United Liberty

During the vice presidential debate last week, Vice President Joe Biden ripped Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for their perceived opposition to the 2014 deadline to leave Afghanistan, promising that the United States would no longer occupy the country.

While that may be music to the ears of a war weary nation, Josh Rogin notes over at Foreign Policy that the Obama Administration is actually trying to extend that deadline to leave an American presence in Afghanistan:

Last week, U.S. and Afghan negotiators met in Kabul to talk about the Bilateral Security Agreement that will govern the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, when President Barack Obama said the combat mission in Afghanistan will end and the U.S. will complete the transition of the entire country to Afghan government control.

Also last week, Biden told Americans during his Oct. 11 debate with Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan that U.S. troops were leaving Afghanistan by 2014.

“We are leaving in 2014, period, and in the process, we’re going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion,” Biden said. “We’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed. Now all we’re doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security. It’s their responsibility, not America’s.”

Marc Grossman, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, explained today that’s not the whole story.

Grossman said Tuesday that the point of the upcoming negotiations is to agree on an extension of the U.S. troop presence well past 2014, for the purposes of conducting counterterrorism operations and training and advising the Afghan security forces.
[…]
Some U.S. military officials have said the plan is to keep 25,000 American troops in Afghanistan past 2014, but Grossman insisted that there is no number yet and the 25,000 figure quoted in reports is speculative. NATO announced Monday that it will also keep international troops in Afghanistan past 2014 alongside U.S. troops, not for combat but strictly for the mission of training and advising the Afghans.

The only real conclusion here is that Biden sat there, with that goofy grin on his face, and lied to every single American watching that debate. There is no way Biden couldn’t have known about this unless he is just that far out of the loop.

While I’m no fan of the foreign policy pushed by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, we know now that the troop surge in Afghanistan failed. We know that the country’s leadership wants us out as soon as possible. What is even more painfully clear is that Americans are still dying in Afghanistan, and all Joe Biden does is lie and laugh.