Political infighting over war debacle appears to have just warmed up
Taliban fighters patrol a street in Kabul on Thursday. The Taliban say they are close to forming a new government in Afghanistan. (AAMIR QURESHI / AFP)
Which way will the political winds blow in the United States after the chaotic, deadly troop withdrawal from Afghanistan?
In the short term, the scenes of chaos and disorder have taken a toll on President Joe Biden's standing, if one goes by polls, and also have subjected him to bipartisan rebukes.
A common thread in the polls is that people wanted the US to extract itself from the war but were angered by the frantic way the pullout unfolded.
A poll by the Pew Research Center released on Tuesday found that 54 percent of respondents felt it was the right decision to leave Afghanistan, while 42 percent disagreed. Only 27 percent rated Biden's handling of the situation as excellent or good, 29 percent judged it fair, and 42 percent called it poor.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 59 percent of respondents disapproved of Biden's handling of Afghanistan, while 38 percent approved.
Republicans are looking to wield the Afghanistan response by the Democratic president against his party in the 2022 congressional elections.
While some Republicans in the House of Representatives have floated the idea of impeaching Biden, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday basically said that wouldn't happen, as Democrats hold a slim majority in the House and Senate, the latter by only a tie-breaking vote.
"There isn't going to be any impeachment, but I think they have a good chance of a very bad election next year," the influential Republican said.
Jack Pitney, a political-science professor at Claremont McKenna College, told NBC News:"Foreign policy usually doesn't drive midterms unless American lives or economic interests are directly at stake. The Kabul incident will hurt Biden in the short run but will drag down the party only if there is a hostage crisis or an Afghanistan-based terror attack."
Biden could be banking that in the long run, getting the US out of Afghanistan will be viewed positively.
One theory as to why Biden faced such a vociferous reaction from both major political parties is because he went against the desires of Washington's foreign policy elite and "hawks".
"Biden's decision to withdraw has handed Afghanistan over to the Taliban and created a terrorist sanctuary," said US Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican and daughter of former US vice-president Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the Iraq War.
Nikki Haley, a Republican and former US ambassador to the United Nations, said:"Biden just completed his shameful retreat from Afghanistan, leaving American citizens and Afghan allies behind under the rule of a terrorist government. If anything happens to them, Biden is to blame."
Robert Menendez, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was "disappointed that the Biden administration clearly did not accurately assess the implications of a rapid US withdrawal".
Bipartisan faith
In an article on Wednesday, Mark Landler, The New York Times' London bureau chief, suggested that Biden's move was anathema to such thinking.
"Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the doctrine of an aggressive, expeditionary foreign policy－in which all options, including military force, are invariably on the table－has become a bipartisan article of faith in Washington," Landler wrote. "The news media, which covered those wars, played a significant role in amplifying these ideas.
"While Biden may have antagonized foreign policy elites, his determination to extricate the US from costly entanglements overseas plays better with average Americans."
He added that polls indicate that many, if not most people in the US, share his conviction that the country "does not have a compelling reason to stay in Afghanistan".
Still, that outlook also will be tempered by the fact that 13 US service members－all but one in their 20s－were killed in a suicide bombing last week at the Kabul airport, where scenes of desperation unfolded relentlessly for two weeks.
The president also faces raw anger from the families of the fallen troops, some of whom have publicly chastised him.
There also is another potentially dramatic issue of whether the estimated 200 US citizens left behind in Afghanistan will make it out.
If harm were to befall any of them in the coming weeks, then the White House could have a new televised crisis on its hands.
Agencies contributed to this story.
