To end a somewhat pathetic mandate, a totally pathetic decision... (2)

... I told you so...

Politico

To end a somewhat pathetic mandate, a totally pathetic decision...

CNN

... and an excuse for his successor's list of pardons.

"Time to Go, Joe". He took the words right out of my mouth

«Biden needs to step aside—for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country.»

«President Joe Biden needs to end his campaign. The first presidential debate, held last night, was a disaster. It was clear from the outset that Biden looked old, sounded old, and yes, is in fact very, very old.

This has been rumored for a while. Last night, it was confirmed.

Panic seemed to set in among Democrats within minutes of the candidates taking the stage—on social media, at shell-shocked “watch parties.” Full freak-out mode was achieved by the 20-minute mark.

Biden’s voice kept trailing off, and he kept getting lost in his train of thought. Donald Trump was sneering and lying. He said a bunch of stuff that made no sense—about club championships, cognitive tests, the whole farce of it. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered in this debate was Biden: his hushed and halting voice. His befuddled resting face. He looked like he wanted to be in bed. Or maybe every Democrat in America was just projecting. People kept sending me vomit emojis, among other things.»

«Time to Go, Joe», Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic 

In the contest of mental decay Mr. Trump tenaciously pursues Sleepy Joe (2)

Continuation of (1)

I turn, once again, to Forbes' "Biden-Trump Gaffe Tracker" to inventory the evidence of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump mental decline, aiding their devotees to identify this evidence in the object of their devotion, a difficulty insurmountable in the case of devotees of the second..

Here is some of the latest evidence.

Biden (May 14): He told Yahoo Finance inflation was “at 9% when I came in,” repeating a claim he made in a CNN interview earlier this month (inflation was at 1.4% year-over-year when Biden took office in January 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index).

Trump (May 11): He referred to former President Jimmy Carter as “Jimmy Connors,” chuckling as he caught the error during a campaign speech in New Jersey, clarifying that “Jimmy Carter had a bad reputation,” but “right now he is considered a totally brilliant president by comparison” to Biden.

Trump (May 11): In another odd reference, Trump told the crowd in New Jersey he had just eaten a hot dog, against advice he said Frank Sinatra once gave him to “never eat before you perform,” to which Trump said he responded “I’m not performing, I’m a politician,” but Sinatra died in 1998, before Trump’s entrance into politics.

Biden (May 9): The president said Candace Parker—a two-time WNBA Most Valuable Player and Olympic gold medalist who retired from the Aces after 16 seasons in the league—“will be considered one of the greatest all-time coaches” while honoring the Aces for their 2023 WNBA championship win at the White House, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Biden (April 16): In an interview with a local CBS affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., Biden said, “I made it clear to the Israelis—don’t move on Haifa”—likely referring to Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip city where millions of Palestinians have taken refuge and the U.S. has warned Israel not to carry out a potentially devastating invasion. Haifa is a major port city in northern Israel.»

Although I'm not sure if this is evidence of mental decline or just another nonsense, I add to the Forbes list Mr. Trump's idea to eliminate the income tax and replace it with massive tariffs on imports. An idea about which Brian Riedl, a conservative budget expert, wrote on X «If a 20yo interviewing for a House internship suggested replacing the income tax with a massive tariff, they’d be laughed out of the interview.» (apud The Atlantic Daily).

In the contest of mental decay Mr. Trump tenaciously pursues Sleepy Joe

As is well known, Mr. Trump's devotees are tenaciously trying to inventory supposed evidence of Mr. Biden's mental decline. It seems to me a public service for which American voters should thank these devotees, and I regret that their talent is not equally applied to the supposed evidence of their devotee's mental decay.

Fortunately, Forbes magazine has been filling this gap by publishing the «Biden-Trump Gaffe Tracker», from which I quote the most recent entries below. 

«Trump (March 16): At a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Trump again mistakenly referred to former President Barack Obama, this time possibly confusing himself with Obama, though it remains unclear what he might have meant: “Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama, has anyone ever heard of him?” Trump asked the crowd, before adding, “every swing state, Biden beat Obama but in every other state, he got killed.”

Trump (March 9): At a speech in Rome, Georgia, Trump claimed “the polls are rigged” while discussing his appeal to suburban housewives, before abruptly backtracking and saying “disregard that last statement, I love the polls so much.”

