{"id":563,"date":"2021-08-24T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T02:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/?p=563"},"modified":"2021-08-27T22:22:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T03:22:20","slug":"the-fall-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/?p=563","title":{"rendered":"The Fall Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The tragic finale to the West\u2019s 20-year quixotic attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan comes complete with a fall guy: Joe Biden.  His three forerunners, Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, all effectively passed the buck to him; Trump even set a devious trap by agreeing to an unsound military pullout with the Taliban that would occur either during his second term or on his successor\u2019s watch.  Some Republican critics actually blame President Biden for losing the war, with the farcical claim that a force of merely 3,500 soldiers could have maintained the status quo.  But after two decades of dealing with largely corrupt government officials and an often-indifferent population, we knew that Afghanistan\u2019s society could not support a modern state on its own.\u00a0 Having once driven the Taliban from power by force, we would be foolish to expect them to wave goodbye to our personnel and allies at the airport.\u00a0 And had the evacuation begun earlier, the Administration would\u2019ve been blamed for the collapse of the Afghan military.\u00a0 In the short run, Biden\u2019s approval ratings have sunk, accompanied by calls from political nemeses (who apparently saw little wrong with their party\u2019s leader inciting a violent raid on the Capitol) for his resignation, impeachment or removal from office with the 25<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment of our constitution.\u00a0 Perhaps because he was never committed to running for reelection at 81 years of age, Biden was prepared to take the heat for ending a doomed war, and his historical legacy should reflect that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tragic finale to the West\u2019s 20-year quixotic attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan comes complete with a fall guy: Joe Biden. His three forerunners, Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, all effectively passed the buck to him; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/?p=563\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyvineberg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}