Media top headlines August 23
In media news today, a CBS reporter instructs the White House staff to show Biden the poll about his job approval falling, Bill Maher and Andrew Sullivan pan newsrooms for caving to the 'woke mobs,' and a CNN panel blasts Biden's 'bizarre' messaging on Afghanistan
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gave President Joe Biden a pair of Pinocchios for claiming nation-building "never made any sense" in his interview with ABC News on the crisis in Afghanistan.
"We went there for two reasons, George. Two reasons," Biden told George Stephanopoulos. "One, to get bin Laden, and two, to wipe out as best we could, and we did, the al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did it. Then what happened? Began to morph into the notion that, instead of having a counterterrorism capability to have small forces there in — or in the region to be able to take on al Qaeda if it tried to reconstitute, we decided to engage in nation-building. In nation-building. That never made any sense to me."
Kessler appeared confused by Biden's remarks, as it was "easy to find" statements made by him after the invasion of Afghanistan in which "he seemed to extol the virtues of nation-building."
In October 2001, Kessler noted, then-Sen. Biden said the U.S. should "absolutely" be in the business of nation-building. His rhetoric remained the same for some years after, telling his congressional colleagues in 2004 they shouldn't consider nation-building a "dirty phrase."
"In some parts of this administration, ‘nation-building’ is a dirty phrase," Biden said at a Senate hearing. "But the alternative to nation-building is chaos —— a chaos that churns out bloodthirsty warlords, drug-traffickers, and terrorists. We’ve seen it happen in Afghanistan before —— and we’re watching it happen in Afghanistan today."
Other reporters and experts shared footage of Biden's past comments to suggest he was now contradicting himself.
Yet, Kessler also quoted foreign policy experts who argued Biden was not exactly reinventing history, and that the phrase nation-building was open to interpretation because it was unclear whether he was referring to reconstruction and building of state institutions by diplomats, or military involvement. The Bush administration’s policy at the time, some noted, was "murky,"
"I don't think Biden is really reinventing history," Afghanistan veteran and author Carter Malkasian said. "I think the history can be interpreted in different ways depending on how we look at what the Bush administration said."
Kessler concluded Biden's language was "sloppy" and "disconcerting" and gave him two Pinocchios for it.
"Biden’s language is sloppy here," Kessler said. "Is he referring to nation-building as Bush once did, meaning it was being done by the military? Or is he referring to simply reconstruction and development aid — evoking the phrase when he would knock Bush for not embracing a big aid package?"
Several other claims made by Biden in his ABC interview were picked apart by the press, including his suggestion that his senior advisers never told him to delay the withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite reports suggesting the opposite. He also told Stephanopoulos that no one was being killed at the Kabul airport at the time of their conversation.
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"But, look – but no one's being killed right now, God forgive me if I'm wrong about that, but no one's being killed right now," Biden said while knocking on wood.