“There was a lot of promise, a lot of assurance. A lot of talk about values, a lot of talk about progress, about rights, about women’s rights, about freedom, about democracy. That all turned out to be hollow.

Had I known that this commitment was temporary, I wouldn’t have risked my life. … I don’t care if it’s the Trump administration or the Biden administration.

I believed in the U.S. But that turned out to be such a big mistake.”

Biden’s Saigon

From Secretary of State Antony Blinken, last June:

“Whatever happens in Afghanistan, if there is a significant deterioration in security, that could well happen. We’ve discussed this before. I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

President Joe Biden, 8 June:

“The Taliban is not the south—the North Vietnamese army. They’re not—they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.

There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Bret Stephens Reports in the NYT on the Fall of Afghanistan:

“This is happening on Joe Biden’s watch, at Biden’s insistence, against the advice of his senior military advisers and with Biden’s firm assurance to the American people that what has just come to pass wouldn’t come to pass.”