‘A Stain on Biden’s Legacy’: John Oliver Tears Into the President’s ‘Blithe’ Disregard for Afghans, ‘Failure to Plan’ for Taliban Takeover
John Oliver opened Sunday’s Last Week Tonight with both an analysis and scathing rebuke of the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, tearing into President Joe Biden for his “failure to plan” for a Taliban takeover.
“America’s war there is drawing to a close after almost 20 years of fighting,” he said. “We all knew the end was likely to be ugly, the only question was, how ugly? Well, this week, we got our answer.”
The host went on to show shocking footage of people crammed onto a plane, reminding viewers that it only reveals what happened to those who escaped the airport.
“There were horrific videos—that we are not going to show you—of people clinging to the wheels of a plane and falling to their death as it took off,” he added. “And while Biden insisted that ‘we planned for every contingency,’ that is pretty hard to believe given that just 10 days ago, the U.S. was desperately trying to negotiate with the Taliban asking to spare our embassy in Kabul; a day later, that embassy was told to destroy sensitive files; and by this time last week, we were evacuating it altogether.”
After joking that an embassy should not be placed in an airport “because it’s not a fucking Wolfgang Puck restaurant,” Oliver said that the U.S. has now joined a long list of countries that selfishly invaded Afghanistan — “only to leave defeated.”
The host went on to note that America’s initial reason to enter Afghanistan 20 years ago was to “get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,” adding that it was “never supposed to have been nation-building.”
“That’s a little true, but also a lot not,” he continued. “Because, yes, the primary reason for initially invading Afghanistan was 9/11, and the fact that the Taliban had been giving safe haven to [Osama] bin Laden. But very quickly, that mission became dressed up in the language of nation-building and human rights.”
Oliver explained that Biden was not the only supporter of the Bush administration’s invasion, hitting at Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) for pushing the war on the House floor while wearing what Oliver called a “fuck you burqa.”
“So, here we are: 20 years of war and destruction, tens of thousands of Afghans killed, many more traumatized, and the overall sense that you have at this point is a deep betrayal—betrayal of the promises that were made to the Afghan people, and betrayal of the U.S. service members asked to execute those self-serving promises, and are now left to ask themselves: What did I just do? What was this all for?” Oliver asked.
The host hit at Biden for being “blithe about the fate of the Afghans,” adding that his “failure to plan here is astonishing.”
“But his continued indifference to the lives of anyone who’s not American isn’t really surprising. He’s felt this way for years,” Oliver added, citing a passage from biography of the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
According to the text, when asked about the consequences for those who live in Afghanistan, Biden said, “Fuck that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
Biden also said in an interview with “Face the Nation” last year that he would bear “zero responsibility” if the Taliban were to takeover once U.S. troops withdraw.
“If Biden wants to argue for isolationism going forward, he is welcome to do that. But what he can’t do is use that as a justification to dismiss the fates of people in whose country we’ve already disastrously intervened,” Oliver said. “Because we have a non-zero duty at this point to do everything we can to help them, and that means getting as many people out as we can.”
“The chaos this week is already a stain on Biden’s legacy,” he added. “The only question is how big does he want that stain to be?”
Watch above, via YouTube.