Biden (State of the Union speech, March 7): the president misidentified Laken Riley, the student murdered on the University of Georgia campus, calling her “Lanken,” while holding up a pin with her name on it.

Biden (State of the Union speech, March 7): the president briefly said the 2021 Capitol riot took place on July 6, before correcting himself and saying “January 6.”

Biden (State of the Union speech, March 7): after speaking about capping prescription drug prices, Biden made an off-the-cuff remark and invited Congress to fly with him and see lower prices for their medications in “Toronto, Berlin, Moscow—I mean, excuse me—well, even Moscow, probably.”

Trump (March 2): Trump seemed to confuse former President Barack Obama with President Joe Biden—alleging during a rally in Virginia Putin has “so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” marking at least the eighth time in recent months it’s happened.»

E se os eleitores americanos enviassem os incumbentes actual e anterior para a reforma? (2) As primárias republicanas de Iowa

 Continuação de (1)

WSJ

Sem surpresa, Donald Trump ganhou folgadamente as primárias do Partido Republicano no Iowa. Alguns dados complementares para contextualizar os resultados: só 15% dos republicanos registados votaram (devido ao frio extremo); os 56 mil eleitores republicanos que votaram Trump representam menos de 6% dos 898 mil que votaram em Trump nas eleições presidenciais de 2020; de acordo com as projecções de MSNBC, Trump teve 65% dos votos dos eleitores sem formação universitária e apenas 35% dos com formação, contra 33% de Haley e 23% de DeSantis; no mesmo sentido, a vantagem de Trump foi muito menor nos círculos eleitorais urbanos.

O grande trunfo de Trump (trocadilho acidental) são as classes operária e rural abandonadas pelo Partido Democrata e irritadas com o bullshit esquerdista radical (ver a série de posts «How the Radical Left Conquered Almost Everything for a Time») a que os democratas e Biden deram colo. Ruy Teixeira, um cientista político de origem portuguesa, dizia recentemente num debate publicado por The Free Press:

«Na verdade, era muito claro que, em muitos estados-chave, não haveria forma de os Democratas sustentarem o que na altura chamávamos “a coligação centrista progressista”, a menos que fossem capazes de manter a lealdade destes eleitores. Em 2016, com a vitória de Trump apoiada nas costas dos eleitores brancos da classe trabalhadora, especialmente no Centro-Oeste, ficou muito claro que os Democratas não foram capazes de manter o tipo de parcela do voto da classe trabalhadora branca de que necessitavam para tornar a situação política mais favorável. a aritmética de uma América em mudança funciona a seu favor. Mas, como vimos depois de 2016, os Democratas resumiram a sua perda como sendo relacionada com as partes reaccionárias da América – os racistas, os xenófobos, os deixados para trás – e não parecia ter muito a ver, na sua opinião, com questões de economia. Era tudo uma questão de como eles não estavam alinhados com aa América multicultural e multirracial que está surgindo, e isso é tudo. Então, eles pensaram, por que se preocupar com essas pessoas? São “deploráveis”, como disse Hillary Clinton.» 

Foi o que se viu em 2020 e vamos ver o que se verá em 2024.

E se os eleitores americanos enviassem os incumbentes actual e anterior para a reforma?

Fonte: Rasmussen Reports

Fonte: The Free Press

Idades actuais: Biden 81, Trump 77, Kennedy Jr. 69, Halley 51, DeSantis 45

Kennedy Jr. com 52% de opiniões favoráveis parece bem colocado para disputar a nomeação ao "incumbente" Trump e Nikki Haley com 33% dos eleitores sem opinião parece ter potencial de progressão. 

Do lado democrata as coisas parecem mais simples, mas na verdade são mais complicadas porque sem alternativa ao Sleepy Joe a eleição parece perdida.

Sleepy Joe's idea of proposing Frau von der Leyen to lead Nato doesn't seem like a good idea

«Why does Joe Biden think that Ursula von der Leyen is qualified to lead the defence of the West? She was German defence minister between 2013 and 2019 and was involved in multiple controversies.

