed that the debacle was in fact a failure, but disclaimed responsibility for it (video below, New York Post story here).
Milley thought the buck stopped with President Biden, who rejected his advice. McKenzie said he assumed “full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate.” Biden himself has declared our exit “an extraordinary success.” In the words of the poem, ’twas a famous victory.
A State Department official, asked about Tuesday’s hearing, told the Washington Post that the department is “immensely proud of the work done, under incredibly difficult circumstances, to ensure the relocation of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Afghans throughout the withdrawal and the period that followed.” Congratulations are apparently in order.
Biden now intends to impart the fruit of his strategic genius to Israel. He seeks to dissuade Israel from eliminating Hamas. In this case, Biden believes in deterrence — in deterring Israel, that is, from a final offensive on Hamas’s last redoubt in Rafah.
According to a long Times of Israel story, Biden has a better plan. This must be the heart of it: “Elaborating on the alternative approach the Biden administration has in mind, [the cited] senior US official said Washington envisions Israel focusing instead on preventing the smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor.”
The Times of Israel story is sourced to two senior administration officials who agree on one thing: “Both US officials clarified that the Biden administration is not ignoring the four remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah but argued that their strength and importance to the mission of defeating Hamas was being overblown by Netanyahu.”
Joshua Marks reports in this JNS story: “The final four Hamas battalions with some 3,000 gunmen are concentrated in Rafah. Netanyahu has repeatedly said that all of the Hamas battalions must be defeated for Israel to declare victory, which is essential to prevent the terrorist organization from regrouping and reestablishing itself to threaten Israel again.” With his genius for border control, Biden would prefer to help Israel fashion a “famous victory” leaving Hamas free to fight another day.
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