Ridin’ With Biden

Just like President Biden, I’m going to make a prediction: This cartoon will NOT get a lot of love.

Even when they’re criticizing a fellow Democrat, Democrats don’t like it when I draw cartoons on Democrats. Even while Democrats were screaming for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign, they didn’t share my cartoons saying the same thing. It’s possible they don’t want to help give Republicans something to share and it’s also possible that every cartoon I drew on the subject sucked. Already this morning (after this cartoon was posted on Facebook), a liberal accused me of going after “low-hanging fruit.” If a president making a promise that doesn’t come true and costs thousands if lives is “low-hanging fruit,” then what isn’t?

The only people who will give me credit for this will be a few other cartoonists and the jerk who left a comment yesterday on my YouTube channel accusing me of covering up for President Biden. Even then, his kudos will be given begrudgingly, if at all. But I can’t care about any of this. I have to care about doing my job.

I’ve been saying that President Biden should be criticized for Afghanistan, but not by those who refused to criticize Trump. That jerk calling me out on YouTube yesterday never attacked Trump for downplaying the coronavirus. All the Republican cartoonists drawing the same cartoon of the Saigon airlift labeled “Afghanistan” never criticized Donald Trump for saying the virus would “magically disappear” or be gone by Easter, 2020. Their criticism here isn’t legitimate because they are strictly partisan. I have to take Biden on for this because I’m not those guys.

Yes, Donald Trump shoulders a LOT of blame for this. I covered this yesterday. But right now, thank God, Donald Trump is not the president. Joe Biden is. To ignore that would be abdicating my responsibilities. Cartoons don’t have to be fair, but cartoonists should be.

I am not a Democrat. I vote Democrat because they’re on the right side of the issues most of the time and they are the only answer to a corrupt and evil Republican Party. Other than that, I really don’t give a shit about the Democratic Party. I don’t join parties and I advocate for issues by myself, not as a part of any movement. I was never a part of the “resistance.” I’m my own resistance. If you get too close, I will bite your fingers. But Republicans are evil, corrupt, greedy, and racist. Democrats are clumsy and oftentimes, stupid.

When I criticize Joe Biden, keep in mind, I took on Trump for over four years. I’m not trying to make a case about how awesome I am for this as basically every liberal cartoonist is doing the same thing (though I have seen a couple trying to shift blame from Biden). The point is, liberal critics usually have more credibility than conservative critics. Yesterday, I saw a tweet from Trish Regan going after Biden for this and even attacked him for using a teleprompter. People in Afghanistan aren’t dying because the president of the United States used a teleprompter. If President Biden was playing golf, you know she would have gone after that too. But for four years, this person ignored Trump’s use of a teleprompter, his word salads, and his golfing. But maybe it’s not fair to use Trish Regan as an example because this person was so full of crap, that Fox fired her. By the way, I’m pretty sure when Trish Regan had a TV show, she used a teleprompter.

This is why I resent political tribalism. Wrong is wrong and it should be called out, not just when it comes from your side…but even when it comes from someone you supported and believed in. Here, President Biden disappointed me. I believed in President Biden.

I don’t blame President Biden for pulling us out of Afghanistan. I don’t even blame him for the way he did it. Every person who’s attacking him for the way he did this can’t tell you a better way it could have been done. Nobody is an expert on evacuating Afghanistan without collateral damage after years of fighting in that nation, because no one has ever done it.

What I’m disappointed in is that President Biden made an arrogant prediction. He should not have done that. I don’t care what assurances he had from our intelligence network or from the former Afghan president and government. President Biden knows history and he should have known that it was something he couldn’t predict. The only thing that probably could have been predicted was the way it turned out because there wasn’t an exit strategy when we invaded Afghanistan two decades ago and none was ever made during the past two decades.

Up until this point, President Biden has been fairly straight with the American people. All conservatives had to go after him was the border (which they ignored Trump on), his stutter (while ignoring Trump’s word salads, bullshit, and when he would make up names of countries), and the fact he likes ice cream (ignoring that Donald Trump liked ice cream too and wouldn’t share equally with his guest. Seriously. This was a thing). Conservatives keep going after Biden for liking ice cream as if it’s some sort of character flaw. Disclaimer: There is ice cream in my fridge right now. I even had a bowl last night. I even liked it.

I was also disappointed with Biden’s speech yesterday. It took him and his team two days to come up with something to defend themselves with, and what they came up with sucked ass.

After four years of hearing a president (sic) refuse to accept any responsibility for anything that went wrong, it was refreshing to hear President Biden say, “The buck stops here.” But then he went on to blame others. And, that blame is fairly placed on the former Afghan government, that was trained and supplied by the United States for two decades. It was a force of over 300,000 strong versus a Taliban force of around 80,000. The smaller Taliban army didn’t defeat the much larger Afghan army as the Afghan army refused to fight. They saw the Taliban army coming in their small Toyota pickups and 20-year-old hatchback cars with soldiers piled into and hanging out of the trunks…and the U.S.-trained Afghan army threw down their weapons and went home. The president fled the country. But the president and Afghan army didn’t force President Biden to predict that we won’t see a replay of Saigon. President Biden declared that we won’t see people overrunning a U.S. embassy rooftop to be evacuated.

Instead, we got people chasing airplanes down a military runway. We had people hanging onto wings of those airplanes. We may even have had people falling off those airplanes after takeoff. President Biden never should have predicted this wouldn’t happen. And you should not deflect or defend him for this shit. Nobody should put political tribalism before the lives of people. These are real people, not talking points. They don’t exist so you can make a social media meme.

President Biden shouldn’t have made any prediction. When asked, he should have said, “I don’t know.” He could have told us we have been there too long and we’re leaving. He could have said we spent 20 years and the safety for the people of Afghanistan now falls on the Afghan government. We had every right to leave, even with there being a humanitarian disaster. This disaster would have happened no matter when or how we left.

Biden also predicted the Afghan army was no match for the Taliban. I hope President Biden makes a Super Bowl prediction so I can put money on the other team.

I don’t think we can blame Biden for leaving behind those who helped U.S. troops and are now in danger…but it does fall on him. The blame for this is on U.S. bureaucracy. I know people being left behind would have happened no matter who was in charge because U.S. bureaucracy sucks. Yesterday, I was on the phone for 20 minutes with the U.S. government trying to get a replacement Social Security card…and they hung up on me. Then I called the local Social Security office and after ten minutes of voice prompts, it told me they couldn’t take my call at this time (why can’t you start the recording with the fact you’re not going to take my call?). U.S. bureaucracy is a sonofabitch. Of course, my little tiny problem pales in comparison to people being left behind by our bureaucracy, but I’m making an example. Our government screws up big and small.

Now, we need to do everything we can to rescue every Afghan who helped the United States over the past 20 years, even if that means we have to deal with the Taliban. But we closed our embassy. I understand we don’t want a repeat of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, but we need an avenue to at least communicate with the Taliban. I’m not saying we have to recognize their control as legitimate. Rescuing the people in Afghanistan is the right thing to do. This should be our president’s primary focus now that we have left Afghanistan.

Biden is a disappointment here, but I still have some faith in him. There may not be time to make up for his mistakes, but there is time to save lives. Instead of deflecting and trying to find blame, let’s focus on saving those lives and worry about the political consequences later.

Sometimes it’s tough to do the right thing. People lose elections for doing the right thing. But sometimes, that’s why it’s the right thing.

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Ridin’ With Biden