In 2015, German troops were so ill-equipped that they had to use broomsticks instead of machine guns for a Nato exercise. It also emerged that German rifles wouldn’t shoot straight in temperatures above 30°C. By 2019, the Bundeswehr’s ammunition stocks were reportedly so low that they would run out after two or three days of fighting.

The same year, German soldiers used mobile phones on another exercise because they didn’t have encrypted communication devices. Thanks in part to von der Leyen’s leadership, Bundeswehr soldiers still lack modern radios, night-vision equipment, body armour, radio-integrated helmets, combat boots and even thermal underwear and water proof clothing.

In February 2021, the Dutch MEP Derk Jan Eppink called for von der Leyen to stand down from her fairly disastrous spell as president of the European Commission. ‘I did not vote for your candidacy for president of the European Commission because I knew of your past as a minister of defence in Germany,’ he said. ‘You have run away but I will say it anyway, you are to be blamed.’»

Is Ursula von der Leyen fit to run Nato?, by Steerpike, from the Spectator Newsletter

Biden's Buy American protectionist policies are wrong and hurt the US and its allies

 «Buy American provisions can have several advantages. They funnel money to domestic businesses in important industries, theoretically raise the wages of workers in those sectors, and let the government support the development of crucial technology and infrastructure. For example, if the U.S. wants to build an all-electric economy, we probably need to be much more deliberate about creating a stable and thriving market for inputs such as lithium and copper.

But the Buy American philosophy has at least four problems that the White House, Democrats, and all policy makers should think about as they engineer a new industrial policy for the 21st century.

B.A. typically raises costs. 

The U.S. should be concerned about building more and building faster. (...)  But building certainly won’t get any cheaper or easier if our policies increase the cost of essential materials by making foreign purchases of them illegal. All things equal, buying American might make building in America more expensive at a time when we should be obsessed with reducing costs rather than raising them.

B.A. can make key supply chains less resilient. 

Last spring, a bacteria outbreak at a Michigan plant that makes infant formula created a scary shortage. It also offered a lesson on the downsides of protectionism. The U.S. government makes the legal importation of otherwise-safe European formula almost impossible, going so far as to seize shipments at the border. (...) The U.S. should consider “friend-shoring” the production of certain materials—that is, working with our allies to create many nodes around the world so that if one fails, no catastrophe ensues.

B.A. policies can hurt innovation, even if just by accident. 

(...) Buy American provisions might send a strong signal to buyers—whatever you do, just buy from one of these few domestic suppliers! - that overwhelms other signals, such as price and quality. As a result, domestic suppliers don’t have to keep up with any innovative wave, and Buy American policies lock parts of the economy into being less innovative.

B.A. hurts global alliances that we should be nurturing. 

If the U.S. really is on the cusp of a second cold war with China, we should be focused on building alliances rather than frustrating our allies and trading partners. (...) 

Protectionism pushes us in the other direction. When the U.S. imposes Buy American rules, other countries may copy us and impose their own restrictions on global trade. This is why too much protectionism can punish the very people it’s meant to help. Under President Trump, the U.S. imposed import tariffs to protect manufacturing workers who built washing machines and made steel and aluminum. These jobs happened to be disproportionately located in GOP counties. But the policy backfired, triggering retaliatory tariffs in other countries. Suddenly our washing machines weren’t priced competitively for foreign buyers, leading to a sharp decline in U.S. exports. A 2019 analysis by several economists found that the U.S. companies that lost the most business were heavily concentrated in the very same GOP-leaning counties that Trump was theoretically trying to assist.

(...) But in this molten moment for economic policy, as we’re sliding from a neoliberal era into something else, we should be explicit about the trade-offs that come from explicitly protectionist policies. We already know the downsides of a laissez-faire, “build wherever it’s cheapest” regime. Twenty years from now, I don’t want to have to write that the U.S. overreacted to the China shocks by forcibly onshoring the production of goods in a way that made those goods less resilient and ample.»

Derek Thompson in The Atlantic

Devotees of Mr. Trump, before you point the finger at sleeping old Joe, don't forget what you said...

... about the object of your devotion when piles of documents were found in Mar-a-Lago...

NBC News

... and please note that it was the White House legal team that found the documents and so far the old sleeping Joe still hasn't invoked a conspiracy against him.

