No good choices
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME JOE BIDEN HAD WITNESSED DEAD Americans returning home from a foreign battlefield as President and Commander in Chief. The bodies of 11 Marines, a Navy medic and an Army staff sergeant arrived on U.S. soil on Sunday, Aug. 29, all killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26 amid America’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. For 35 minutes, as the flag-draped cases were carried down the ramp of an Air Force C-17 cargo plane at Dover Air Force Base, in silence except for the hum of aircraft engines and muted troop commands, Biden stood in front of the cold reality of his decisions.
A series of fateful choices over the past six months drew a tragic line to that moment. It was Biden who, in
