The Biden Speech I Would Have Drafted

 

President Biden finally found his way back to the White House this afternoon to deliver a speech about his failure in Afghanistan. If he were a real president, in full control of his mental faculties and looking to earn respect from his constituents, here’s what he should have delivered. You can read his miserable, finger-pointing, “not my fault” remarks as delivered here.

Note: I’m a former speechwriter. I have written speeches for a Cabinet Secretary in the Bush 41 Administration, a leading United States Senator, and on occasion, a couple of Fortune 250 corporate CEOs.

Here’s the speech I would have written and he would never have given, considering his lack of integrity, failure of leadership, his diminished mental state, and his awful staff. And I would have resigned before being fired. These are incompetent and deluded people, from the top down. This is the first draft, so forgive the errors.

My fellow Americans. This is a sad and tragic day.

Trillions of dollars, twenty years, and more importantly, 2,400 lives were invested in meeting an important mission that began 20 years ago – exacting justice from the horrible attacks on our soil on 9/11.

Twenty thousand more were injured and live every hour, every day, with their painful sacrifices. God bless you for your service and sacrifice. We honor you; it was not in vain. We accomplished so much. But we made mistakes, and I want to own up to them and outline where we are headed now.

We paid a serious price decades ago by allowing the Taliban to sponsor Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who, with others, conspired to attack both the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Over 3,100 lives were lost that day, and not all were Americans – people from dozens of countries lost their lives along with our fellow patriots. The pain still resonates. We will never forget.

America and the free world came together on that tragic day.

Under President Bush, we removed the Taliban from power and helped Afghanistan instill its own democratically elected government based on universal human rights.

Under President Obama, we continued that progress. Over some objections, we implemented a “surge” to combat a resurgence by the Taliban. We were successful. More importantly, under President Obama’s leadership, we killed Al Qaeda’s leader, Obama bin Laden, and captured an enormous amount of intelligence to help us with the war on terror.

President Trump began the process, after nearly two decades, of turning over the responsibility for Afghanistan’s future and defense to the Afghan people, and slowly and responsibly withdrawing US troops. He negotiated a set of accords and annex agreements with the Taliban and the Afghan government. Not a perfect agreement. But one I felt obligated to live up to.

And that’s where we made mistakes. As President, I take full responsibility.

I made the decision to implement the Trump accords. Our nation had promised to provide continued air support, reconnaissance, intelligence, and other forms of support to the Afghan government. We didn’t do that. When the Taliban began violating the agreement and ignored the annexes that accompanied it, we failed to enforce it. The Taliban saw that as an open invitation. And the Afgan army, without support from us that they were counting on, cut and run, and worse.

As a result, near the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are seeing the Taliban’s banner flying over the country once again. I understand why so many Americans feel shame and intense hurt. So do I.

The Taliban has committed that they will no longer harbor the terrorism they sponsored twenty years ago. We will hold them to it, and we will build an international coalition to hold them accountable.

We and our allies will pressure the Taliban to respect the rights of women and the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations. We will pressure the rest of the world to hold them accountable and punish countries with sanctions that overlook abuses of human rights by the Taliban, especially those nations that quickly recognized the Taliban, including – and I’ll name them – Communist China, Russia, and Iran.

We will suspend our negotiations over a renegotiated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, with Iran over its naked ambitions for nuclear weapons and support for undermining our accords in Afghanistan. Further, we will reimpose sanctions and intensify them. It is time we recognize that Iran is our enemy and means us harms and stands most to benefit from the Taliban’s reemergence. We will never allow them to develop or procure nuclear weapons. Period.

Most urgently, we are working feverishly to help Americans, our allies, and our Afghan friends to leave Kabul. I call on the Taliban to live up to their promises of an “open, inclusive” Islamic government. We are watching you. We have committed more than 7,000 American troops to help facilitate that free movement.

If we see forced, arranged marriages, degradation of women’s rights, the open killings of LGBT persons, and the torture and murder of their people, the world will respond. I’ll see to it. This is your chance for a second chance, after your failures of 20 years ago.