Pior é possível, mas difícil

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll - Rasmussen reports

A decisão e execução desastrosa da retirada do Afeganistão em finais de Agosto certamente contribui para acelerar a queda da aprovação de Biden pelo eleitorado, mas é apenas uma das razões. A sua taxa total de aprovação, mais baixa ainda do que a de Trump na mesma altura do mandato, era nos finais de Julho, antes da aprovação do pacote legislativo de combate à inflação e à crise climática, a mais baixa de todos os presidentes americanos. Numa altura em que os EUA enfrentam ameaças e desafios o avô Joe não está claramente à altura deles. 

Biden’s war: does he know what he’s doing? I share this doubt myself

The Spectator

Antes de fazer um juízo definitivo sobre os desconchavos de Biden, convirá rever as atrocidades e os erros crassos de Putin e o que dizem os seus admiradores

Em face da invasão russa ordenada por Putin à Ucrânia e da destruição maciça de alvos civis, qualificar o Czar como criminoso de guerra e considerar que deve ser removido do poder, são afirmações que qualquer cidadão decente poderia fazer. Outra coisa é serem feitas por um presidente de um outro país, na circunstância Joe Biden, o presidente americano. Se ditas em público, como foi o caso, a qualificação como criminoso de guerra é contra todas as regras não escritas da diplomacia, e apelar à remoção de Putin é uma ingerência nos assuntos internos de outro país, inadmissível face ao direito internacional, e possivelmente uma inutilidade se Putin tiver o apoio da maioria dos russos, como parece. 

É por isso compreensível que um cidadão decente considere as afirmações de Biden inaceitáveis e eventualmente as atribua a senilidade e/ou uma tentativa de diversão para fazer esquecer os falhanços da sua administração e a sua cada vez maior impopularidade. 

Um cidadão decente em face do desastre que está a ser a invasão, que o Czar no seu linguajar de newspeak orwelliano baptizou de «operação militar especial», compreensivelmente consideraria o Czar e os seus siloviki uma clique incompetente e com inteligência limitada (nos dois sentidos), pelas razões que sumarizo a seguir:  

• Lançar uma operação militar nesta época do ano (os tanques e todo o material circulante ficam atolados fora da estrada e por isso as filas de dezenas de kms nas estradas, esquecendo o que aconteceu aos exércitos de Hitler);
• Falhar definitivamente a logística que, segundos os manuais da primeira classe, faz ganhar ou perder guerras (tanques e outro material ficaram parados por falta de combustível; a Ucrânia aproveitou e confiscou centenas e tem agora mais tanques do que no início da invasão);
• Falhar as comunicações que não estão capacitadas para encriptação (até telemóveis comuns estão são usados) e são escutadas pelos ucranianos;  
• Um antigo espião rodeado de antigos e actuais espiões, falhar na inteligência e ser apanhado completamente desprevenido pela resistência ucraniana (dois dias depois da invasão, a a agência estatal RIA Novosti publicou por engano - era para sair mais tarde - um artigo onde se gabava que  “A Ucrânia voltou para a Rússia” e “Alguém nas antigas capitais europeias, em Paris e Berlim, acreditava seriamente que Moscovo desistiria de Kiev?”) (fonte);
• Um antigo espião rodeado de antigos e actuais espiões acreditar nas suas próprias balelas e esperar que um Ocidente decadente seria incapaz de reagir e ser surpreendido pela reacção da UE e da NATO;
• Usar tropa impreparada, mal informada e desmotivada que pensava estar a continuar o exercício começado há meses ou ser recebida de braços abertos pelos "irmãos ucranianos"; 
• O resultado das falhas de informação, estratégia, planeamento, logística, comunicação e a  impreparação não poderia deixar de ser o desastre que está a ser: baixas (7 oficiais generais mortos e entre 7 a 10 mil mortos) e perdas de material várias vezes superiores às ucranianas (quatro vezes, segundo esta fonte documentada com datas e fotos);
• Inevitavelmente, o desastre está a levar à reformulação dos objectivos que começaram por ser o derrube do governo legítimo e a sua substituição por um do tipo bielorrusso, reformulação camuflada por declarações grandiloquentes e mentiras puras e duras.

