As much as I love America, these are the times that try an optimist’s soul. The Biden administration is running a reckless foreign policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere and a reckless economic domestic policy at home.

In Afghanistan, of course, President Biden has catastrophically bungled his exit strategy. The lack of preparedness is mind-boggling. His willingness to let the terrorist Taliban run the show defies credulity. No one would believe this if not it were, sadly, true.

As the Taliban marched to Kabul, overrunning province after province, the United States raised not a finger of protest. Of course, there was no military response to prevent it. Now the Taliban is running Kabul. With their checkpoints. They are blocking access to the airport.

Abandoning the Bagram military airbase in the dead of night was itself an incredible blunder. Then we had to fight to gain control of the Karzai civilian airport. Here’s a question, though: Why is the strongest military power in the world permitting a bunch of terrorists to operate checkpoints that prevent Americans and Afghans from gaining access to the airport?

Why has not the administration taken strong military action to clear an easy path for Americans, NATO personnel, and our Afghan friends who have been assisting us these many years. The Taliban is stealing passports and other documentation. They are roughing up Americans. They are now preventing afghan citizens from getting to the airport.

Incredibly, we have done nothing about it. How’s this possible? Making it all even worse, America is literally leaving women and children behind. It’s supposed to be women and children first, then the gallant military. Under this commander-in-chief, it’s get the military out first, and women, children, and the Devil take the you-know-what.

They will be cruelly and inhumanely treated by the terrorists under their so-called Sharia law. Not for one minute has it seemed clear to this administration what the consequences will be of leaving a terrorist tribe in charge of a country that is and will continue to harbor other terrorist groups.

The whole lot of them, including their friends in Pakistan, will be plotting terrorist acts against America. Instead of telling the Taliban when and how American Forces and friends will leave the country, President Biden is letting the Taliban set the deadlines. This to me is beyond the pale. We have caved into the Taliban terrorists. Plain and simple.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Macron are advising Mr. Biden to extend significantly the deadline to complete the process of evacuation. Basically NATO didn’t agree with this withdrawal policy to begin with. Mr. Biden, who is going to “patch up the European alliance,” has refused to listen.

My former boss, President Trump, gave Europe hell for not paying its share of NATO expenses. He forced them to pony up. With his hard-nosed businessman’s attitude, he always expressed backing for NATO. Mr. Biden, in contrast, has emerged as the isolationist. Go figure. It’s part of his recklessness.

Meanwhile, every 20 minutes he and his senior staff throw new numbers around concerning who’s still there, who is left, who wants to leave, and where they are all sheltered in place. Our government doesn’t know. Why is this? Because there was no preparatory planning for this withdrawal.

Thousands of people are going to be left stranded. Afghanistan is a battlefield. Our American tradition is that we never leave Americans on the battlefield. This tradition is being broken. We might be abandoning American citizens but we are surely abandoning our Afghan allies.

Right now we are fighting for America’s honor. It’s credibility. It’s standing in the world. Listening to the president and his top aides, I get no sense that they understand this urgency. Yesterday at his presser, the President began by congratulating Speaker Pelosi for her backhanded ways of jamming a reckless budget resolution through the House.

He didn’t get to the Afghanistan catastrophe until well through the presentation. This is a reckless fiscal policy. We’re talking about $6 trillion-plus dollars of additional spending on a far left, Democratic wishlist. That includes vast new entitlements, woke transfer payments, Green New Deal subsidies, amnesty for illegal immigrants, federalization of elections, unionization of the workforce, and an all-out, across the board tax attack on business, investment, middle class blue collar workers, and American foreign commerce.

There isn’t one single iota — not an electron — of pro-growth, pro-job creation, prosperity inducing action in this budget. Not one. This is a prosperity and recovery killer. That is why it is so reckless. This is all about redistribution.

Not growth. It’s all about suffocating new regulations that will strangle the economy. It’s all about paying people not to work, greater welfare dependence on the state without any employment incentives anywhere. That is why it, too, is reckless.

Which takes me back to the beginning. These are policies that try the patience of an optimist like me. So I’m going to work against them and I’m going to work to overturn them. That’s the mission — to preserve America first.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s Fox News broadcast.