Im-Politic: Has Biden Bet Right Politically on Afghanistan?

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Afghanistan, Biden, border security, Charles Lane, crime, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Europe, hostages, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jimmy Carter, Lloyd J. Austin III, Open Borders, politics, refugees, Taliban, terrorism, Washington Post

Even if he didn’t peevishly block me on Twitter, I’d consider Washington Post columnist Charles Lane’s Tuesday piece on – how President Biden can “contain” Afghanistan-related damage to his presidency and historical legacy – pretty silly. For it completely ignores some screamingly obvious ways that this debacle can greatly worsen and keep degrading his image far into the future – and of course through the midterm 2022 elections and the 2024 presidential campaign.

Not that it’s out of the question that the domestic political calculation on which Mr. Biden is widely reported to have based his Afghan withdrawal will prove correct. The American public’s attention span can be pretty short and, as the President has rightly noted, who controls that remote “country” has no bearing on U.S. national security. (I use quotes because American policy has been led astray largely because there’s so little evidence that Afghanistan is a country in any meaningful sense of the word.)

Moreover, in case you haven’t noticed, the national news cycle has sped up considerably in recent years. Therefore, any public anger over the withdrawal botch could quickly evaporate once the next crisis or Biden failure, or Biden triumph that comes barreling down the pike. And the twenty-plus year Forever War remains unpopular. (See, e.g., here and here.  For an interesting exception, see here.) As a result, Afghanistan could indeed become yesterday’s meat loaf as far as U.S. voters are concerned, and even surprisingly quickly. 

Even so, it’s easy to imagine how fallout from the withdrawal could pose genuine threats to America and keep Mr. Biden “in the woods” politically.

For example, the odds seem good that the Biden administration will not be able to pull all American citizens out of Afghanistan during the partially open window the Taliban victors seem willing to provide – for now. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has already admitted that the U.S. military can’t guarantee Americans not already at the Kabul airport safe passage to the airport, and the State Department has advised these individuals to “shelter in place.” Many could be widely scatttered throughout Afghanistan’s Texas-sized territory.

The Taliban might agree to allow the United States to keep troops in the country beyond the August 31 total military withdrawal deadline set by the President – which Mr. Biden now says may be necessary to complete the evacuation. Or it might not. And if its leaders (whoever they really are) do decide to play nice with the United States, some groups in its jihadist ranks might not.

It’s plausible to believe that those Taliban leaders would want the American military completely gone as soon as possible, and therefore have strong incentives to play ball with Washington. But it seems to me just as plausible to believe that they’d find hostages very useful – say, as leverage to prompt the United States to release large amounts of the ousted Afghan government’s funds (which are currently held at the U.S. Federal Reserve), and the International Monetary Fund to release the smaller but not negligible amount of economic credits (called Special Drawing Rights or SDRs) that the previous regime was scheduled to receive about now. (See here for the details.)

If a hostage situation does emerge, then Mr. Biden could find himself with a problem at least as bad as former President Jimmy Carter suffered after the Iranian revolution in 1979. But even if hostages aren’t taken, a Biden administration decision to keep American troops on the ground in the country in defiance of  Taliban wishes in order to find U.S. personnel and escort them to the airport, or even increase the deployment to carry out these missions, could trigger renewed fighting and American casualties. And this fighting could last for weeks and even months.

Afghan refugees admitted into the United States could vex President Biden for years to come as well – and in two ways. First, as noted, if his administration casts too wide a net (and it’s widened already), any number of Taliban or Al Qaeda members or other jihadists could wind up resettling here. Few question the desire to protect Afghans directly employed by the U.S. military or other government agencies – and I don’t, either.

But calls are being issued to extend visas to still other categories of Afghans, and as always, it’s difficult to imagine that all of them could have been adequately vetted in peacetime given that the previous Afghan government wasn’t exactly the gold standard for efficiency or honesty. Now of course, conditions in the country are utterly chaotic, so the vetting challenge looks that much greater.

