The day Joe Biden lost the midterm elections?

Joe Biden ’s address to the nation after the fall of Kabul was one of the worst by any American president in my lifetime. He stumbled over his words, he abandoned the people of Afghanistan in their moment of need, he failed to acknowledge what had been achieved during the conflict over the past twenty years. Worst of all, he rushed to save his own neck rather than speak up for American values.

In 1940, after the Fall of France, Winston Churchill did not mock the failure of the Third Republic or its soldiers. Instead, he told the House of Commons, “The House will feel profound sorrow at the fate of the great French nation and people to whom we have been joined so long in war and peace, and whom we have regarded as trustees with ourselves for the progress of a liberal culture and tolerant civilisation of Europe.” Did Biden speak of “the people to whom we have been joined so long in war and peace”? Did he speak of “the progress of a liberal culture” or the virtues of “ a tolerant civilisation”? Indeed, did he speak of American values at all, of democracy and liberty, and why so many American soldiers have died to defend these values in so many parts of the world? The answer to all these questions is no. Above all, he failed to say what America stands for in a world where authoritarianism and fundamentalism are on the move.

It’s not a question of whether Biden was right to say enough is enough, that after twenty years it was time for America to withdraw from Afghanistan. There were two other questions, neither of which Biden addressed. First, if America was going to withdraw, and many Americans agreed that it should, was this the way to do it? Second, who will trust America now? The people of Afghanistan who risked their lives to help British, American and Nato forces against the Taliban? Women and girls in Afghanistan who thought America would support their hopes for peace and change?

Who did Biden let down in his speech? First, American veterans and their families mourning thousands of loved ones. What had they died for? Was their sacrifice in vain? Biden didn’t seem to care. He certainly had no answers to these questions. What mattered to him was that he had been right.

What about America’s allies? Listen to soldiers turned MPs, such as Tom Tugendhat, Tobias Ellwood, Rory Stewart, Dan Jarvis and Johnny Mercer, all of whom have spoken with such dignity and righteous anger over the past few days. Or, even more seriously, consider those who look to America for vital support and reassurance. The people of the Baltic Republics and Ukraine as they fear what Putin might do next. Pro-democracy activists, from Hong Kong to Iran. Israelis faced with more missile attacks. “America is back,” Biden said on his first international tour. Really, Mr President? This is a very different America to the one we and others around the world hoped Biden would represent.

Biden said the government forces in Afghanistan, with all their resources and materials, would prevail. They collapsed like a house of cards. Their president fled immediately. Biden had no sympathy or concern, no analysis or explanation. Why was he so wrong? Bad intelligence? Or did he not listen to advice from strategists and military advisers who knew? We don’t know because he never addressed these issues. He ducked and weaved. The mission in Afghanistan was not about nation-building, he said. That’s not what he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2003, soon after American troops went in. It was all the fault of Afghanistan, he said. But as recently as last month he told us that the Afghan forces had the resources to win and the Taliban didn’t.

In barely more than a year, Biden will face the voters in the midterm elections. Republican candidates for the Senate will fill the airwaves with images from the past few days: chaos at Kabul Airport, the triumphant Taliban on the march. Worse, there will be the images still to come. Women being stoned, enemies of the Taliban being executed, young girls describing how they were raped or forced to marry Taliban soldiers. Biden may have been right that it was time to pull out. But where in his speech did he face up to the terrifying future that so many people in Afghanistan now face?

Biden’s wafer-thin majority in the Senate will disappear in the face of these images and these questions. He will become a lame-duck president in fifteen months’ time. By then, he will look even older and sound even less articulate. And where is his Vice-President? What has happened to Kamala Harris and why is no one even asking? In Biden’s first media appearances after he was elected they were inseparable. She was always there, at his side. Not during the greatest crisis of his brief presidency, though. She has been invisible.

The midterm elections bring us to what might be the most pernicious part of Biden’s address. Who was he speaking to? Not the people of Afghanistan or America’s allies. He was speaking to the voters of Middle America, telling them we are bringing our troops home, that Afghanistan was always about making sure there would never be another 9/11 and that, as Secretary of State Blinken said, that was a “ success ”. Biden was fighting to save his neck come the midterms. No talk of American values; just naked self-interest. It was a disgusting performance. Not as bad as Trump at his worst but certainly not edifying.