Opinion | What we still don't know about Americans in Afghanistan - The Washington Post

The phrase “credibility gap” was popularized during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas used it to describe his inability to get straight answers from LBJ and his minions on the escalating Vietnam War. To all subsequent presidents has come some charge of a credibility gap.

President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and press secretary Jen Psaki now all suffer from a credibility gap born of obfuscation over the Afghan catastrophe. Though the State Department can count the minimum number of “Americans” — defined by me as all U.S. passport holders, whether citizens or Legal Permanent Residents with “green cards” known to its teams by text, email and phone calls — no one at State or the White House can seem to agree on what that number is.

This past Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told CNN there were “around 100” Americans left in Afghanistan. On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said “hundreds” are still stranded. The Post’s Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief Susannah George told my radio audience Friday morning there is simply no way to know, as some passport holders are cut off and most of the country is out of contact with anyone.

We have a right to know the scale of this crisis: the minimum number of U.S. passport holders known by our authorities to be in Afghanistan. And it is a crisis. It is America Held Hostage 2.0, and though a cohort of Americans escaped Thursday, many remain behind. Psaki, with astonishing indifference to the worries of families and friends across the country, said on Wednesday that there were a “handful” of Americans still in Afghanistan.

A “handful.” It is shocking to hear that. Americans do not come in “handfuls.” They come in ones. Each one matters. One American abandoned is a crisis. We need to know the denominator against which the “ongoing efforts” can be measured. We celebrate every American who escapes, but we cannot forget and dare not accept the minimization of Americans left behind.

We must also learn the state of the president’s robustness. I believe my eyes. The president is, in my opinion, infirm. He is old. Soon to be 79, Biden shows his years every time he appears in public.

Biden is not incapacitated. He’s not sidelined. He is simply lacking the “energy in the Executive” that Alexander Hamilton identified in the Federalist Papers as the key ingredient in the president’s competence and the federal government’s success. This isn’t an issue of chronological age, but simply of energy. Biden lacks it. The press fails the people when it refuses, absolutely and repeatedly refuses, to discuss what this means for the country given the urgent issue of hostages, and the menace of emboldened enemies who must see in the president’s infirmity a vast field of opportunities.

On Tuesday, Chris Wallace spoke to me with the sort of candor we need, but his target was Blinken. It is worth quoting Wallace at length.

“I’m very unimpressed by the State operation,” Wallace began. “I’m very unimpressed by Antony Blinken,” he continued. “You know, Blinken had a news conference, I guess it was, well, it was last Friday. It was when he refused to say how many people, Americans and Afghans, had gotten out. And you know, he was speaking with all the passion of somebody reading the telephone book.”

Wallace grew animated. “And you know, it’s not a matter of politics. It’s a matter of presence and gravitas. When Mike Pompeo or Hillary Clinton or, you know, you can go on and on, Colin Powell, spoke for the United States of America, there was, you know, there was a ‘Don’t mess with us, guys, we’re the United States of America.’ Blinken, I think, is a great staff man, but I’m not, I’m very doubtful as to whether he should be … the voice of America’s presence in the world.”

That is a blunt and devastating assessment of American leadership, and if a broadcaster says it, imagine what the Taliban, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping must think. We are in deep, deep trouble.

That trouble is compounded by legitimate questions, all unanswered, about the president’s energy and capacity. Merriam-Webster defines “infirm” this way: “of poor or deteriorated vitality.” The first step to repairing our crisis is a strong secretary of state, one whom the world pauses to watch when he or she speaks. There are many candidates. Time to make a change, Mr. President. American lives depend upon it. As does your credibility with the people.

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September 12, 2021 at 07:05PM
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Opinion | What we still don't know about Americans in Afghanistan - The Washington Post
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