Many Americans ask why we should care about Afghanistan. It’s simple. We should never allow terrorism to grow, fester, and be exported to the free world, especially the United States, nor support those who do.

My fellow Americans, we handled this wrong. Our intelligence was faulty. We planned poorly. We were inadequately prepared. The easy, political thing to do is to blame my predecessors. I won’t do that. I’m President. This was on my watch. I own it. And I’m going to respond. This must never happen again, and we will never, ever let terrorism let loose on our shores ever again. That is my solemn commitment.

Hold me accountable.

God Bless the United States of America.

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There are 11 comments.

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  1. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    LOL

    Good one.

    • #1
  2. Some Call Me ...Tim Coolidge
    Some Call Me ...Tim
    @SomeCallMeTim

    Wrong tag.  Should be Humor. 

    • #2
  3. Brian Wyneken Member
    Brian Wyneken
    @BrianWyneken

    Would we ever to hear such a speech I think it would actually play pretty well (but, be skeptical of my “political acumen” – I seem to be usually out of sync).

    • #3
  4. No Caesar Thatcher
    No Caesar
    @NoCaesar

    “… and therefore, effective midnight August 20, 2021, I shall resign the office of the President of the United States of America.”

    • #4
  5. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Yeah, there seems to be a lot of faith in establishment institutions in your speech. The UN? Seriously? I think there’s every reason to be way more cynical. 

    • #5
  6. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    This would have been a more appropriate speech, although I think I would have more concrete immediate actions included in it. 

    Something to the effect of,

    We are reinforcing our remaining personnel in Kabul, in order to safely transport any US person or SIV applicant out of the country. When those people have left, we will redeploy our remaining forces.

    • #6
  7. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    I’ll simplify it:

    “My fellow Americans, this is a big effing deal. I utterly failed to ensure the safety of Americans and Afghanis on the ground in the hastened capitulation to the Taliban who had already violated the withdrawal agreement they made with my predecessor’s administration.

    My order to eliminate air support for the Afghan Security Forces who have bravely fought the Taliban for years and lost tens of thousands of lives doing so, resulted in the swift, blitzkrieg takeover of the country by the Taliban who are now sure to bring bloody reprisals on anyone associated with the Afghan government, the Afghan Security Forces, or the United States of America – especially vulnerable are thousands of women and children who will be enslaved, beaten, and disfigured. Oh, well.

    I am solely to blame for not protecting American military assets – aircraft, munitions, and weapons at Bagram airbase and other American facilities in the country that are now in the Taliban’s hands.

    My surrender to these terrorists will result in a renewed resurgence of terrorist threats not only to America and its allies but to other countries in the region. By abandoning the Afghan people in the reckless way I have, I have demonstrated to our adversaries just how feckless and incompetent I am and the people around me are, including America’s military leadership who have been pursuing woke equity training instead of making sure we have men and women who can fight and defend our country adequately. I have just made the world a much more dangerous place and have communicated to our allies and friends abroad that America cannot be trusted to support you when you are threatened. A special shout out to Taiwan and Ukraine – cover your butts.

    If I had any shred of human decency, I would resign immediately as your President. But given my long history of lies, deceit, and success despite my obvious gross incompetence – and my own arrogance – that’s not going to happen. And as far as I’m concerned all of you criticizing me can just go to Hell.

    Thank you.”

    • #7
  8. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    Now, the Biden speech I would have drafted would have been much shorter:

    Who we kidding here? I can’t do this job so I am going to resign.

    • #8
  9. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    The one problem, as I see it, wasn’t the intelligence community, it was Biden’s intelligence which has always been pretty mediocre. The man never was particularly bright. His decline hasn’t enhanced that at all. Before he was stupid, now he is stubbornly stupid. 

    • #9
  10. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Oh, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The State Department, the White House, the Pentagon . . . all these people knew it would fall this fast, and they lied to us that it wouldn’t happen this way.

    That they will all still have their jobs tomorrow is a deep, deep injustice.

    They’re making us wish that Jan. 6th. really was an insurrection.

    • #10
  11. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Kelly D Johnston: Hold me accountable.

    I believe there’s at least one Congressman working on articles of impeachment . . .

    • #11
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