If any of those resettled in the United States wind up committing terrorist acts, there’ll surely be political hell to pay for the President. In fact, although, as I’ve argued repeatedly (e.g. here) the key to preventing Middle East-spawned terror strikes on America was never sending U.S. forces to chase around that terminally dysfunctional region every new jihadist group it would inevitably spawn. Instead, it was always securing America’s borders.

Consequently, Mr. Biden can now be fairly accused of failure on both these fronts.Thanks to his Afghan pullout, the Taliban might indeed permit jihadists from re-establishing a terrorist base benefiting from the protection of a sovereign state. And it’s reasonable to conclude that Islamic extremists in other countries and regions will be emboldened as well. At the same time, his Open Borders-friendly immigration policies were making it harder to keep them out even before Kabul fell. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

There’s a third refugee-related problem that could stain the Biden record long-term also: crime. Europe’s naive admission of literally millions of Afghans and other Middle Easterners fleeing their war-torn lands greatly undermined public safety in countries like Austria, Germany, and Sweden. No comparable problem has yet appeared in the United States. But so far, U.S. refugee admissions have been much more limited – largely, but not exclusively, because of the Trump administration’s more restrictive policies. If their numbers greatly increase during the Biden years, either because of more indulgent policies or failure to secure U.S. borders, all bets are off.

The 2020 U.S. presidential election showed that it’s dangerous to count Mr. Biden out. After all, until his primary victory in South Carolina, he was derided as a political “dead man walking.” In that contest, however, he benefited from powerful political allies like longtime South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn. I’m straining to see any similar saviors on the ground in Afghanistan or over the horizon. 

Im-Politic: Aftershocks

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abortion, African Americans, America First, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, election 2022, election interference, establishment Republicans, Green New Deal, Hispanics, Hong Kong, House of Representatives, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, mail-in ballots, mail-in voting, Mainstream Media, nationalism, polls, Populism, recession, redistricting, regulations, Republicans, Senate, social issues, state legislatures, tariffs, Trade, traditional values, Trump, Uighurs, women, Wuhan virus

I’m calling this post “aftershocks” because, like those geological events, it’s still not clear whether the kind of political upheaval Americans are likely to see in the near future are simply the death rattles of the initial quake or signs of worse to come.

All the same, at the time of this writing, assuming that the final results of Election 2020 will see Democratic nominee Joe Biden win the Presidency, the Republicans keep the Senate, and the Democrats retain control of the House, the following observations and predictions seem reasonable.

First, whatever the outcome, President Trump’s campaign performance and likely vote percentages were still remarkable. In the middle of a re-spreading pandemic, a deep CCP Virus-led economic slump that’s left unemployment at still punishing levels, and, as mentioned before, unremitting hostility from the very beginning on the part of most and possibly all powerful private sector institutions in this country as well as much of Washington’s permanent government, he gave his opponents a monumental scare. If not for the virus, the President could well have won in a near landslide. And will be made clear below, this isn’t just “moral victory” talk.

Second, at the same time, the kinds of needlessly self-inflicted wounds I’ve also discussed seem to have cost him many important advantages of incumbency by combining with pandemic effects to alienate many independents and moderate Republicans who backed him four years ago.

Third, the stronger-than-generally expected Trump showing means that, all else equal, the prospects for a nationalist populist presidential candidate in 2024 look bright. After all, how difficult is it going to be for the Republican Party (whence this candidate is most likely to come) to find a standard-bearer (or six) who champions the basics of the Trump synthesis – major curbs on trade and immigration, low taxes and regulations but more a more generous economic and social safety net, a genuine America First-type foreign policy emphasizing amassing of national power in all its dimensions but using it very cautiously, and a fundamentally commonsense view on social issues (e.g., recognizing the broad support of substantial abortion rights but strongly resisting identify politics) – without regular involvement in Twitter fights with the likes of Rosie O’Donnell?

Fourth, these prospects that what might be called Trump-ism will outlast Mr. Trump means that any hopes for the establishment wing to recapture the Republican Party are worse than dead. Ironically, an outsized nail-in-the-coffin could be produced by the gains the President appears to have made with African Americans and especially Hispanics. After Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican conventional wisdom seemed to be that the party needed to adopt markedly more tolerant positions on social issues like gay rights (less so on abortion), and on immigration to become competitive with major elements of the former President’s winning coalition – notably younger voters, women, and Hispanics. The main rationale was that these constituencies were becoming dominant in the U.S. population.

