3. Afghanistan Withdrawal
The crises that have hit the Biden administration have not so much snowballed as turned into an avalanche of problems in the first two years of his presidency. And although all presidents face unpredictable and unprecedented problems when they enter the White House, many critics of Biden had pointed to just how ill-prepared he has been.
Like his predecessor, Biden was eager to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, describing it as “America’s longest war,” but he would shift the agreed withdrawal date from May 1, set by the Trump administration, to August 31 and insisted that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable,” and Afghanistan wouldn’t collapse despite his intelligence chiefs telling him otherwise.
Those same intelligence experts warned that the Taliban would swiftly seize power, and true to form they did precisely that. Many believed that the White House was wholly unprepared for this eventuality and that was borne out when Taliban fighters entered the Afghanistan capital Kabul on August 15 and US authorities struggled to evacuate diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.
