WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden made only two references to Afghanistan in his state of the union address on Tuesday night, that too in reference to the diseases American soldiers caught while stationed there.

“Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan faced many dangers. One was stationed at bases and breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits that incinerated wastes of war -- medical and hazard material, jet fuel, and more,” he said.

“When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.”

President Biden said he was aware of the problem because “one of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden.”

Major Biden fell ill in 2001 after returning from military service in Kosovo and was later diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer. He died in May 2015, at age 46.

“We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops. But I’m committed to finding out everything we can,” President Biden said.

He urged Congress to “pass a law to make sure veterans devastated by toxic exposures in Iraq and Afghanistan finally get the benefits and comprehensive health care they deserve.”

Besides underlining the need to focus on war-related illnesses, the event also showed how rapidly Afghanistan was disappearing from the American political discourse.

The US disengagement started much earlier but accelerated after the withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.

For years, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dominated the annual state of the union addresses by US presidents, particularly those of George W. Bush.

His successor, Barack Obama’s first state of the union speech had 92 words on Afghanistan from a total of 7,308 words that focused on the president’s domestic agenda.

Yet, after the withdrawal, Afghanistan continued to draw attention at news briefings and discussions as a humanitarian issue, with both media and think-tanks urging the Biden administration to help revive the Afghan economy.

But when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last week, he also pushed Afghanistan out of these discussions.

As expected, President Biden’s first state of the union speech focused on Ukraine as well.

“Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways. But he badly miscalculated,” said the US leader.

“He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.”

Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2022