The Biden administration is desperately trying to spin its catastrophe in Afghanistan as a success — a distortion of reality so patently absurd that it’s offensive.
Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki shared that the United States has already evacuated thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies out of the region, which makes the effort the “largest airlift in U.S. history,” she added. “So, no, I would not say that is anything but a success.”
White House chief of staff Ron Klain has been pushing a similar narrative, posting updated evacuation totals on Twitter every few hours as if that will somehow make any of this better. (Unsurprisingly, Klain has yet to post the latest totals from Afghanistan: At least 12 U.S. service members are dead, as well as dozens more Afghan civilians, and an unknown number of people are injured).
To be clear: It is a very good thing that the U.S. has evacuated as many people as it has. But the reality is that it shouldn’t have to. President Joe Biden created the conditions that made this evacuation necessary in the first place. Any subsequent effort to make the situation better is not a success; it’s damage control. Put simply, the Biden administration does not get to claim credit for cleaning up the mess it made.
What makes this worse is the fact that Biden has refused to correct course. He is committed to doing the very bare minimum, holding to the Tuesday evacuation deadline because of threats from the Taliban, forcing U.S. citizens to figure out how to get to the Kabul airport, and sending out special ops teams only when it became clear the Americans who did try to get to the airport were being attacked. The result has been more chaos, violence, and instability.
This has been anything but a success, and everybody but Biden knows it.
