Blotting Out Trump: A Correction

Yesterday, after reading yet more sickening accounts of the Administration’s monstrous botching of the Afghanistan pullout, I decided to reread my recent blogs on the subject and noticed something strange about my blog of August 16th, which concluded:

In an astute column in yesterday’s Washington Post, Max Boot reviewed the major blunders relating to Afghanistan made by each of Biden’s three predecessors: Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Barrack Obama, each of them appalling in their wrong-headedness, but none matching Biden’s thoughtlessness in the way he withdrew American forces without regard to the unacceptably disastrous consequences that would very likely ensue.

Checking what Mr. Boot actually wrote: –– “This was a disaster that was produced by four administrations, two Republican (George W. Bush, Donald Trump) and two Democratic (Barack Obama, Joe Biden) –– I realized that my brain inexplicably malfunctioned in blotting out Trump and, no less weird, installing Bill Clinton in his place.

Was that a Freudian slip? My unconscious desire to blot out Trump overcame rational thought?

When the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries were getting underway, I expressed the opinion that Biden was too old to be president. It may be that age was a factor in his blotting out critical facts in planning the withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan. Maybe I was right that he was too old for the job! Maybe, at 90, I’m too old to publish trustworthy blogs. I’ll leave it to readers to judge whether, whatever flaws may be visible from time to time, most of what I write makes sense.