Ainda que a clique putinesca e os seus exércitos possam acabar por ocupar a Ucrânia, destruindo-a, isso será a prazo uma derrota ainda mais pesada porque para manter o controlo sobre um país com cidadãos que odeiam o putinismo e lutam pela sua liberdade com uma tropa determinada pagarão um altíssimo preço. 

Chegado aqui, o que pensaria um cidadão decente de alguém que já depois da invasão tem reiteradamente manifestado admiração e classificado o Czar Vlad como genial? E não, não me estou a referir a nenhum dos siloviki, nem mesmo a nenhum dos oligarcas putinescos, estou a referir-me ao antigo presidente americano Donald Trump.

Joe Biden quase a alcançar a popularidade de Donald Trump

Joe Biden’s state-of-the-union address fails to impress

«After a little more than one year in office, Mr Biden is in a slump. Setback has piled atop setback. After months of agonising negotiations, the signature legislative agenda of the administration—a gargantuan safety-net and climate-change spending package called Build Back Better—is in effect dead. High inflation, exacerbated by the large fiscal stimulus that Mr Biden signed, has wrecked his standing as an economic steward. Having promised to manage the pandemic better than his predecessor, Mr Biden has found himself at the mercy of covid-19 variants. And even his supposed core competence in foreign policy has looked in doubt since the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan (though his handling of the crisis in Ukraine has so far been more adroit).»

Não é possível é enganar todas as pessoas todo o tempo

A NBC News há dois anos que pergunta regularmente a eleitores republicanos se eles se consideram mais apoiantes de Donald Trump ou do Partido Republicano. Mais ou menos por altura da invasão do Capitólio por admiradores de Trump, como se pode ver no diagrama seguinte, deu-se uma inversão das respostas e no último inquérito 54% dos entrevistado identifica-se mais com o PR e apenas 38% com DT.  

Fonte

Pelo lado de Joe Biden, as coisas não estão melhores, como se pode ver no diagrama seguinte.

Rasmussen Reports

Com 47% de "forte desaprovação" e apenas 19%  de "forte aprovação", Biden é hoje o presidente americano menos apreciado pelos eleitores, comparativamente com os anteriores (inclusive Trump) na mesma altura do mandato.

Foi um outro presidente americano que disse:

«É possível enganar algumas pessoas todo o tempo; é também possível enganar todas as pessoas por algum tempo; o que não é possível é enganar todas as pessoas todo o tempo» 

Abraham Lincoln

Pro memoria (418) - Bidenlogia. Cada tiro, cada melro

Joe Biden’s multiemployer pension plan rescue is turning into a political disaster

Programme to provide money for bailouts will start a generational war between active workers and retirees

One of the most touted components of the Biden administration’s $1.9tn American Rescue Plan was a provision to rescue “multiemployer” blue collar union-sponsored pension plans from threatened insolvency. There are about 1,400 of these plans in the US, which cover the retirement benefits for about 10.8m workers.

Now the rescue is turning into a political and financial disaster. It had been known for years that hundreds of these plans have been struggling to meet their obligations to their beneficiaries. The largest of the troubled multiemployer plans, the Teamsters union Central States Pension Fund, covers nearly 400,000 workers and retirees.

Joe Manchin kills the Build Back Better Act, Joe Biden’s ambitious legislative package

It was a case of overpromising and not delivering at all. President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress vowed to pass the Build Back Better Act (BBB), the administration’s long-stalled signature legislation, by Christmas. Instead they spent December scrambling to salvage it from complete collapse. On December 19th, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia and the crucial holdout vote, announced on television that after months of negotiation, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation… I’ve tried everything humanly possible; I can’t get there.” Whether this is a death knell for the president’s legislative agenda or just a serious setback is still to be litigated. But it is hardly the Christmas present Mr Biden wanted.

ACREDITE SE QUISER: Joe Biden dá tiros nos pés (dos pobres e da classe média)

Economist

Uma das medidas do pacote do presidente Biden no campo fiscal diz respeito à chamada dedução SALT («state and local tax») que, adoptada há mais de um século, permitia aos contribuintes americanos deduzir os impostos sobre os imóveis pagos a nível estadual aos impostos sobre o rendimento a nível federal, o que em 2017 custou $370 mil milhões ou quase 2% do PIB. 

Sob a administração Trump foi adoptado um limite anual de $10 mil para essa dedução.

