German Chancellor Angela Merkel and members of her government condemned the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in harsh terms.
The debacle in Afghanistan was “an extremely bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and terrifying,” Chancellor Merkel said while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.
In her sharpest attack on Biden’s decision yet, the German chancellor suggested that the Biden administration’s hasty and messy withdrawal was motivated by “domestic political reasons” rather than geostrategic necessities.
The German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Merkel’s remarks:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on Monday about the quickly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control.
“This is an extremely bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and terrifying,” said the chancellor.
“It is a terrible development for the millions of Afghans who want a more liberal society,” she said. (…)
“I am thinking of the pain of families of soldiers who lost their lives fighting there. Now everything seems so hopeless.” (…)
Earlier, according to participants at a meeting of party members, Merkel said she believed the US decision to press ahead with the withdrawal was taken for “domestic political reasons” were partly to blame.
The head of Merkel’s Christian Democratic party (CDU) and chancellor candidate in the next month’s general election, Armin Laschet, had even harsher words for Biden’s failure in Afghanistan. “It’s the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its creation and it’s a change of era that we are confronted with,” he said.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier saw the Biden administration-led pullout as “shameful.”
“The images of desperation at Kabul airport are shameful for the political West,” the president said. “We are experiencing a human tragedy for which we share responsibility.”
The disaster in Afghanistan comes as a bitter shock to the German political class. After four years of President Donald Trump, the country’s politicians and mainstream media rooted enthusiastically for the Biden-Harris ticket.
Ally UK “Embittered” by Biden’s Afghan Disaster
“Joe Biden has come under fire from senior British politicians over his defense for withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, with [Labour Party chief] Keir Starmer calling it a ‘catastrophic error of judgment,'” UK newspaper The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper said the pressure was mounting on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to distance himself from Biden on Afghanistan.
The Guardian reported the political mood in London:
Biden’s claim that the US and its allies gave Afghans “every chance to determine their own future” but ultimately “could not provide them with the will to fight for that future” drew criticism from senior Tory MPs, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Pressure mounted on the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to disavow the comments, before a statement he will make on Wednesday when parliament is recalled.
Biden’s claim that the US and its allies gave Afghans “every chance to determine their own future” but ultimately “could not provide them with the will to fight for that future” drew criticism from senior Tory MPs, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Pressure mounted on the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to disavow the comments, before a statement he will make on Wednesday when parliament is recalled.
The New York Times reported that Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal has ‘rattled’ the UK political establishment. “Britain was the second-largest supplier of troops to Afghanistan, and the United States’ rapid withdrawal from the country has left some [in Britain] embittered,” the Times commented.
“In Britain, the chaotic departure from Afghanistan has drawn comparisons” to the “1956 Suez crisis, in which a humiliated Britain was forced to pull out of Egypt, having failed to dislodge its nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser,” the newspaper added.
UK’s former Veterans Affairs Minister, Johnny Mercer, who personally served as an artillery officer in Afghanistan, said that his country had “chosen defeat.” The hasty withdrawal was “shameful,” “sad,” “humiliating for the British army,” and a “tragedy for the Afghan people.”
