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Biden stands up to his Republican critics in historic White House speech

Biden stands up to his Republican critics in historic White House speech

On Tuesday afternoon, President Biden gave a historic speech from the White House in which he decisively struck back at the incessant wailing and moaning from his cheapshot Republican critics and the neocon foreign policy blob over the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end to the most profitable conflict in defense contractor history.

“I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” declared the President, who went on to celebrate the success of the enormous evacuation which airlifted over 123,000 people over the past few weeks.  “No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.”

Anyone can see that it would have been literally impossible to arrange an airlift of this scale and speed without there being some kind of chaos, but the assorted warmongers and bootlickers across the American political media sphere are intent on seizing on this as a hood for their real intent, which is to chastise Biden for ending the war at all.

“For Democrats, the political pain of Biden’s bungled exit from Afghanistan could be just beginning” finger-wagged Iraq war cheerleader Max Boot in the pages of the Washington Post, where he was joined by George W. Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson who whined that “it is difficult to claim that the Biden administration’s panicky, slapdash, humiliating exit from Afghanistan…is really the best we could do.”

NBC correspondent Richard Engel seethed that the U.S. withdrawal was ” the worst capitulation of western values in our lifetimes.” CNN anchor and national security lapdog Jim Scuitto bemoaned in a Monday night tweet that “what we’re not hearing here from [Secretary of State Blinken] is an acknowledgment of miscalculation in the withdrawal or the planning for it,” a theme that was echoed far and wide as the bloodthirsty jackals across the corporate media sphere howled for penance from the Biden administration for the unforgivable sin he had committed against the institution of the American empire.

But if these carrion beetles were expecting the kind of apologia that they are usually able to bully out of Democratic presidents, they were sadly disappointed. Biden took responsibility for the chaos and shut down the critics squealing for him to admit that he’d made a mistake. “I take responsibility for the decision…Now some say you should’ve started mass evacuations sooner and couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner. I respectfully disagree. There still would have been a rush to the airport… The bottom line is, there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, and threats we faced. None,” said the president.

The president didn’t shy away from some biting chastisement of the keyboard generals, pasty grievance bloggers and think tank weenies who have been the loudest voices in favor of American militarism but never actually did any serving themselves, telling them that “I don’t think we understand what we’ve asked of the 1% of Americans who serve.” And he’s absolutely right.

For all the crocodile tears these shameless and soulless scumbags shed for the American lives lost (and studious refusal to acknowledge the tens of thousands more innocent Afghans who died in the conflict), they don’t actually care about them one bit. If they actually supported the troops, they’d be furious that three successive administrations lied to the public and to the military themselves about the plan for Afghanistan, the progress the war was making, and what the hell we were doing there in the first place!

But no; the war provides a cheap excuse for them to puff up their own image with weepy kabuki about how much they love the troops and to propagate baby-brained fairytales about America’s role as the global guardian of human rights and democracy on behalf of the shadow army of defense contractors and resource extractors that reap a windfall from the abbatoir of imperialism.

“I give you my word, with all of my heart: I believe this is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America,” finished Joe Biden, who proved to the nation how strong his backbone is by turning his back and walking out without taking any questions.

This inevitably prompted a fresh wave of bitter grumbling and pearl-clutching from the media but after the appalling show of bootlicking and hungering bloodlust they’ve put on these past two weeks, they frankly don’t deserve to ask any questions. While they immediately bow down and assume “both sides” objectivity when it comes to promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and white nationalist rhetoric, the moment anyone crosses the status quo of perpetual militarism all objectivity is tossed into the trash and the fangs come out.

Their reaction has made it clear why it’s been so hard for any president to follow through with withdrawal over the past two decades — and Biden’s response to them is a welcome and surprising show of nigh-revolutionary defiance that we hope he will continue to embody as he turns his attention back to the fate of the most ambitiously progressive budget package in American history.

Watch his speech here:

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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