Career diplomat Ryan Crocker served as Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan. Before he served in the Obama administration, he was called upon by former President George W. Bush to go to the Afghan capital to reopen the shuttered embassy in January 2002. He arrived after the U.S. military toppled the Taliban regime. Obama called him back to service in Afghanistan and he returned to serve as ambassador from 2011 to 2012. He is now retired. During the 2020 election, Crocker endorsed Joe Biden for president. He sounds as though he has buyer’s remorse now after the rapid collapse of the country.

Crocker has criticism for both Trump and Biden over decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan. It is interesting, though, that Crocker served during the Obama administration so he is aware of the level of Biden’s incompetence in foreign policy. We’ve said it many times, and will many more, that Joe Biden has been historically wrong on foreign policy decisions throughout his entire almost 50-year political career. Crocker should have been well aware of Biden’s poor judgment when he endorsed him in 2020 for president and Commander-in-Chief. Now he doesn’t think that Biden is up to the job of leading the country and its military at all. Welcome to reality, Ryan.

In an interview with the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington over the weekend, Crocker, a Spokane Valley native, dishes out harsh words for both Trump and Biden. Crocker said the pace of the Taliban takeover surprised him but that Biden should have been prepared and seen it coming.

“I think the direction was predictable; the trajectory was not,” he said. “What President Biden has done is to embrace the Afghan policy of President Trump, and this is the outcome.”

After Trump signed off on a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that excluded the Afghan government, on April 13 Biden announced his administration would withdraw U.S. troops from the Central Asian country by Sept. 11. That symbolic date falls exactly two decades after al-Qaida attacked the United States from its base in Afghanistan, where the Taliban gave the terrorist group safe haven.

We know that Biden accelerated the timeline and now we are experiencing an embarrassing and devastating defeat on the world stage. Crocker seems to resent Trump for not including the government of Afghanistan in withdrawal negotiations when he worked with members of the Taliban leadership. Crocker is a career bureaucrat so that is logical but Trump was aware that it would be the Taliban who would take over once American troops left. It was controversial (and shocking to some people) when Trump announced the negotiations with the Taliban. That is the reality on the ground, though. While we went in to destroy al-Qaeda and prevent Afghanistan from being a theatre for terrorist training and camps, the Taliban has replaced them and dominates the region. Al-Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s and was responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01. It is still in operation but not as prevalent as it once was. As a side note, how tone-deaf was it for Biden to connect the 20th anniversary with the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Who thought that was a good idea? Giving a deadline of 9/11 for the troop withdrawal only highlights the utter fiasco the actual withdrawal is now.

Crocker has served as ambassador to six countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon – so he knows the neighborhood, so to speak. He also knows that Trump showed greater constraint and used standard negotiating carrots and sticks. In 2019, Trump told the Taliban he would slowly remove U.S. troops and free Taliban prisoners if they abided by a commitment to stop attacking U.S. troops. As we know, Trump was unable to end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as he wanted to do. It was a conditional peace deal. So, he didn’t do as Biden did and rashly withdraw troops. Crocker says it is either incompetence or a lack of interest that leads to Biden’s actions.

“I’m left with some grave questions in my mind about his ability to lead our nation as commander-in-chief,” Crocker said. “To have read this so wrong — or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care.”

A lack of interest is a strong slam against Biden who fancies himself America’s Grandfather, tearing up on cue and emoting for the camera at every possible opportunity. How about those creepy moments when he starts whispering during press conferences? Crocker is likely on to something there, though. Biden wants to do what Trump didn’t and that is to end the Afghanistan war for us. He wants that campaign promise kept and out of the way as we go into the mid-term elections. Now, of course, it has bitten him on the ass and many people will die because of his incompetence. Crocker is also worried about Afghani support personnel who helped American troops and staff there.

In addition to evacuating embassy staff and other Americans, the 4,000 additional troops who began arriving in Kabul on Friday are charged with evacuating Afghans who have worked for the U.S. government and are now being targeted by the Taliban. The White House has said it will take thousands of Afghans who have applied for the Special Immigrant Visa program to safe locations outside the country, but that daunting effort is in even greater jeopardy with most of the country under Taliban control.

Crocker said the U.S. government should move those Afghans out of the country quickly and “sort out the red tape later.”

“But even with all of that, I’m afraid a lot of people are going to die,” he said. “As the Taliban moves into different cities and towns, they’ve got their hit list. So it’s going to be messy, it’s going to be incomplete and more people are going to die, but we’ve got to make our best possible effort.”

Biden was never the sharpest tool in the shed. He was consistent during his long career in the Senate, including as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was the first U.S. lawmaker to visit Kabul in 2002 after the embassy reopened. He should be better versed than he is, yet, here we are. Biden owns this humanitarian crisis and foreign policy disaster. Worst of all, as the horrific video footage, was everywhere over the weekend, on television, and in social media, the leader of the free world was holed up at Camp David, hiding from the press and avoiding providing any explanations. I can’t imagine the pain felt by Gold Star families and veterans of the war in Afghanistan right now. Ryan Crocker owns his endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020.