The daggers are out – sharpened the past seven months by a media devoid of drama, intrigue, lies, and other wrongdoing they’d grown accustomed to the previous four years. The GOP, eager to pounce, now has some chaos they can hang on President Joe Biden.
Why does it seem that certain people seem to be rooting for failure? Because they are. It’s pretty simple. The media and the GOP have specific reasons for loving every minute of the botched exit from Afghanistan.
We’ve heard, anecdotally, that certain media members haven’t been too happy in recent months. They long for those days when all you had to do was head to Twitter early in the morning to find out what crazy mutterings the disgraced former president was typing into his phone. Ah, there’s my story for today! Oh wait, it’s mid-afternoon, and now he’s gone completely off the rails!
Those were the good old days.
With the departure of the worst president in history on January 20, 2021 though, came the boring crowd. This was now the no-drama Biden team, many of whom came from the no-drama Obama administration, and with it, the media’s days became much more mundane.
Questioning why Biden keeps going to Delaware or whether it sends the right message by owning a Peloton treadmill were commonplace in the beginning and up until the last few days. But now, they’ve got their story – one unfortunately given to them on a silver platter by the Biden administration, who got the present situation over there very wrong.
Somehow they were blind-sided by the Afghan military’s complete surrender, as well as the government folding like a cheap suit. For that, they deserve blame and lots of it. We need to find out why the intelligence community got this so wrong. But the idea this whole thing is Biden’s fault is a bunch of, well, malarky. There’s much more nuance for why it went south, but as we know, nuance doesn’t sit too well in America these days. We want answers, black and white – nothing in between.
So Biden’s taking it from all sides. The left is pissed, the right is pissed, as are some of our allies. But here’s one sure thing: The current president owns the withdrawal, and he said as much yesterday in his speech to the American people. In words never heard the previous four years, he said the buck stops with him. We should praise him for that.
Perhaps worse, though, than the media’s obvious delight they have some chaos to report on is the complete and utter hypocrisy coming from the radical right GOP. We already hear calls for impeachment and the 25th Amendment from some of these folks. This, after ignoring the disgrace of the past four years, never holding the traitor-in-chief accountable for anything, and acting like January 6, 2021, was nothing but a spirited protest that got a little heated. Oh, and over 140 of them voted to overturn a lawful election.
These people cannot, and should not, ever be taken seriously. The same folks who think masks are an affront to freedom and downplayed COVID are the same folks now lecturing us about what Biden should have done in Afghanistan. Oh, and some are the same people who praised Trump for negotiating with the Taliban, as well as inviting them to Camp David near the anniversary of September 11.
In other words, failure by Biden is what drives the GOP. They can smell blood in the water, which means possible victory in the 2022 midterms and maybe even the presidency in 2024. So a story like this will have legs for a while, and we know the power-hungry GOP will spin it for their self-interest as long as they can.
But what if, in a few weeks, the evacuations going on right now are perceived as successful? What if the administration can right itself and get thousands of our citizens, and Afghani’s out safely?
You’d hope most of America would want such an outcome. But in today’s post-Trump world of anti-American sentiment, that most certainly is not the case.
In the meantime, the media’s regained the pep in their step, lost after Trump vacated the premises. They’re most certainly grateful for the opportunity. How the Biden administration gets itself out of this mess remains to be seen. But we ought to at least be honest with ourselves, shouldn’t we?
Did we think this 20-year debacle of war would end differently? Did we think the withdrawal would be orderly, efficient, and systematic? If so, then we’d be kidding ourselves. These kinds of conflicts don’t end neatly. Yes, Vietnam is a case study in such a chaotic ending, but there have been others.
The hope here, at least, is that America finally learned its lesson with the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems that Joe Biden certainly has. Trillions of dollars down the rabbit hole and thousands dead or seriously injured ought to be the template for NOT getting involved in any nation-building or trying to help countries mend their own racial and religious hatred toward one another.
Biden is right when he says that it’s not worth another American GI dying on Afghan soil if they, themselves, aren’t willing to fight for their country. In the months and years ahead, we’ll see whether Biden was correct in his decision to pull out of that country once and for all.
The fact is, he’s taking all of the heat for it. He had to know he would, which, if we’re honest about it, ought to reassure America that even when he makes a mistake, this president will, at the very least, own up to it and try to make it better.
Yes, the daggers are out, aimed squarely at President Joe Biden. The media must, of course, hold him accountable for what’s going on right now in Afghanistan. But boy, can they at least hide their glee a little bit? As for the GOP, please ignore them at all costs. Until they’re ready to start rooting for America again, they ought to sit this one out.
On The Fence Voters 
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