The five images that define Biden's catastrophic Afghanistan exit: Ronald Reagan's communications director Pat Buchanan identifies moments that have wrecked his foreign policy legacy
Former Reagan communications director said the Afghanistan crisis 'shattered' Biden's foreign policy in a scathing op-ed
President Biden handling of the Afghanistan crisis 'shattered' his legacy on foreign policy forever, former Reagan communications director said Friday.
In a scathing op-ed, he isolated it to five defining images that immortalize the chaos and devastation of the waning days of the US's 20-year war into Biden's presidency.
The first, Buchanan writes, is 'the initial panic at Karzai International Airport. Afghans clinging to the sides of departing planes.'
Heartbreaking scenes emerged out of Kabul when the US began its civilian evacuation effort and the Taliban took hold of Afghanistan's capital city.
Afghans held onto US military jets actively flying off the tarmac, and videos appear to show some people falling from hundreds of feet in the air.
A 19-year-old Afghan soccer player was among those who died tried to escape, and he was reportedly found dead in the wheel well of a US C-17 transport jet when it arrived in Qatar, after the plane had taken off from Kabul.
The Air Force later said that the pilots decided to go ahead with takeoff because the jet 'was surrounded' and there was a 'rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft.'
Buchanan also panned the US military's 'reliance on the Taliban to vet our citizens and allies at the airport.'
Zaki Anwari, 19, had played for the Afghan national youth football team
The second image Buchanan mentions is the devastation following an ISIS-K suicide attack outside Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul.
The massacre killed 170 Afghans and 13 US servicemembers just five days before Biden's August 31 withdrawal deadline - the deadliest day for the US military in Afghanistan since 2011.
Wheelbarrows were used to cart off the wounded - some missing limbs, others unconscious.
Many survivors dropped vital documentation - their only lifeline to escape a country descending into civil war - in the stampede to flee that followed.
When he addressed the tragedy publicly, Biden invoked his late son Beau - also a veteran - to try and commiserate with the families of the US fallen.
But some of the Gold Star families said they were disappointed the president kept bringing up his late son, as he tried to relate to their fresh sense of loss and devastation.
Shana Chappell, the mother of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui who was killed in the blast, blamed Biden for the 13 deaths on her social media pages before her Facebook and Instagram were deleted in an apparent mistake.
A view of injured people and dead bodies after an explosion near the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26
People carried the wounded away in wheelbarrows amid a stampede prompted by the airport explosion
After publicly expressing his grief Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden made an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base to welcome the 13 flag-draped coffins.
Seconds after a salute honoring their return, the president appears to check his watch - the tone deaf image is another defining moment, Buchanan said.
Biden's apparent checking of his watch sparked fury among veterans, Republican politicians and commenters online.
'Looks like he was being inconvenienced by having to show some respect for these American Heroes ,' wrote Desert Storm Army veteran Samuel Williams.
Submarine veteran J Larry Hanna wrote: 'Biden, as the caskets passed before him, had to glance at his watch. Does he have something more important?'
Another veteran wrote: 'After a fallen soldier goes by, Biden shows his true incredibly disrespectful soul, he checks his watch as if he has somewhere else to be. I’m so mad, this is personal slap to all veterans and active duty.'
Biden appeared to check his watch moments after a salute for the bodies of 13 US service members killed in the Kabul blast. He and the first lady made an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base to formally receive the fallen troops
After the strike Biden vowed to 'hunt' down whoever was responsible for the attack.
In response the US carried out a drone strike targeting a vehicle suspected of carrying a member of ISIS-K.
The stroke destroyed a car that the Pentagon said was laden with explosives that would be used by ISIS-K to use to target Americans.
The blast also wound up killing ten people from the same family - including six children.
'Why have they killed our family? Our children? They are so burned out we cannot identify their bodies, their faces,' one relative told BBC reporters through tears.
He vilified the US strike as a 'brutal attack which happened based on wrong information'.
Zemaray Ahmadi, 36, was killed alongside his sons Zamir, Faisal and Farzad - aged 20, 16 and 12 respectively, while Emal Ahmadi said his two-year-old daughter Malika Ahmadi also died.
Six of Zemaray's nieces and nephews were also killed - a boy and girl both aged two, girls aged five and seven, a six-year-old boy and a 28-year-old man.
Scenes of destruction and grief following the US attack are the fourth defining moment, Buchanan writes.
Relatives and neighbors of the Ahmadi family gathered around the incinerated husk of a vehicle targeted and hit earlier Sunday afternoon by an American drone strike
The final image, according to the former White House official, are the faces and stories of all those left behind to fend for themselves in the Taliban-controlled state.
'Hundreds of US citizens and tens of thousands of Afghans, all now potential hostages of a triumphant Taliban, with the Afghans facing the prospect of torture and murder,' Buchanan writes.
Biden vowed on August 18 that 'if there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay to get them all out.'
Just hours after the US withdrawal US Central Command chief General McKenzie admitted to reporters Monday that 'We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out.'
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that night that 'We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.'
Thousands of Afghan interpreters were also left, many who fear they have targets on their backs now that the Taliban run the country.
That includes an interpreter named Mohammed, who notably helped rescue Biden in 2008 when a Blackhawk helicopter he was in had to make an emergency landing in a remote Afghan valley during a snow storm.
Afghan interpreter Mohammed, who helped save Biden during an emergency Blackhawk landing during a snow storm, begged Biden on Fox & Friends: 'Do not leave. Do not forget me and my family.' Mohammed was left behind when the US completed its military withdrawal from Afghanistan
Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised the US would get him out but didn't elaborate on how.
Mohammed spoke to Fox & Friends on Thursday and told them he felt betrayed by the president he rescued.
When asked what message he has for Biden, he said: 'Hello, President, do not leave. Do not forget me and my family.'
Buchanan writes, 'All these stories, photos and videos are indelibly fixed in America's mind and inextricably linked to Joe Biden. They will forever define his legacy.'
And the dozens of critics who panned Biden along the way will now be a roadblock for 'any bold foreign policy decision' he makes as president, Buchanan said.
He went so far as to say Biden's handling of Afghanistan rendered him and his advisers 'unable to speak for American on the world stage.'
'Bottom line: If Joe Biden, as commander-in-chief, draws a red line, what reason is there to believe the country will back him up if it comes to enforcing it?' he questioned.