Is He Leaving Soon?
The president took a break from Camp David and returned to the White House briefly on Monday afternoon to address the fall of Afghanistan. He repeated a line that he used in a statement over the weekend, noting that he was the fourth U.S. president to deal with a war in Afghanistan, and he was determined not to hand it off to a fifth.
That’s a fine rhetorical line, and it made a point about the amount of time the U.S. has been involved there.
But last I checked, Joe Biden is scheduled to be president until at least January 20, 2025…he still has three years and five months left in this term.
The way this withdrawal was handled, it makes you think he was hurrying to tie up some loose ends before leaving a job. You know, how someone announces their retirement and finishes a few long-term projects before walking out the door, because it’s easier than pushing it off on someone else.
So did Biden just tip us off to what was the plan all along…he’d get to be president, but would leave early? Was that all part of the deal that meant all but one of his primary season challengers threw in the towel before Super Tuesday? Is that how he got widely disparate factions of the Democrat party to vote for him, because a radical progressive would be waiting in the wings?
I know, that’s sort of tin-foil-hat stuff. But it’s hard to explain why the withdrawal was so badly mishandled. He had three years to do it before handing off to a fifth president. So it’s almost like they know something we don’t. Then again, they didn’t know how quickly Kabul would fall, so perhaps the “fifth president” line is simply more worthless rhetoric coming from that podium.
