Joe Biden once snarled “F–k that” when asked if the US had an obligation to protect Afghans from the Taliban, according to newly resurfaced reports.
The commander-in-chief allegedly made the callous remark back in 2010 when he was vice president, while speaking to US diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
At the time, Biden reportedly was arguing that the US should leave Afghanistan despite the humanitarian costs, including the potential erosion of women’s rights.
“F–k that. We don’t have to worry about that,” he allegedly told Holbrooke. “We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
The conversation between the pair was documented in Holbrooke’s diary that was eventually included in George Packer’s 2019 book, “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.”
Holbrooke also wrote that Biden “erupted” when he specifically mentioned women’s rights.
“I am not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights, it just won’t work, that’s not what they’re there for,” Biden said, according to Holbrooke.
The alleged comments have resurfaced as Biden faces mounting criticism after the Taliban managed to regain control of Afghanistan on Sunday after a week-long onslaught.
It signals how Biden was in favor of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan long before becoming president.
The US was forced to rush in additional troops Monday to help secure the Kabul airport and protect Americans still trying to evacuate after thousands of Afghans stormed onto the tarmac and tried to climb onboard US military planes.
Shocking videos showed masses of Afghan civilians chasing after a plane as it taxied down the runway, with some managing to cling on as it took off. At least two people plunged to their deaths moments later as the plane rapidly gained altitude over the city.
Biden has rejected blame for chaotic scenes of the bungled withdrawal.
He called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians “gut-wrenching” and conceded that the Taliban had achieved a much faster takeover of the country than his administration had expected — but stopped short of assuming responsibility for the bedlam.
Just a month earlier, on July 8, the president insisted that the likelihood of the Taliban toppling the Afghan government and running the country was “highly unlikely.”
Still, Biden expressed no second thoughts about his decision to stick by the US commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to withdraw from Afghanistan and end America’s longest war.
Despite declaring that “the buck stops with me,” Biden placed almost all blame for the shockingly rapid Taliban conquest on the Afghans themselves.
“The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight … American troops cannot, and should not, be fighting in a war — and dying in a war — that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden said Monday.
The president then argued that the chaotic and unsettling collapse of the country reinforced the idea that ending US military involvement was the “right decision.”
