He came to office with the reputation of a foreign policy heavyweight. Yet barely six months later, US President Joe Biden now stands a diminished figure, damaged by the growing gap between his grand rhetoric and the disastrous execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The President has lost none of his abilities to deflect blame though. Reacting to the killing of 13 US soldiers in the terrorist attack at Kabul airport on Thursday - the bloodiest single incident recorded by America's armed forces in a decade - Mr Biden claimed yet again that all he was trying to do was end a situation botched by his presidential predecessor, and that in exposing the troops to the highly dangerous operation at Kabul's airport, he followed all the advice of his chiefs of staff.