The Gaslighting Continues – Biden’s “Successful” Withdrawal from Afghanistan

There is now no doubt about exactly how much contempt with which the Biden administration and the Democrats hold this nation and the American people. During this holiday weekend, the White House released a gaslighting 12-page national security assessment about their catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal. This was done on the heels of the Pentagon and State Department sending their own reports on the disaster to Congress.

The definition of gaslighting is when someone attempts to psychologically manipulate reality to a point where the target begins to doubt their own perceptions. The Biden administration seems to be relying on that old tactic far too often. Within this report and during the White House national security spokesman John Kirby’s press conference, the Biden administration takes virtually no responsibility for what happened and instead blames…wait for it…Donald Trump.

The Wall Street Journal, usually no defender of Trump, issued an editorial slamming the Biden team for “fake history”. The editorial goes on to say, “More alarming than its fake history is the White House’s inability to connect the dots between the U.S. surrender in Afghanistan and increasing world disorder. The U.S. is not more respected after surrendering to the Taliban, despite the heavy firepower the Administration deploys to make that case: ‘multiple opinion surveys. You can draw a straight line between the debacle in Afghanistan and the failure to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine,” they wrote, “Yet the only lessons the Biden Administration learned are the wrong ones. ‘In Ukraine,’ the report notes, ‘we decided to evacuate personnel nearly two weeks before Russia’s invasion,’ apparently unaware that this was one more signal to Mr. Putin that he could roll in without fear of a U.S. response.”

When Kirby chirped that the Biden administration was “proud” of the withdrawal, Fox News’ Peter Doocy, as perplexed as everyone else in the press room, asked: “There were children being killed…there were people hanging off of Air Force jets that were leaving. And you’re saying you guys are ‘proud’ of the way that this mission was conducted?” Kirby’s response, “You bet!” Further, Kirby inexplicably asserted “I just don’t buy the whole argument of chaos” besetting the withdrawal at the Kabul airport.

We remember the shocking chaos of the withdrawal—our 13 troops and over 100 Afghans who were murdered at the Kabul airport by a terrorist’s bomb. The abandonment of the American embassy and Bagram airbase. Leaving the Taliban in possession of billions of dollars of abandoned military equipment, supplies and munitions. The children murdered, and babies being tossed to Marines by desperate families outside the airport. And as the New York Post reported, “A US airstrike in Kabul against a supposed Islamic State bomber actually killed an innocent man who worked for a US aid group and his family, according to newly published testimony and footage — raising the specter that the Pentagon lied to the public about the strike.” Among those killed in that U.S. drone strike were seven children, carried out two days after the airport bombing as the world was told it was a strike on an ISIS terrorist and prevented another bombing. None of that was true.

Senator Marsha Blackburn responded to the report by tweeting, “@WhiteHouse just blamed President Trump for their botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Let’s set the facts straight: – 9K Americans were left behind under Biden – $7B in military equipment was left to terrorists under Biden – And 13 brave servicemembers died in Kabul under Biden.” Moreover, reports indicate there are at least 175 Americans still stuck in Afghanistan, with a number of those being held hostage, and thousands of our Afghan allies still stranded and in danger due to their association with the United States.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) called Kirby’s comments “disgraceful and insulting.” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) called his remarks “sickening.” Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) said they were “utterly detached from reality.”

Even some in legacy media pointed at the Biden administration for the catastrophe and its aftermath. Margaret Brennan at CBS News put it this way, “Biden’s decision to pull the U.S. out of Afghanistan led to the collapse of its government, its military, the death of 13 Americans, & it left tens of thousands of Afghans hoping to escape. Girls over 12 can no longer be educated. This is one of the darkest moments of the Biden presidency to date.”

On its face, it is insulting and deeply troubling to be lied to so directly and obviously by our own government about events we witnessed with our own eyes as we watched the disaster unfold in real time. This issue of national security is an existential one and we have to ask, if the Biden administration is so willing to lie and gaslight the American public about things that we have directly seen, what else are they lying about?

We saw them mislead us about the economy and inflation. They made COVID policy decisions that resulted in debilitating our economy and the physical and mental health of Americans. Our federal law enforcement has been spending an inordinate amount of time spying on the American people, trying to censor and silence our voices, targeting parents at school board meetings, as they continue to develop a federal infrastructure aimed at censorship and the targeting of political opponents.

This renewed effort to lie to the American people about serious life-altering events should be a serious and urgent reminder for everyone about the danger we are in due to the malevolence and incompetence of the Biden administration and the Democrat Party.