The Biden administration is going to get a lot of grief for this portion of a statement from U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne, and they deserve every last bit of it:
The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA. They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort. This is a positive first step.
There’s one scenario where the administration’s constant ludicrously generous public statements of the Taliban make sense, and that’s if the Taliban has communicated their willingness to harm or detain Americans in Afghanistan, and the Biden administration is buttering them up. As Will Rogers once said, “diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”
If this bit of public praise for the Taliban is not being offered with metaphorical or literal guns to heads, and the administration really thinks it does any good to sing the Taliban’s praises to the world, then this is just one more abject humiliation of the United States, brought to you by this president and this administration.