Biden scrambles to limit damage to credibility from Afghanistan

Biden came to office promoting himself as an international statesman with a steady hand on the tiller after Trump's four storm-tossed years in office.

He quickly rejoined international agreements abandoned by Trump and sought to rejuvenate traditional alliances that Trump had spurned.

But his first big international challenge is generating an intense political backlash as Democrats and Republicans alike raise questions about his strategy.

A prediction by US intelligence that the Taliban could be held off for three months following US withdrawal proved to be wrong. US military commanders who sought a more deliberate approach to the withdrawal were dismissed.

Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan took the White House podium on Tuesday to offer a broad defence of Biden's actions. He said that signalling support for the Afghan government "was a considered judgment" that did not save it, however.

"When you conclude 20 years of military action in a civil war in another country, with the impacts of 20 years of decisions that have piled up, you have to make a lot of hard calls. None with clean outcomes," Sullivan said.

CALLS FOR INVESTIGATIONS

Members of the US Congress, increasingly frustrated with events in Afghanistan, want to investigate what went wrong.

Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic Intelligence Committee chairman, had said on Monday he intended to work with other committees "to ask tough but necessary questions" about why the United States was not better prepared for the collapse of the Afghan government.

Republicans continued their harsh criticism of Biden's policies.

"The security and humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Afghanistan could have been avoided if you had done any planning," Republicans on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said in a letter to the White House on Tuesday.

The crisis appears to have taken a toll. Biden's approval rating dropped by 7 percentage points and hit its lowest level - 46 per cent - since he took office in January, a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted on Monday found.

Biden, managing the crisis from the presidential retreat of Camp David in Maryland's Catoctin mountains, went several days without talking to any foreign leaders about Afghanistan. He spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday.

"The prime minister stressed the importance of not losing the gains made in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, or protecting ourselves against any emerging threat from terrorism and of continuing to support the people of Afghanistan," said a Downing Street spokesman.

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