OPINION:
Joe Biden’s 50-year career in Washington will forever be remembered for the images of a U.S. transport plane rumbling down the runway in Kabul as hopeless Afghan citizens cling to the landing gear. It takes decades of death and false promises to whip up that level of desperation.
As harrowing as it was, those poor souls had a better shot at surviving inside the wheel well of a C-17 at 30,000 feet than they did on the ground back home after 20 years of American “nation-building” and “democracy training.”
As Ronald Reagan famously quipped: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” How do you say that in Farsi?
But why would anybody in America be shocked by scenes of such desperation? For decades, we have watched right here at home the same misery unfold in the aftermath of the same false promises from the same politicians.
For a half-century now, Mr. Biden and his party have been promising that the government is the answer to all your problems and will fix everything. Large American cities are some of the only places where people are foolish enough to believe all the lies and put people like Mr. Biden in charge.
The results are entirely predictable. And tragic.
George Floyd was the product of these false promises. In the end, he died resisting arrest after shoving lethal amounts of fentanyl up his anus and passing a fake $20 bill. Floyd was failed by government policies that destroy families, a public education system that fails to educate, and a welfare system that scorns honest labor.
Yet, the only person held responsible for the catastrophe of Floyd’s final demise was the police officer the government dispatched to arrest the guy for passing the fake $20.
The swiftness with which politicians rushed to blame the cop — and the cop alone — for the tragedy was suspicious. It was almost as if they were trying to quickly pin the blame on someone — anyone — other than themselves.
“Round up the usual suspects,” Capt. Renault said as the last plane left Casablanca.
Listening to all the politicians analyze and pontificate on Kabul’s collapse has the same ring to it. It’s almost like they are desperate to find a scapegoat — any scapegoat — so long as it’s not them.
Republicans are among the most enthusiastic searching for the phantom scapegoat.
“The unmitigated disaster in Afghanistan — the shameful, Saigon-like abandonment of Kabul, the brutalization of Afghan women, and the slaughter of our allies — is the predictable outcome of the Trump-Biden doctrine of weakness,” Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, announced on social media. “History must be clear about this: American troops didn’t lose this war — Donald Trump and Joe Biden deliberately decided to lose.”
Because, apparently, from 2001 to 2016, America was winning in Afghanistan — until Mr. Trump showed up.
This is, of course, a self-serving lie told only by politicians in Washington.
In fact, America has been losing in Afghanistan ever since politicians forgot the original purpose of our being there in the first place, which was to execute devastating revenge against anyone remotely connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.
Mr. Trump only emerged as a political force many years after America began losing in Afghanistan. He just happened to be the first politician actually to listen to American voters and to realize it.
So now you have these rotten politicians in Washington — both Democrats and Republicans — slithering up the greasy pole to blame all of their own sins, lies, and miscalculations on Mr. Trump.
Republicans, in particular, love to lament the “loss of faith” American voters have in their “institutions.” But instead of fixing the institutions that failed because of their lies and incompetence, they only want to fixate on Mr. Trump for exposing them.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor of The Washington Times.
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