Joe Biden’s Flip-Flop on Afghanistan

In light of Joe Biden’s decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, his old comments are coming back to bite him. When it comes to the presence the U.S. military should have in Afghanistan, Joe Biden has backpedaled on the issue throughout his 40-plus year career in politics.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden claimed he was “the guy” who opposed sending a large amount of troops into Afghanistan “from the beginning.”

• “I’m the guy, you remember, who said we should not send massive forces into Afghanistan…The only thing we should have is a very small footprint of special forces in there being able to take out those terrorist cells that are, in fact, designed to come at the United States of America like we did with Osama Bin Laden. We don’t need large footprints of troops.” (Joe Biden, Remarks At Town Hall, Fort Dodge, IA, 1/21/20)

• “I argued from the very beginning that we should have a policy that was based on an antiterrorism policy with a very small footprint that, in fact, only had special forces to deal with potential threats from that territory to the United States of America. The first thing I would do as president of the United States of America is to make sure that we brought all combat troops home, entered into a negotiation with the Taliban. But I would leave behind special forces in small numbers to be able to deal with the potential threat unless we got a real good negotiation accomplished to deal with terrorism. That’s been my position from the beginning.” (Joe Biden, PBS Democrat Presidential Candidates Debate, Los Angeles, CA, 12/19/19)

But from 2003 to 2008, Joe Biden repeatedly supported sending more troops into Afghanistan.

• Fox News’ Tony Snow: “All right. I want to be clear here. So you’re saying, you think the United States should have had more troops in Afghanistan over the past year?” Biden: “Oh, I do. I do. I think that we should’ve expanded an international security force. I think we still should be extending the international security force in that region. I’m still worried about the stability of Afghanistan.” (Fox’s “Fox News Sunday,” 3/2/03)
  
  
• Question: “Now you’re suggesting more American troops, sir?” Biden: “Absolutely. More American troops and more NATO troops.” Question: “How many more?” Biden: “Well, that’s up to the military to tell you that. But we made a serious mistake not putting considerably more troops, as I called for…” (Sen. Joe Biden, Press Conference, 9/27/06)

• “Biden, along with many others in both parties, is alarmed that the intense focus on Iraq is distracting attention from a disaster in the making in Afghanistan, with the resurgence of the Taliban. ‘If we’re surging troops anywhere, it should be in Afghanistan,’ Biden said. Adding troops there would give the United States ‘the moral high ground’ in its quest for more forces from NATO allies.” (E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Short-Circuiting The Surge,” The Washington Post, 1/5/07)

• “If America does more — and this has been my premise since 2001 when I came back — 2002, when I came back from my first trip after the Taliban had just been defeated and sent in a report indicating that we had to provide more force in Afghanistan. My view is if, in fact, America does more, so will our allies.” (Joe Biden, Remarks At Council On Foreign Relations, New York, NY, 2/25/08)

Bottom line: President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, really did put it best when he said Joe Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”