President Joe Biden was silent during Saturday’s 9/11 commemoration events. So were former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Former President Donald Trump visited a New York City police precinct and fire station, where he made a few impromptu remarks.

The only president who delivered a formal speech on 9/11 was former President George W. Bush. And it was terrible.

In two ways. First, Bush’s speech was as much about decrying today’s political divisions as it was about remembering the events of Sept. 11. But Bush showed an astonishing lack of self-awareness of the role his own actions played in creating those divisions. And second, Bush helped widen those divisions by endorsing a Rachel Maddow-esque argument that an equivalence exists between the plane-hijacking, murderous terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6, 2021 — a comparison that has no basis in fact but has done much to sour the national debate.

Bush spoke at ceremonies for Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was the site of perhaps the most heroic of many heroic acts by Americans on Sept. 11. The passengers who fought back against the hijackers sacrificed their own lives to save the victims the terrorists were targeting. In the process, they likely also saved the Capitol, or perhaps the White House, from attack.

It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence and alienate our allies and much of the country.

In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise.

We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.

On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women’s Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity — unity — our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram airbase in the middle of the night without opposition?

The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI’s active-duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.

Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.

Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.

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By Michael W. Chapman | August 23, 2021

In a very candid interview with conservative Mark Levin on Sunday, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, said that President Joe Biden had single-handedly destroyed NATO’s credibility and had betrayed the United States and the U.S. military, for which he “should be court-martialed.”

“In my opinion, and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position, people have been talking about impeaching President Biden,” said Col. Kemp on FNC’s Life, Liberty & Levin.

“I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached,” he added.  “He’s the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn’t be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces.”

Colonel Kemp was an infantry battalion commanding officer and he headed Operation Fingal in Afghanistan in 2003. Kemp also served in the Iraq war, the Bosnian war, the Gulf war, and in battles against terrorists in Northern Ireland (Operation Banner).  He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery.

During the Aug. 22 interview, Levin asked, “Colonel Kemp, my question to you is, given what has taken place now in Afghanistan, and it’s ongoing, and assuming that Joe Biden stays on the same course, what are consequences for the United States, Britain, NATO, the free world, and that area of the world now?”

Kemp replied, “I think the consequences of what has just happened and what’s still happening are absolutely devastating for the whole of the Western world. I mentioned earlier that the catastrophic effect on NATO. NATO is a very important military alliance.”

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August 23, 2021   By Clifford D. May      Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

You don’t need to be a brilliant geopolitical strategist to understand that the United States should be the best friend – and the worst enemy – any nation could have. Following the events of recent days, the U.S. will be perceived differently: “harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”

Many politicians and diplomats share blame for this outcome, as do those deep thinkers who fancy themselves proponents of “responsible statecraft,” based on the dangerous fiction that “forever wars” end once Americans stop fighting them.

But since the buck stops in the Oval Office, history will most vividly remember the terrible decisions President Biden made in the months leading up to the 20th anniversary of the most catastrophic terrorist attacks ever on American soil.

The commander in chief had options. None were good. Least bad would have been to continue to frustrate the ambitions of the Taliban and al Qaeda, which also would have ensured that Afghans in Kabul and other cities would retain a measure of freedom and security. That would have required leaving a small residual force in Afghanistan, a force that would train, advise, and assist – not engage in direct ground combat.

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