Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie joined Instagram and she used her first post to slam Joe Biden on his approach to Afghanistan.
The Oscar-winner is also Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and she said she signed up for the platform to “share [the] stories and the voices of those across the globe who are fighting for their basic human rights.”
Jolie, who is known for being a liberal among the Hollywood elite, shattered American’s expectations when she used her first post on Instagram to criticize Joe Biden.
While other celebrities have been in Biden’s corner, Jolie posted her disappointment in him. She shared that she’s “ashamed” of how Biden has handled the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as well as the other issues that have taken place there.
Jolie said that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan led to the Afghan government surrendering to the Taliban. Jolie had earlier joined Instagram after the Taliban’s takeover and shared a letter written by a teenage girl in Afghanistan.
When Jolie posted her thoughts on her account, she became one of the top celebrities to shatter a record on the social media platform by reaching over 1 million followers in just a few days. Shortly after that, she had over 7 million people following her. As more people see the post that she made, she gains more people who share similar views.
A little over 2 million people started following her within about three hours of her post. There are very few people who have amassed even a fraction of those numbers and who have the courage to stand up for their beliefs while living among people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to politics.
“I was on the border of Afghanistan two weeks before 9/11, where I met Afghan refugees who had fled the Taliban. This was twenty years ago,” she wrote. “It is sickening to watch Afghans being displaced yet again out of the fear and uncertainty that has gripped their country.”
The Hollywood actress added, “To spend so much time and money, to have bloodshed and lives lost only to come to this, is a failure almost impossible to understand.”
Jolie also wrote in an op-ed for Time magazine that “Whatever your views on the war in Afghanistan, we probably agree on one thing: it should not have ended this way.” The actor expressed her anger over the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Jolie said that she was ashamed of the way the US handled their departure from the war-torn country and said that it could have been ‘better, more decent and safer.’
Jolie further expressed her concern over women’s safety and wrote, “We lack a strategy to monitor and support women and civil society in Afghanistan, who the Taliban have a history of targeting – banning girls from school, confining women to the home, and inflicting brutal physical punishments, including public lashing, on any woman perceived to have stepped out of line.”
She added that the US has now lost leverage to influence what happens in Afghanistan.
“Our allies are rightly upset, blaming the U.S. for a precipitate, unilateral withdrawal that missed the opportunity for any coordinated plan to preserve some of the gains made in the country. We have to acknowledge and address these realities if we are to have any hope of learning from this dark moment.”
Source: AWM
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