President Joe Biden has issued another statement on events in Afghanistan. He says that several thousand American troops are on their way to assist at the departure of other Americans and their friends, bringing the total number of troops there to 5,000.
That’s double the number he decided to withdraw from the country when he declared their mission over. He said the Afghan army was strong and viable. He also insisted that the withdrawal was ‘not conditions-based’. It was a matter of principle.
He still insists that it was the right thing to do. His defenders agree. They claim that it was much better for the inevitable collapse of Afghanistan’s Potemkin government and army to have happened without US and NATO forces getting in the way.
Tell that to the thousands on their way over there.
To be fair, it is difficult to imagine the pressures Biden’s wordsmiths are under. But it’s also difficult not to hear an echo of old Sam Rayburn’s line: ‘I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.’
As for Mr Biden, he’d do well to recollect another line, this one of Wittgenstein: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’
He should accept this humiliation of his country and let others do the talking from now on.