Afghanistan disaster marks a turning point in Biden’s presidency – Market Research Telecast

Until Thursday’s attack, which will indelibly mark the presidency of Joe Biden, the White House was trying, against all odds, to recover and control the narrative of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. After the indefiniteness of the first days, and the president’s silence for more than 48 hours, the communication policy of the Democratic Administration seemed to have reversed part of the criticism for the reigning chaos in Kabul, glossing over the good pace of the evacuation.

Light and stenographers, continuous appearances of the commander-in-chief, open to questions from the press; an avalanche of facts and figures on the number of flights and evacuees … messages that underscored the superhuman task of removing, in record time and adverse circumstances, tens of thousands of people from the Afghan quagmire: no less than 117,000 since August 14 until this saturday. Working day and night since the fall of Kabul, the Biden Administration believed that it might still be able to emerge from the disaster that the withdrawal management had caused.

But the epic of an evacuation in which voices related to the White House see reminiscences of the Dunkirk withdrawal – a simile destined to erase any memory of the flight from Saigon in 1975 -, became an elegy when on Thursday a suicide bomber, Wearing a vest with 25 pounds of explosives, he blew himself up at an access control at the Kabul airport, claiming dozens of lives, including those of 13 US servicemen.

Politically, the reigning consternation is such that there are still no notable derivatives, except for the foreseeable handful of Republican critics urging Biden to resign or subject him to a impeachment (removal process); if anything, very few voices among military families demanding explanations, responsibilities. But these are days of mourning, not politics, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki recalled Friday. Everything will probably hatch once the soldiers’ coffins return home. The image of a dozen coffins draped in the stars and stripes flag that Biden never imagined he would have to see in this operation.

Beyond the urgency of the disaster, it is necessary to look at the medium and long term: in the shadow that will cloud, or at least accompany, the rest of his presidency. With another open front at home – the worrying upturn in the pandemic due to the delta variant – the first challenge is to articulate a new discourse, focused on the good progress, with nuances, of the economy; also reformulate the good intentions that led him to the White House.

From his promises of moderation, consensus and defense of human rights in the world during the electoral campaign and the first stages of his mandate, Biden went on Thursday to call for revenge against ISIS, with a message full of fury and hatred. Tired, stammering at times, prisoner of emotion, the veteran politician could not show weakness – the flank that Republican criticism hopes to open – but reconciling determination and defeat seems a bitter task, both for the president and for his government. . Another item, he must demonstrate to his voters – and to his allies – that his promises have not fallen on deaf ears and that any of his objectives are still viable. In that of opening up to the world, his commitment to multilateralism after four years of isolation from Trump seems to have put the brakes on, rooting for his allies by rejecting the request for an extension in the evacuation made by most of the G7 partners. .

The safeguarding of human rights is another challenge, given the disturbing situation of the 250,000 Afghans who are estimated to be left to their fate after the departure of the United States, while the Administration manages with difficulties the flood of applications for special visas ( SIV, in its English acronym), a modality inaugurated in the Iraq war for former local collaborators.

“SIV visas involve a 14-step process, both in Washington and Kabul, involving the collaboration of six federal agencies. Around 20,000 Afghans are currently waiting for an IMS, while up to 70,000 more, including applicants and their immediate family members, are eligible to apply, ”warns a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which urges streamlining the procedure and recalls how, after the fall of Saigon – that unspeakable precedent in the Biden Administration – Washington was able to remove 140,575 refugees from Vietnam, and relocate almost 130,000 of them to the United States, in less than a year.

The fact that those responsible for the evacuation provided the Taliban with lists, with names and surnames, of Afghans with visas, theoretically for them, does not help the safeguard of human rights that Biden promoted. bearded men who guard the perimeter of the airport will allow them access to the enclosure. Criticisms for this information, equivalent to targeting refugees, have been primed in the alleged fledgling of the Administration, paradoxical on the other hand, since much of it is in the hands of officials fought during the Obama term.

“The weaknesses that have surrounded Biden’s Afghan response can also be seen in his handling of other issues. If these habits do not change, there will be more debacles in the future of the country ”, warned this week the conservative Karl Rove, in his day deputy chief of staff of President George W. Bush, the one who embarked the United States in the Afghan war. A probable structural weakness, which in the opinion of many could explain lapses such as the delivery of what many already call death list the Taliban.

Back in the day, from Saigon to Iraq, Biden is compared to Jimmy Carter, the well-meaning and folksy Democrat who came to the White House promising to make human rights the flag of his foreign policy. The strategic failure in Iran, due to the 1979 Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis, sharpened its image of weakness, although it was the economy – the shock waves of the 1973 energy crisis, in addition to inflation – that it cost reelection in 1980 (one year after the Iranian crisis). Although by age (78 years) a repetition of Biden’s mandate is unlikely, the current president will play it within a year, in the legislative elections of November 2022 -which are given mid-term-, before which Democrats and Republicans they already warm up engines.

The ravages of the Afghan disaster on Biden’s image were already noticeable before the attack. Although the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the Afghan war is not worth fighting for, the president only got 41% approval this week, with 55% rejection, according to a Suffolk University poll for USA Today made public on Tuesday. Only 26% approved their management of the withdrawal.

But perhaps more worrying than a decline in popularity is the scant support for its economic management. Only 39% of respondents approve of its performance, according to this survey, when curves are presented in September: the reverse of the Supreme Court, by canceling the anti-eviction moratorium, which leaves hundreds of thousands of families on the edge of the street. Or the nearly seven million Americans who can be left without unemployment benefits as of September 6, when the special bonus of the pandemic rescue plan expires. The risk of rampant inflation complicates an initially successful outlook: despite internal differences between moderates and progressives, the Democrats are managing to carry out in Congress the two major infrastructure plans (physical infrastructure and social infrastructure) that they constitute the backbone of Biden’s tenure.

“I do not think there will be political consequences of the chaos of the withdrawal,” argued, days before the Kabul attack, analyst Vanda Gelbab-Brown, of the Brookings Institution think tank. “Foreign policy has never had electoral success in the United States, and the voters are not worried about what is going to happen in Afghanistan [tras la retirada]. Internal issues will be much more decisive, especially economic ones ”, he added. Other analysts share his opinion: that when the heat of the Afghan disaster dies down, the waters will return, more or less cloudy, to their course. Maybe even as soon as the last shovelful of earth falls on the grave of the soldiers killed in a distant and, already, alien war.

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