President Joe Biden once dismissed America’s obligations to Afghan women and girls when he was vice president, telling officials “Fuck that” when it was brought to his attention.
Atlantic reporter George Packer, also a biographer of former President Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, revealed the 2010 exchange in March.
Packer cited Holbrooke’s diary as the source:
According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: “Fuck that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
The comment has now resurfaced in the media as President Biden failed to plan for evacuating Americans and Afghan allies after the country fell rapidly to a resurgent Taliban.
Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Zabi Karimi)
Biden also explained to Packer in 2004 why he once supported the war in Afghanistan and the importance of nation-building. Packer wrote that Biden told him of “a catalytic event” for him after he met a young girl in Afghanistan who urged Americans not to leave the country.
Packer wrote: “As Biden explained it, the girl was saying, in effect: ‘Don’t fuck with me, Jack. You got me in here. You said you were going to help me. You’d better not leave me now.'”
But Biden appears more war-weary after abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban over the weekend.
During his speech Monday, he said he would only use words and diplomacy to help the women and girls of Afghanistan.
“We’ll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people — of women and girls — just as we speak out all over the world,” he said.