By Mahua Venkatesh
New Delhi, Aug 27: US President Joe Biden will have to do a lot of answering with the twin blasts at Kabul that killed 13 American Army personnel. Even before the blasts, Biden had come under severe criticism for a thoroughly unplanned and ill executed evacuation job of US citizens from Afghanistan. But the attacks have now made Biden’s task even more challenging.
According to Al Jazeera more than 70 Afghans, including 28 Taliban members, were among those killed in the bombings.
“With the Kabul blasts, he (Biden) will have a tough job at hand (in stabilising the situation), especially as expectations from his people were high (after he defeated former President Donald Trump). The Afghanistan debacle shows that neither has he managed to keep his home front happy nor the global community,” an analyst told India Narrative.
New Delhi, which had been cementing its relations with the US, may also “gently and gradually recharter” its Washington policy in the wake of the recent incidents.
The US President in a press briefing after the ghastly attacks promised to “hunt” down the terrorists.”I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” he told reporters at the White House after the bombings.
“At this point, Americans may not be willing to even trust his words,” the analyst, however, said.
Biden, who decided to pull out of Afghanistan, had full support of the Americans but the “botched execution of that decision” has been “indefensible.”
“It’s now time for Biden to be honest. He owes that to our troops, to our allies, and to the American people,” Steven Roberts, who teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University wrote in an article published byBrookings.
Meanwhile, the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) said that across the world there are worries about the reliability and credibility of the US as a guarantor of security.
“It would be foolhardy to take American credibility on external commitments as a given. While there are fewer doubts about US commitments to Europe and the NATO, the looser arrangements in the Indo-Pacific leave open many questions,” the ORF paper stated.
(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)
–indianarrative
