Biden neuters himself with Taliban

 Rich Lowry:

Joe Biden has done many things in his statements about Afghanistan over the last week, from his speech last Monday to his brief press conference Sunday afternoon.

He’s critiqued Afghan leaders, blamed Donald Trump, denied he could have known what would happen, and painted rosy scenarios about the situation on the ground at the Kabul airport.

The one thing he’s never done, though, is criticize the Taliban.

The United States has been humiliated by Islamic radicals who have killed and maimed Americans for 20 years toward the end of restoring their medieval rule to Afghanistan, and the president of the United States can’t call them out — because he’s so dependent on them.

Biden needs the Taliban right now. They control the fate of his presidency, and have the power to determine whether he gets out of this to fight another day, or whether he’s the next LBJ or Jimmy Carter, whose presidencies were destroyed by the Vietnam War and the Iranian hostage crisis, respectively.

If the Taliban, or a faction of them, decide to take American hostages or, say, crater the runway at the Kabul airport, the current debacle would instantly become several magnitudes worse.

So Biden is very forceful at rebutting his critics, but gentle as a kitten when talking about the Taliban, who, in Biden’s statements, have achieved a status almost like that of a partner.
...

Don't forget he put himself in this position by failing to have a plan to get our people out before he got our military out.  He closed the best base we had in the country in the middle of the night and left the Americans in the country exposed.

See, also:

Biden blames others, but the errors are his in Afghanistan's crisis

And: 

What Biden doesn't understand

...

 Biden fails to understand why the United States is transfixed by these images and reporting. In televised statements and interviews, he has repeatedly failed to make the distinction that any child could — between the decision to leave Afghanistan and his appalling execution of that evacuation.

The exit has been chaotic, deadly, gruesome, and humiliating. It has caused many people to lose faith in the leadership of the military.

Biden has defended indefensible failures and inexcusable ignorance of conditions in Afghanistan. He has defended pulling our military out at the same time as he left so many U.S. citizens still in the country.

...

He was never very smart and apparently, he either did not put smart people in his administration or he paid no attention to them.