Inside The Final Countdown To Leave Afghanistan

WASHINGTON– For a president so often flagged for incoherence, he was perfectly clear.

“I want to talk about happy things,” Biden told reporters Friday, when asked about Afghanistan. “It’s a holiday weekend.” The new president said: “I’m not going to answer any more questions about Afghanistan.” Said Biden: “I’ll answer all your negative questions – not negative, your legitimate questions,” later, next week. 

Scat, pronto, in other words. In a phrase: come on, man. 

As the president declared: “There are great things happening,” just not necessarily in Afghanistan. The revealing exchange comes as his administration tries to bring a legacy-defining maneuver of realism and restraint, a true withdrawal from America’s longest war,  over the finish line.  

The bromide came as President Ashraf Ghani (of the official government in Kabul) was in town this week, ostensibly in a last-ditch effort to delay the inevitable. 

The U.S. president assured continued support for Ghani’s state, even though combat forces are set, more or less, to truly exit by September 11, 2021. The choice of the solemn anniversary of the attacks plotted from Afghanistan that set America on two decades, and counting, of a dragnet over the greater Middle East and Central Asia, of course being no accident.