President Joe Biden has known for quite some time that a haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a disaster, yet he went ahead and did it anyway.
A video that was filmed in 2007 – and resurfaced recently – when Biden was running for the Democratic presidential nomination shows that he knew the most likely result of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan if they were pulled out quickly.
While appearing in Iowa on a campaign stop during the 2008 presidential primary – which he ultimately lost to Barack Obama – Biden warned people that getting American troops withdrawn from Afghanistan would take much longer than many people realized.
Biden, who was then a Senator from Delaware, added that if the U.S. rushed the withdrawal of troops and ended up leaving military equipment in the country, the situation could turn dramatically worse not long after.
The video shows Biden telling people in Iowa that he understands that many Americans want the troops to come back home. That being said, even if the war were to have ended at that time, the U.S. had to keep in mind that it could take about a year to bring home all the troops in a safe manner.
As he said in the video:
“It will take a year to get the American troops out. Do you hear me now? That’s the truth. It will take a year to get them physically out.
“Now, if you leave all the equipment behind, you might be able to do it in seven months. … [But] you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind, I promise, they’re going to be used against your grandchild and mine some day.”
When Biden made those comments in 2007, there were roughly 25,000 U.S. military members serving in Afghanistan. The focus of the ongoing War of Terror was shifting over to Iraq.
The video proves that Biden knew full well exactly what would happen if the country rushed a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Yet, for some reason, he pushed forward to do that in 2021 as president.
The question, then, becomes why Biden would do that if he knew what the outcome would be.
Ironically, Biden hit the nail on the head with his prediction. When American troops withdrew, it resulted in a very deadly and chaotic scene at the country’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, as Afghans were doing anything they could to leave – including trying to hang onto military planes as they were taking off.
A suicide bomber then killed 13 U.S. service members at the Abbey Gate at the airport.
As part of the frantic withdrawal of troops, the U.S. military left billions of dollars of military equipment behind, all of which was obtained by the Taliban, which quickly took over control of Afghanistan from the democratic government.
While the Taliban has said that it will work to hold off ISIS and other terrorist groups, it has already started to reinstitute controlling policies on women and others in the country.
