Exit strategy ... anyone?

Biden takes unfair share of the blame for chaos

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The chaos and confusion surrounding our exit from the battlefield in Afghanistan prompts a question or two.

One of them is this: When we decide to go to war, would it serve everyone well if we crafted an exit strategy going in knowing that the end would arrive one day?

I ask the question because of the pounding that President Biden is receiving over his withdrawal of troops and the shoddy lack of preparation for the end game.

I say this trying to spread the responsibility around through three previous presidential administrations, namely the George W. Bush administration, which took us to war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The question keeps rolling around. Why didn't President Bush's team come up with an exit strategy from the get-go? Did he not have some wished-for notion that our war against terrorists would find a conclusion? The same thing can be said of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the two men who followed Bush into the Oval Office. Did either of them foresee an end? If so, why didn't they develop an exit strategy that our troops could follow?

Now the whole thing has fallen on President Biden's lap. He did what he had to do, what he pledged to, which was to bring our troops home from the longest war in our nation's history. Yes, he should have had an evacuation plan on which to draw when he issued the order. He didn't. Neither did any of the men who preceded him.

So, who deserves the blame? Does it fall entirely on President Biden? No. It's a shared consequence.