Agora o Partido Democrata pretende aumentar o limite anual de $10 mil para $80 mil, o que além de custar $275 mil milhões nos próximos 5 anos tem um efeito fortemente regressivo, beneficiando quase só 1 em cada mil contribuintes (ver diagrama ao lado).

De modo que um dos resultados do Build Back Better Act, já aprovado na Câmara dos Representantes e em discussão no Senado, que segundo Biden visava melhorar a situação da classe média, pode ser em, vez disso, melhorar a situação dos bilionários, a um custo que é superior à despesa prevista para os subsídios para reduzir a pobreza.

CASE STUDY: A bidenlogia não é uma alternativa à trumpologia. É diferente mas igualmente negativa

Enquanto esteve acordado na COP26 em Glasgow, Biden fez prelecções sobre as mudanças climáticas à China e à Rússia que nem o Imperador Xi nem o Czar Vladimir se dignaram presenciar. Enquanto isso o candidato que apoiou fortemente perdia a eleição para governador da Virgínia, um Estado tradicionalmente democrata. A retirada do Afeganistão foi um desastre sem apelo e enquanto a China ameaçava Taiwan a administração Biden anunciava eufórica a nomeação do primeiro almirante de quatro-estrelas transgénero. 

Lá em casa o programa de vacinação está a patinar e o número diário de mortes aumentou, o seu projecto de investimento maciço em infraestruturas, que será financiado com um aumento sem paralelo de impostos, continua a aguardar aprovação do Congresso e as suas medidas para impedir a entrada ilegal de imigrantes não se distinguem das de Trump.

As coisas não parecem correr bem a um Biden com quase 80 anos, dois aneurismas cerebrais e uma senilidade cada vez mais difícil de esconder. Biden que foi o presidente eleito com maior número de votos da história americana é hoje um dos presidentes mais impopulares.

Rasmussem Reports

Por esta altura a taxa de aprovação de Biden é inferior à de Donald Trump na mesma altura. A vice-presidente Kamala Harris, apoiada por progressistas e adeptos da cancel culture, rivaliza com Biden nos disparates e, por inacreditável que pareça, é a responsável directa pelas medidas de imigração que ela e os seus apoiantes demonizaram.

Unforgivable stupidity

U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate

The White House contends that limited information sharing with the Taliban is saving lives; critics argue it's putting Afghan allies in harm's way.

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

A câmara de Lisboa do Dr. Medina comunicava às embaixadas da Rússia, da China e da Venezuela, entre outros países com regimes autocráticos, os dados pessoais de promotores das manifestações contra os respectivos regimes. Podeis voltar Dr. Medina, estais perdoado.

Henry Kissinger sobre os erros estratégicos e políticos que levaram à retirada do Afeganistão

«THE TALIBAN takeover of Afghanistan focuses the immediate concern on the extrication of tens of thousands of Americans, allies and Afghans stranded all over the country. Their rescue needs to be our urgent priority. The more fundamental concern, however, is how America found itself moved to withdraw in a decision taken without much warning or consultation with allies or the people most directly involved in 20 years of sacrifice. And why the basic challenge in Afghanistan has been conceived and presented to the public as a choice between full control of Afghanistan or complete withdrawal.

An underlying issue has dogged our counterinsurgency efforts from Vietnam to Iraq for over a generation. When the United States risks the lives of its military, stakes its prestige and involves other countries, it must do so on the basis of a combination of strategic and political objectives. Strategic, to make clear the circumstances for which we fight; political, to define the governing framework to sustain the outcome both within the country concerned and internationally.

The United States has torn itself apart in its counterinsurgent efforts because of its inability to define attainable goals and to link them in a way that is sustainable by the American political process. The military objectives have been too absolute and unattainable and the political ones too abstract and elusive. The failure to link them to each other has involved America in conflicts without definable terminal points and caused us internally to dissolve unified purpose in a swamp of domestic controversies.

We entered Afghanistan amid wide public support in response to the al-Qaeda attack on America launched from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The initial military campaign prevailed with great effectiveness. The Taliban survived essentially in Pakistani sanctuaries, from which it carried out insurgency in Afghanistan with the assistance of some Pakistani authorities.

