No, Mr. President, we won’t ‘move on’ from your Afghanistan disaster

“That was four or five days ago” is quickly becoming the permanent mantra of the Biden administration and its media allies. Journey back a mere two weeks, and you will recall President Joe Biden, in a home-field-advantage interview with George Stephanopoulos, saying those words about the harrowing scenes at the Kabul airport.

First of all, it wasn’t true — it had only been two days. More important, every promise the president made turned out to be false: He didn’t end the violence at the airport, and he didn’t maintain our troop presence until every last American was out.

Now more than 100 American citizens are stranded. In Afghanistan. Under the Taliban. Even journalists who worked for the US-government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe are abandoned to the vicious whims of the Taliban.

His bizarre temper tantrum of a speech on Tuesday, in which for some reason he scolded his critics and the American people, was meant to turn the page on the debacle he created in Kabul. And the president’s sycophantic pom-pom brigade in the media heralded his performance as “defiant!”

Well, that kind of tough talk might have made Corn Pop back down in Biden’s epic tale of standing up to gangsters at the local swimming pool. But the American people aren’t buying it.

Team Biden is now counting on the Afghan disaster to fall into the dustbin of news cycles past. Good luck. Americans won’t forget the shocking display of weakness they have been treated to for weeks now. They will never forget the image of Biden, slumped over, head resting in his hands, cowed under the questioning of Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

Even as his poll numbers sink off the table, Biden’s boosters insist this is just a blip. Nobody will remember, they convince themselves. Americans will get back to Netflix and TikTok. But there are moments that define presidencies, and Biden has found his.

It’s a close-up of his back as he refused time and again to answer for his actions that spilled American blood. This isn’t about the attention span of the American voter, it is about indelible images of a president who can’t be trusted.

Biden is demonstrably not trusted by our allies, even as he dams his ears to the cacophonous chorus of condemnation coming from them. He is not trusted by the Afghan soldier who literally saved his life in a rescue operation back in 2008, now trapped without help. He is not trusted by Gold Star families disgusted by his behavior with them. And he is losing the support of even those Americans who voted for him despite his having spent most of the 2020 campaign in his basement.

Today, Biden’s only hope is that his diplomatic leverage with the Taliban will force them to allow our citizens and allies to escape and usher in a kinder and gentler Islamic caliphate that hews to Western norms. The only problem with this is that the Taliban wants death to America more than it wants International Monetary Fund loans and invitations to UN cocktail parties. That the president and his band of Ivy League idiots don’t understand this is frankly amazing.

Biden has always promised to level with Americans, to shoot from the shoulder. He could have done that here. He could have said, “Boy, we made mistakes, and I’m to blame.” He could have demanded the resignations of the Cabinet secretaries who abetted his shameful decisions. But he didn’t, and he never will. That the buck stops with Joe Biden is a rhetorical tool for him. It is also a damning reality, one he and his legacy will never escape.

Next week, New Yorkers will once again be stopped in their tracks by the piercing twin columns of light commemorating the heroes of 9/11. Joe Biden hoped it would be a photo-op for his presidency, the man who ended the Forever Wars. But as our fellow citizens and allies sit beneath the scimitar swords of those dedicated to killing us, we feel no safety, no security. We are angry, and we should be.

No Mr. President. We will not move on. This is who you are. Forever. Not just four or five days ago.