2 pitfalls the GOP should avoid in its Afghanistan response
The Biden administration is taking a pounding in the court of public opinion with regard to the execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and Republicans are once again said to be "pouncing." But there's no denying this is a legitimate political issue.
Whatever the overall success rate of the airlift out of Kabul, some Americans and most Afghan partners were left behind. There was a terrorist attack in which over a dozen service members perished. The images on television screens were disturbing. Polling shows that the public does make a distinction between the decision to withdraw — which most Americans still support, with an even larger majority concluding that the war was a failure — and how President Biden implemented it. This is a fair point for Republicans to bring up about Biden's proficiency as commander-in-chief, which was a major Democratic talking point in favor of his election.
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The second, more challenging pitfall to avoid is appearing too partisan, ghoulish, and grasping in the attempt to exercise appropriate oversight and engage in constructive criticism of what the Biden administration has done. This became the problem with Benghazi, the much-probed consulate attack in which four Americans died. There were some legitimate questions, especially about how the Obama White House chose to initially speak about Benghazi in public, and the wider Libya intervention was a fiasco.
But it did not take long for Republicans to be perceived as simply wanting to rough up then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election. Voters will find that just as gross under Biden.
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