But as the Taliban was fleeing the country, we lost strategic focus. We convinced ourselves that ultimately the re-establishment of terrorist bases could only be prevented by transforming Afghanistan into a modern state with democratic institutions and a government that ruled constitutionally. Such an enterprise could have no timetable reconcilable with American political processes. In 2010, in an op-ed in response to a troop surge, I warned against a process so prolonged and obtrusive as to turn even non-jihadist Afghans against the entire effort.

For Afghanistan has never been a modern state. Statehood presupposes a sense of common obligation and centralisation of authority. Afghan soil, rich in many elements, lacks these. Building a modern democratic state in Afghanistan where the government’s writ runs uniformly throughout the country implies a timeframe of many years, indeed decades; this cuts against the geographical and ethnoreligious essence of the country. It was precisely Afghanistan’s fractiousness, inaccessibility and absence of central authority that made it an attractive base for terrorist networks in the first place.

Although a distinct Afghan entity can be dated back to the 18th century, its constituent peoples have always fiercely resisted centralisation. Political and especially military consolidation in Afghanistan has proceeded along ethnic and clan lines, in a basically feudal structure where the decisive power brokers are the organisers of clan defence forces. Typically in latent conflict with each other, these warlords unite in broad coalitions primarily when some outside force—such as the British army that invaded in 1839 and the Soviet armed forces that occupied Afghanistan in 1979—seeks to impose centralisation and coherence.

Both the calamitous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, in which only a single European escaped death or captivity, and the momentous Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 were brought about by such temporary mobilisation among the clans. The contemporary argument that the Afghan people are not willing to fight for themselves is not supported by history. They have been ferocious fighters for their clans and for tribal autonomy.

Over time, the war took on the unlimited characteristic of previous counterinsurgency campaigns in which domestic American support progressively weakened with the passage of time. The destruction of Taliban bases was essentially achieved. But nation-building in a war-torn country absorbed substantial military forces. The Taliban could be contained but not eliminated. And the introduction of unfamiliar forms of government weakened political commitment and enhanced already rife corruption.

Afghanistan thereby repeated previous patterns of American domestic controversies. What the counterinsurgency side of the debate defined as progress, the political one treated as disaster. The two groups tended to paralyse each other during successive administrations of both parties. An example is the 2009 decision to couple a surge of troops in Afghanistan with a simultaneous announcement that they would begin to withdraw in 18 months.

What had been neglected was a conceivable alternative combining achievable objectives. Counterinsurgency might have been reduced to the containment, rather than the destruction, of the Taliban. And the politico-diplomatic course might have explored one of the special aspects of the Afghan reality: that the country’s neighbours—even when adversarial with each other and occasionally to us—feel deeply threatened by Afghanistan’s terrorist potential.

Would it have been possible to co-ordinate some common counterinsurgency efforts? To be sure, India, China, Russia and Pakistan often have divergent interests. A creative diplomacy might have distilled common measures for overcoming terrorism in Afghanistan. This strategy is how Britain defended the land approaches to India across the Middle East for a century without permanent bases but permanent readiness to defend its interests, together with ad hoc regional supporters.

But this alternative was never explored. Having campaigned against the war, Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden undertook peace negotiations with the Taliban to whose extirpation we had committed ourselves, and induced allies to help, 20 years ago. These have now culminated in what amounts to unconditional American withdrawal by the Biden administration.

Describing the evolution does not eliminate the callousness and, above all, the abruptness of the withdrawal decision. America cannot escape being a key component of international order because of its capacities and historic values. It cannot avoid it by withdrawing. How to combat, limit and overcome terrorism enhanced and supported by countries with a self-magnifying and ever more sophisticated technology will remain a global challenge. It must be resisted by national strategic interests together with whatever international structure we are able to create by a commensurate diplomacy.

We must recognise that no dramatic strategic move is available in the immediate future to offset this self-inflicted setback, such as by making new formal commitments in other regions. American rashness would compound disappointment among allies, encourage adversaries, and sow confusion among observers.

The Biden administration is still in its early stages. It should have the opportunity to develop and sustain a comprehensive strategy compatible with domestic and international necessities. Democracies evolve in a conflict of factions. They achieve greatness by their reconciliations.»

Henry Kissinger on why America failed in Afghanistan