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Unpleasant Surprises: Extent of Damage From Disastrous Biden Policies Still Being Discovered

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  May 09, 2025 12:01 PM

Former President Joe Biden resurfaced for an interview with a foreign outlet this week.  He spoke haltingly, with long pauses, sometimes seeming to struggle for the next syllable.  When asked if he should have exited the 2024 presidential race sooner his answer was a bit of a jumble, but the upshot was 'no.'  One of the statements he made, in fact, was that he'd been just too successful as president.  So why would he want to walk away from such a glittering performance?  As you watch this clip, recall that he left office with an approval reading south of 40 percent in the RealClearPolitics aggregation.  Also recall that his White House, his political party, and the vast 'news' media ecosystem that supports that political party repeatedly assured us that this man was fully capable of serving another four year term -- until their giant, brazen lie officially imploded on a debate stage:


As noted above, Biden's approval was deep underwater upon his departure from office, having flipped upside down right around the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle of summer 2021.  Biden pulled our entire presence out of that country in a shoddy, rushed, chaotic way, entirely to maintain a political promise, along a political timeline.  This was a deadly decision and a national humiliation from which Biden's image never recovered.  He and his Vice President refused to grapple with the lethal consequences of his policy throughout the rest of his term.  He and his team hoped voters would forget about the thousands of and allies who were left behind, shattering a solemn pledge.  He labeled the whole disgraceful fiasco an "extraordinary success," then walked away.  No one was ever held accountable for the appalling failures, including inadvertently bombing an innocent family, rather than the terrorists who were responsible for the deaths of 13 US service members at Abbey Gate.  Biden was at the beach when he had someone else announce that awful error.  And we are still, to this day, learning more about the scope of those unaccounted-for failures:

The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group. The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied "weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army," according to a new oversight report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)...The United States left 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and over 300,000 weapons in Afghanistan in a withdrawal that saw 13 American service members lose their lives. According to the SIGAR report—which the watchdog group delivered to Congress on April 30—the Taliban transferred many of these arms directly to terrorist affiliates, while others made their way to the black market.

The Pentagon assesses that of around $18.6 billion worth of U.S. equipment provided to the Afghan Army over decades of support, $7.12 billion in weaponry remains in the Taliban’s possession. As a result, "terrorist groups continued to operate in and from Afghanistan amid ongoing U.S., UN, and regional concerns that the country remains a terrorist haven." More than two dozen terrorist organizations are currently active in Afghanistan, including the Islamic State-affiliated Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). At least four al Qaeda offshoots are also using the country to organize operations. "Terrorist groups," SIGAR reported, "continued to use Afghan soil to train and plan attacks and a ‘small but steady’ flow of foreign terrorists continued to travel to Afghanistan and join one of over two dozen terror groups based there." The findings come just months after the Trump administration terminated virtually all U.S.-funded assistance programs in Afghanistan, citing the Taliban’s ability to steal millions annually in American taxpayer cash. The Biden-Harris administration pumped nearly $4 billion into Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control of the country...

We left in such harried, embarrassing fashion that we didn't even bother to destroy our own weaponry. Now, dozens of aircraft, tens of thousands of vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of weapons -- our weapons -- are in the hands of terrorists.  Two dozen terrorist organizations are now operating in the country, a dangerous new reality that echoes the status quo before the 9/11 atrocities, which ended up being the entire reason we invaded Afghanistan in the first place.  As if all of that weren't bad enough, the previous administration yanked all of our people out of that country on an insanely accelerated timeline, for political reasons, yet continued to funnel billions into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, post-exit.  Insanity.   Speaking of which, we've recently received the final word on another shocking -- albeit smaller -- Biden disaster.  Remember the worse-than-useless Gaza floating pier?  It was even more shambolic than we'd realized:

More than 60 service members were injured as a part of former President Joe Biden's floating aid pier in Gaza, a Pentagon Inspector General report published on Tuesday said, a number significantly higher than had been previously disclosed. The pier, announced by Biden during a televised address to Congress in March 2024, was a massive endeavor that took about 1,000 U.S. forces to execute...The pier was only operational for about 20 days and cost about $230 million...While there were no deaths or known direct attacks on the pier, the Pentagon had said three U.S. troops suffered non-combat injuries in support of the pier in May, with one medically evacuated in critical condition. But the new report by the Pentagon Inspector General said that the number was actually 62.

Actually, Reuters, there was a death.  Aside from that not-so-minor detail, dozens of injuries, less than three weeks, and hundreds of millions of dollars.  Jennings is correct that the true purpose of this misadventure was to placate Hamas supporters within the Democratic base.  It placated no one, achieved nothing, cost taxpayers a fortune, hurt 62 of our soldiers, and killed one of them.  "Smart power" at work.  And yes, a scandal.  Or too much 'success,' as Biden would have us believe.