I’ll give President Joe Biden credit for one thing: at least he didn’t hide in his basement for three days after the latest tragedy in Afghanistan. Biden took to the press room yesterday to address the 13 American service members and scores of Afghan civilians who died following a heinous, tragic terrorist attack outside the airport in Kabul. The media made much of Biden’s promise to punish those responsible, but he refused to acknowledge his role in the tragedy. When asked point-blank whether he should own those American deaths, Biden wasted no time shifting the blame to his predecessor. “I bear responsibility for, fundamentally, all that’s happened of late,” Biden said Thursday. “But, you know as well as I do that the former president made a deal with the Taliban to get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1.” This is a lie. As I pointed out yesterday, these deaths and the Taliban’s rise to power should be laid squarely at the feet of the president and his administration. Biden’s blame-shifting wasn’t the only cowardly, asinine part of yesterday’s speech. He also lied about the relationship between the Taliban and ISIS, described the American deaths as part of the “design,” and used the speech as an opportunity for a victory lap. The speech was a national embarrassment, and it’s just another piece of proof that our president is unfit for office. Biden gloried in the airlift efforts even before he expressed sympathy for the families of those killed. He called the airlift an “evacuation effort unlike any seen in history, with more than 100,000 American citizens, American partners, Afghans who helped us and others taken to safety in the last 11 days.” SEE ALSO: I’m Not Afraid to Say It: Joe Biden is Evil This may be true, but it’s hardly the time to celebrate. Thirteen Americans and dozens of innocent Afghans just died. This is not an opportunity to score political points or brag about solving the crisis you yourself caused. In fact, many of the Afghans and Americans that Biden takes credit for saving were only evacuated thanks to the herculean efforts of private American citizens. These former special operations veterans carried out rescue missions in spite of Biden’s policies, and they saved hundreds of the Afghan interpreters who had risked their lives fighting the Taliban. Biden didn’t stop there. In what may be one of the most contradictory statements ever made by a president in crisis, Biden tried to distinguish between the Taliban and ISIS, admitted that the Taliban freed ISIS fighters, then used those facts to defend his administration’s policies: Over the past few weeks — I know many of you are probably tired of hearing me say it — we’ve been made aware by our intelligence community that the ISIS-K, an archenemy of the Taliban, people who were freed when both those prisons were opened, has been planning a complex set of attacks on the United States personnel and others. This is why from the outset I’ve repeatedly said this mission was extraordinarily dangerous and why I’ve been so determined to limit the duration of this mission. SEE ALSO: Biden Has a Clear Duty to Help the Afghanistan Resistance If ISIS is truly the “archenemy” of the Taliban, why did the Taliban just free thousands of ISIS prisoners? And if this attack proves that Biden should keep his self-imposed August 31 deadline, doesn’t it prove even more that we never should have pulled out in the first place? Here’s the truth: there is much less difference between the Taliban and ISIS than President Biden would have us believe. Both are radical jihadists intent on the destruction of the West and the subjugation of their people. The fact that we trusted one jihadist group to provide security to protect against another jihadist group is the height of idiocy. I could do this all day, but I’ll leave you with one more. As the families of 13 American soldiers begin their process of grief, President Biden had the gall to say that the mission is going according to plan: “this is why our mission was designed, this is the way it was designed to operate, operate under severe stress and attack,” he said. Mr. President, if this is what you meant to happen, let me suggest that you shouldn’t just be impeached: you should be imprisoned. It’s unthinkable that a president could respond to a direct attack on American lives with this level of cowardice and deceit. Our country deserves better. The American people deserve better. God rest the souls of the soldiers who died this week.
