So far, only crankish Republicans in the defence sphere have demanded scalps from Biden’s political team over the withdrawal from Afghanistan.Ĭhallenging the hidden high command is not exactly unprecedented, but it is rare and startling when the gauntlet is thrown down so forcefully, as Biden did this week. ‘The Blob,’ and its ally in government, ‘the deep state,’ is a multi-tentacled thing. “The Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East,” Rhodes was said to explain in a notorious New York Times Magazine profile that probably ended his career in government. the Blob,” in reference to the coinage of Obama speech writer Ben Rhodes. The headline in the Washington famous Politico Playbook on Wednesday was crystal clear: “Biden vs. “It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”Īcross the river in Northern Virginia, land of the defence contractor, you could hear a pin drop. “The decision about Afghanistan isn’t just about Afghanistan,” the president declared. Now President, Biden overruled his generals and his Cabinet to get out of Afghanistan, or as the uber-hawkish senator Lindsey Graham, an ex-Biden friend, put it: the president “ignored sound advice” from the national security establishment and most importantly, “he’s been this way for forty years.”Īnd on Tuesday, President Biden delivered a speech his predecessor never did: an emboldened “America First” defence of why the United States left Afghanistan. But the wholesale dumping of the occupant of the Oval Office by almost every major institution in America belied Biden’s longtime, below-the-radar feud with a militarist mind-meld in Washington. As the brass turned against Donald Trump in 2020, Gates clarified in the Wall Street Journal that he long believed Biden “was a man of genuine integrity and character,” while spelling out that he did not feel the same about the 45th President.
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