President Joe Biden spoke to the nation today in an effort to justify his withdrawal from Aghanistan.

In his speech he demonstrated both his delusional state of mind and the stubborn, emotionally dug-in thinking that led to his decision to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan, and its botched execution.

We are faced with a president and a foreign policy team who cannot think straight.

They see everything in terms of the kind of narrative they imagine will satisfy a domestic political audience.  The distortions, ommissions, and outright misrepresentations contained in Biden’s speech today are utterly shameful.  As one commentator wrote recently, Biden’s withdrawal decision and its implementation will go down in the history books as actions that will live in “infamy”.

One is tempted to say that Biden’s presidency is over.  Given the ignorance of the American people of foreign policy in general, and Afghanistan in particular, this would probably be an exaggeration.  But from today forward, Joe Biden will be managing a wounded presidency.  The consequences of this fact are not yet known, but may turn out to be considerable.

What seems clear is that Biden will be a one-term president, and a lame duck president with all the consequences that condition entails.

The Trenchant Observer

The Trenchant Observer has been following Afghanistan closely since 2005, when he worked in Kabul as the Team Leader of group of six lawyers charged with advising the government on modernizing its criminal justice process to better meet international human rights standards.