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Enemies of the Taliban Beware
Is international pressure enough to curb human rights abuses and terrorism by the ruling Taliban?
Before 13 U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack in Kabul last week, long before the last U.S. plane departed Afghanistan on Monday, readers of the New York Times must have been shocked to see the following headline: “To Save His Presidency, Biden Must Tell the Truth About Afghanistan.”
The implications, that President Joe Biden was not only deliberately misleading the public on the subject of Afghanistan, but also that his presidency was suddenly in need of saving, were hard to miss.
President Biden, who has only been in the Oval Office for 8 short months, certainly doesn’t deserve to bear all the responsibility for 20 years of U.S. military failures in Afghanistan. To what extent the botched withdrawal, which likely could have been handled better, will damage the Biden presidency, and legacy, there is no shortage of opinions on the matter or journalists willing to express them.
On the other side of the Afghanistan disaster, if indeed we are on the other side, will U.S. voters be sufficiently relieved to finally be out of Afghanistan as to forgive the Biden Administration for any mistakes?
Or will the photos and heartbreaking stories continuously pouring out of that beleaguered…