The establishment Republicans pushing this transformation got the raw demographics right – although the short run political impact of these changes was exaggerated, as the Trump victory in 2016 should have made clear. But it looks like they’ve gotten some of the political responses wrong, with immigration the outstanding example. However many Hispanic Americans overall may sympathize with more lenient stances toward newcomers, a notable percentage apparently valued Mr. Trump’s so-called traditional values and pro-business and pro free enterprise positions more highly.

If the current election returns hold, the results will put the GOP – and right-of-center politics in America as a whole – in a completely weird position. Because the party’s establishment wing still figures prominently in its Senate ranks, a wide, deep disconnect seems plausible between the only branch of the federal government still controlled by Republicans on the one hand, and the party’s Trumpist/populist base on the other – at least until the 2022 mid-term vote.

Fifth, as a result, predictions of divided government stemming from Election 2020’s results need some major qualifications. These establishment Senate Republicans could well have the numbers and the backbone to block a Biden administration’s ambitious plans on taxing and spending (including on climate change).

But will they continue supporting Trumpist/populist lines on trade and immigration? That’s much less certain, especially on the former front. Indeed, it’s all too easy to imagine many Senate Republicans acquiescing in the Democratic claims that, notably, the United States needs to “stand up to China,” but that the best strategy is to act in concert with allies – which, as I’ve explained repeatedly, is a recipe for paralysis and even backsliding, given how conflicted economically so many of these allies are. As suggested above, the reactions of the overwhelmingly Trumpist Republican base will be vital to follow.

One reason for optimism (from a populist standpoint) on China in particular – Senate Republican opposition to anything smacking of the Green New Deal should put the kibosh on any Biden/Democratic notions of granting China trade concessions in exchange for promises on climate change that would likely be completely phony. Similar (and similarly dubious) quid pro quos involving China’s repression of Hong Kong and its Uighur Muslim minority could well be off the table, too.

Sixth, their failure to flip the Senate, their apparently small losses in the House, and disappointments at the state level (where they seem likely to wind up remaining a minority party) means that the Democrats’ hoped for Blue Wave was a genuine mirage – and looks more doubtful in future national contests as well. For state governments are the ones that control the process of redrawing Congressional district lines in (very rough) accordance with the results of the latest national Census — like the one that’s winding up. So this is a huge lost opportunity for the Democrats, and a major source of relief for Republicans.

Meanwhile, on a symbolic but nonethless important level, the aforementioned better-than-anyone-had-a-right-to-expect Trump showing means that the desire of many Democrats, most progessives, and other establishmentarians to crush the President (and other Republicans), and therefore consign his brand of politics and policy to oblivion, have been sort of crushed themselves. So it’s an open question as to whether they’ll respond with even more vilification of the President and his supporters, or whether they’ll finally display some ability to learn and seriously address legitimate Trumper grievances.

Seventh, as for Trump Nation and its reaction to defeat, the (so far) closeness of the presidential vote is already aggravating the nation’s continued polarization for one particularly troubling reason: A Biden victory aided by the widespread use of mail-in voting inevitably will raise charges of tampering by Democratic state governments in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Call it domestic election interference, and the allegations will be just as angry as those of foreign interference that dogged the previous presidential election. As a result, I hope that all Americans of good will agree that, once the pandemic passes, maximizing in-person voting at a polling place needs to return as the norm.

Finally, for now – those polls. What a near-complete botch! And the general consensus that Biden held a strong national lead throughout, and comparable edges in key battleground states may indeed have depressed some Republican turnout. Just as important – a nation that genuinely values accountability will demand convincing explanations from the polling outfits concerned, and ignore their products until their methodologies are totally overhauled. Ditto for a Mainstream Media that put so much stock in their data, in part because so many big news organizations had teamed up with so many pollsters. P.S. – if some of these companies are fired outright, and/or heads roll (including those of some political reporters), so much the better.