Assigned as White House con man, 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is the media point man with all the excuses, why the 78-year-old President Joe Biden has actually done a bang up job in Afghanistan. Sullivan’s tasked with changing the narrative to one of abysmal failure to one of great success, trying to evacuate thousands of U.S. citizens, Afghans and others from a chaotic withdrawal the started when 72-year-old Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country Aug. 16 to Doha, Qatar with oodles of cash, signaling a complete collapse of the U.S.-backed puppet government. Sullivan’s supposed to convince the public that Biden’s done everything possible to deal with a bad set of cards. One minor problem, Biden announced his withdrawal plan April 17, spending four months procrastinating. Biden could have started a methodical and orderly withdrawal in April.
Sullivan admitted today at a White House press briefing that he delayed the evacuation because he didn’t want to signal to the Taliban that the government had collapsed. President Joe Biden, 78, told the press last week that there was no way of preventing the chaos out of Kabul. Well had Biden kept a large military contingent in Kabul, secured the airport and proceeded to methodically evacuate people over the last four months, there wouldn’t be the chaos and panic seen today. No, Sullivan wants to say the White House did everything right. “We did contemplate a big gray-tail move of Afghans and other in July, early August time frame.” “We made a determination not to do so because, not just Afghan government officials, but supporters of the Afghan government of the people who want to come out now, said that doing so would trigger a complete crisis of confidence in the government,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan makes zero sense, only spewing feeble excuses of what happened. Sullivan’s “gray tail move,” suggests that the White House played its cards close to the vest when it came to an evacuation. Sullivan knows that Biden said the intel community said the Taliban was months away from taking over Kabul. Now Sullivan’s saying that they knew all along that the Taliban was close to overrunning Kabul. Sullivan’s been told to help salvage Joe’s sinking poll numbers, not because of right wing media but because his judgment has been questioned by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and other left wing publications. Democrat and Republicans alike are equally upset how the White House managed the evacuation. Whatever Joe’s classified briefings said about the Taliban, all he had to do was read the Delaware News Journal to see the Taliban took over Afghanistan months ago.
Sullivan’s insulting attempt to explain away the abysmal White House evacuation plan shows that only scoring political points matters. What about all the Americans stuck in Kabul, trapped, unable to get through Taliban checkpoints to the airport to get out? “Not taking out the vacuum, not doing that evacuation, didn’t exactly save the Afghan government,” Sullivan said, admitting that the White House strategy backfired. But Sullivan’s statement about White House strategy contradicts Joe who told the press no one could have predicted the end of the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Sullivan wants the public to think that Biden did everything possible to secure the Kabul airport and surrounding area once the evacuation started. After wasting four months, Joe decided to deploy the military to secure the airport once chaos-and-panic swept over the airport and surrounding area.
Sullivan tried to reinforce his boss’s remarks that nothing could have been done to prevent the chaos-and-panic when everyone ran to the airport at the same time. “But that was considered judgment at the time. Once we faced a circumstance in which we needed to move rapidly to secure the airfield to help get those folks out, that’s precisely what we did, and that is precisely what we are doing,” Sullivan said, admitting that the White House waited to act after the stampede took place. Sullivan thinks he’s a clever sophist but he’s actually establishing the record that the White House waited until the stampede started to secure the airport. U.S. troops should have set the perimeter around Kabul and the airport months ago, letting the evacuation go without a hitch. Sullivan wants to reinforce Biden’s feeble explanation that nothing could have been done differently.
White House officials have only hindsight now to explain away the colossal lack of planning to protect American and Afghan lives as the stampede toward the exit started. Had the White House started evacuations in April, there’s be no one left today other than a few stragglers. “Whether Kabul fell in August, September or December or next August, the fact is, whenever it fell, there were going to be American citizens in Kabul who need to be evacuated,” Sullivan said. No one in the White House blows more smoke than Sullivan, far better than Biden or 58-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But Sullivan doesn’t know the facts, he makes up the facts to make the White House look in control. Watching the TV footage tells the real story about a White House that procrastinated, squandered its opportunity for a methodical and orderly withdrawal, now dealing with chaos.
