Joe Biden faces his first international crisis.
The Taliban's lightning offensive in Afghanistan, until their seizure of power on Sunday, August 15, took the US president by surprise.
He who still assured Friday that "Kabul is not, at present, facing an imminent threat", is forced to organize an emergency evacuation of its nationals.
As images of chaos at Kabul airport multiply, Monday, August 16, the President faces a wave of criticism never seen since his election.
For several hours, Monday, August 16, his agenda did not provide for any speech for Joe Biden, currently at Camp David, the resort of American presidents.
The latter will finally speak at 7.45 p.m. (GMT) (9.45 p.m. French time), the White House announced.
"A disaster", "a humiliating conclusion"
All the American media, including those which had greeted with relief his election, speak today of "disaster" or of Joe Biden "on the defensive" (according to the Washington Post).
"Whether we find it fair or unfair, history will remember that Joe Biden is the one who presided over the humiliating conclusion of the American experience in Afghanistan [after twenty years of war]", asserts "the New York Times" .
Faced with this wave of criticism never seen since the election, Joe Biden's White House, this well-oiled machine, seems paralyzed.
This is evidenced by the tweets broadcast over the weekend, as America follows hour by hour the fall of Kabul, and the image of helicopters leaving the embassy recalls the last images of the Vietnam War.
In a snapshot broadcast Sunday on Twitter, Joe Biden is alone at a huge Camp David meeting table.
In a dark blue polo shirt, he faces a video conference screen and several wall clocks set to various time zones, receiving "updates" on Afghanistan from senior officials.
Joe Biden spends the weekend at Camp David.
He took stock with his advisers on the situation in Haiti after the earthquake and on Afghanistan where panic is spreading to Kabul.
The Taliban are only about 10 km from the Afghan capital.
pic.twitter.com/RyA9f9kIai
- Elisabeth Guédel (@EGuedel) August 14, 2021
It was on August 10 that the 78-year-old Democratic president spoke for the last time in public, to say that he did not "regret" his decision to withdraw on August 31 the last American soldiers from the country.
Thursday then Friday, while the Taliban took control of Afghanistan at an astounding speed, the priority of the White House remained to extol the "Biden plan" supposed to rebuild the American economy on a more just basis.
And Saturday, it is in a statement that Joe Biden announces to bring to some 5,000 soldiers the military deployment in Kabul to secure the evacuation of civilians.
But his presidency so far rather controlled, assuming to devote himself to economic and social reforms "boring", the expression is Joe Biden himself, has indeed wavered.
So far, nothing has dented a popularity rating firmly anchored above 50%, not even the recent resumption of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last week was to be the consecration of the efforts of the president, old rogue of American politics, to pass a gigantic infrastructure program with the votes of certain Republican senators.
A boon for Republicans
And the White House intended to devote the next few weeks to another pharaonic project, applying to the United States some recipes from the European welfare state, with better support for medical or university costs.
But the collapse of the Afghan government and its Washington-funded army shatters this well-prepared "streak".
The silence of the Democratic president in the face of the plight of many Afghan civilians contrasts with the image of a compassionate man he usually cultivates.
The Republican opposition, so far embarrassed since American public opinion was mostly favorable to the withdrawal of troops, rushed into the breach in the face of the specter of an international humiliation of this army of which the Americans are so proud.
Former President Donald Trump was not mistaken, he who had yet decided the final withdrawal of American troops from May 1, 2021, a deadline pushed back to August 31 by Joe Biden.
"It is time for Joe Biden, discredited, to resign for allowing what happened in Afghanistan," he claimed.
With AFP
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