Liberal and conservative mainstream US media alike have relentlessly bashed the Biden administration this week in the wake of the unexpectedly rapid disintegration of the US-backed government in Kabul on Sunday, two weeks before Washington's deadline to get all American forces out of the country.
Clarissa Ward, a CNN correspondent who has been reporting from Taliban-controlled Kabul in recent days, has encouraged President Biden to own up to the US's “failure” in Afghanistan.
In an extended interview on Afghanistan for ABC News earlier this week, President Biden insisted he didn't consider events of the past week as evidence of “failure,” saying that his only other choice would have been to keep tens of thousands of US troops deployed in the war-torn country indefinitely, and blaming the Kabul government and the 300,000 troop-strong Afghan army for collapsing in a matter of weeks in the face of Taliban offensives.
Speaking from Kabul on Thursday, Ward called the situation on the ground at the airport “just an absolute mess” and an implied that the US strategy was absolutely a failure.
“I can't even fathom what level of desperation an individual needs to be at where they are literally throwing their baby over razor wire to try to get them to safety. But I think what that very clearly speaks to is the panic. The lack of clear information. The rumour mill is in overdrive. There's hysteria. You have…
