Macho Joe Biden

Machismo happens when a putative male tries to cover up weakness with a show of pseudo-strength. Macho men know how to look tough when they are surrendering.

Yesterday, Joe Biden put on a great show of machismo. Unfortunately, no one was buying. 

Being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry. A defiant Joe Biden cut short his vacation and stepped to the White House podium to declare that, as for his Afghanistan policy, he had done exactly the right thing. If anything went wrong, the fault lay with other people.

It is regrettably typical of Democratic politicians. Even though they are supposed to believe in science and in empirical thinking, they refuse to allow their policies to be judged by the consequences.  

Of course, Biden didn’t fool anyone. No one with any sense at all granted any credence to his self-serving rant. He was effectively surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban, but he was rejecting any sense that he had any responsibility for what was happening. 

But, if he is not in charge, who is?

The Wall Street Journal editorialized this morning:

President Biden told the world on Monday that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule. We doubt the world will see it the same way in the days, months and years ahead.

Biden was arguing that it’s none of our business. Unfortunately for him, we had been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly two decades. Many people have lost their lives; America has spent a fortune trying to restore something like stability to that godforsaken country. We have an investment in Afghanistan-- or at least we did.

Instead of taking responsibility, Mr. Biden played to the sentiment of Americans who are tired of foreign military missions. It’s a powerful point to speak of sending a child to risk his life in a foreign country, and no doubt it will resonate with many Americans. It is a question that every President should ask.

So, tired and empty-headed Joe took no responsibility:

We had hoped that Mr. Biden would accept some responsibility and explain how he would fix this mess. He did none of that, making it clear that he himself is the main architect of this needless American surrender. It does not bode well for the rest of his Presidency.

The world has seen a President portraying surrender as an act of political courage, and retreat as strategic wisdom. As we write this, the world’s rogues are looking for ways to give him a chance to deliver a similar speech about other parts of the world.

Then again, look at the bright side. The American occupation set up a gender studies major in the university at Kabul. Nothing quite like a little gender confusion to lead people on the path toward-- whatever.

Now, the Chinese, of all people, are going to recognize the Taliban and will work to mine that country’s abundant supply of rare earth minerals. While Americans are up in arms, in the highest dudgeon over what is happening to the Uighurs, apparently the Taliban doesn’t care. Figure that one out.

The rare earth minerals are more important. Considering that China mines most of these vitally important substances and that the civilized world is largely dependent on China for them, you would have thought that successive American administrations would have worked with the Afghan government to set up a mining operation. One suspects, without knowing much more than anyone else, that such an operation would have run afoul of American environmental concerns. Better to teach gender studies and promote woke ideas about gendered pronouns.

There you have it, a cultural failure of monumental proportions.

And yet, it cannot do better than bungle and botch the exit from Afghanistan. If the Biden White House rejected the best advice of the military and went ahead with a doomed policy anyway, these officers, in order to retain their own honor, should resign. Otherwise, the Biden surrender will be on their record, and will blot out the rest.