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Biden to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by 9/11/21

BeachBumDeac said:
Really nailed him there 4 months later
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One way to avoid mockery is to avoid making terrible decisions. Like ceding the airport to local control before securing your diplomatic personnel. Maddeningly stupid decisions. How was the vacation, Mr. President?
 
I don't know what the answer is but I don't want another US solider to die or have their life completely changed by injury in Afghanistan. Not one more. I wish that the people of Afghanistan were more able to have their own functioning government but that just doesn't seem to be the case even after 20 years of help.
 
WokeandBroke said:
One way to avoid mockery is to avoid making terrible decisions. Like ceding the airport to local control before securing your diplomatic personnel. Maddeningly stupid decisions. How was the vacation, Mr. President?
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People who voted for Biden and did not expect him to make stupid decisions made a stupid decision.
 
Tangentially related, but Taiwan is not resting easy right now.
 
bcobbdeacs said:
As opposed to the stupid decisions the last guy made, you have got to be kidding me, no I have seen your postings for years.
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Indeed. This was going to be a clusterfuck no matter who was in office. Trump is on record as wanting us to leave even earlier this year, and it would almost certainly have gone the same under Trump (or Obama or Bush) as it has under Biden. Below is the intelligence estimates that the Biden Administration was receiving, and those estimates would likely have been the same if Trump or Obama or Bush were currently in office. Not that Biden is blameless - they could certainly have gotten more Afghans who helped us out of the country more quickly - but to pretend that things would have been much different if a different POTUS was in office is foolish. This was going to be a disaster the moment we pulled our military out, imo.

 
birdman said:
No way is this worse than Bush and Katrina.
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Maybe. But being on vacation while an entire country we just left is about to become Handmaids Tale with all the rape, murder, and people hanging from the wall is moronic. I watched as much of the Sunday shows as I could and I was disappointed by the “explanations” for what is happening. I certainly don’t blame any of this on Biden, he made a tough move to do the right thing. It’s critically important that he appear totally engaged and speak to the American people.
 
It’s the Afghan people who are being hurt by this. Address them. Americans stopped caring about Afghanistan years ago except for political gotchas and financial enrichment.
 
wakelaw13 said:
Maybe. But being on vacation while an entire country we just left is about to become Handmaids Tale with all the rape, murder, and people hanging from the wall is moronic. I watched as much of the Sunday shows as I could and I was disappointed by the “explanations” for what is happening. I certainly don’t blame any of this on Biden, he made a tough move to do the right thing. It’s critically important that he appear totally engaged and speak to the American people.
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Well one huge difference was that New Orleans is in America and Afghanistan is in Afghanistan. Another huge difference is that the US isn’t even supposed to finalize the pull out for another month.

It is funny to compare this to Bush PR fuck up when it was Bush’s dumb plan to occupy the country from the beginning.
 
PhDeac said:
It’s the Afghan people who are being hurt by this. Address them. Americans stopped caring about Afghanistan years ago except for political gotchas and financial enrichment.
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Yep, especially the women. The first time the Taliban took over professional women lost their careers and girls were banned from going to school. The same thing also happened in the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Now that the Taliban is back in charge, it is very likely that all Afghan female doctors and other medical specialists, teachers, professors, lawyers, etc. will lose their careers and female students in all schools and colleges will be expelled. Women there are about to go backwards in a massive, very ugly way. I remember when we first occupied Afghanistan there were all of these sweet and inspiring stories about Afghan girls going to school for the first time. Now we've just left their younger sisters in the lurch.

 
PhDeac said:
It’s the Afghan people who are being hurt by this. Address them. Americans stopped caring about Afghanistan years ago except for political gotchas and financial enrichment.
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Why not both? And yes, trust me, I am sufficiently demoralized about how little people care about other people.
 
The military incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan should never have occurred. They were simply new versions of Vietnam waiting to happen. Everyone in the government involved in these fiascos is responsible. Everyone in the private sector that profited from these actions are responsible. The fact that Trump made the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and that Biden decided to finalize that decision are the only positives involved in the matter. Anything beyond that is bullshit of one variety or another. To think otherwise is ignorance.

There is a first step toward a solution to the problem. The Congress of the United States of America needs to restore it's responsibility to declare war. It abdicated that responsibility with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and every subsequent resolution of that nature. The tail has been wagging the dog ever since.
 
Highland Deac said:
Yep, especially the women. The first time the Taliban took over professional women lost their careers and girls were banned from going to school. The same thing also happened in the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Now that the Taliban is back in charge, it is very likely that all Afghan female doctors and other medical specialists, teachers, professors, lawyers, etc. will lose their careers and female students in all schools and colleges will be expelled. Women there are about to go backwards in a massive, very ugly way. I remember when we first occupied Afghanistan there were all of these sweet and inspiring stories about Afghan girls going to school for the first time. Now we've just left their younger sisters in the lurch.

 
PhDeac said:
Well I hope people who actually care about Afghans will support a robust refugee program.
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Totally agree. And I’m at a total loss for why the administration didn’t make sure the people who supported us in that country the last two decades and who face death for their assistance weren’t out first.
 
PhDeac said:
Well I hope people who actually care about Afghans will support a robust refugee program.
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Agreed. But, it's not enough. I'm not blaming this on Biden, Trump had the same plan. I just disagree and can't spell.
 
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wakelaw13 said:
Totally agree. And I’m at a total loss for why the administration didn’t make sure the people who supported us in that country the last two decades and who face death for their assistance weren’t out first.
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The tweet Highland posted helps explain it. They probably thought they had time.

 
PhDeac said:
The tweet Highland posted helps explain it. They probably thought they had time.

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To be fair, I have read reports that some military officials had been pushing the Biden Administration for some time to get more people out of the country, without much success. Maybe they thought with these intelligence reports they had more time, but it's still a poor excuse in some ways. I don't think Biden is to blame for the total and complete collapse of the Afghan government and military in about a week (a military we spent nearly two decades creating and building up), but I do think he'll get some blame, and rightfully so, for not getting Afghans who supported us out more quickly. To be fair again, though, I seriously doubt that Trump would have done any better in that regard either.
 
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U.S. power is not the problem. 21st century non-state actors don't respond under a time frame is the problem and we don't have the will power to wait anymore (i.e. Germany, Japan, South Korea, Cuba).

God bless who is left in Afghansitan, and Pakistan. It's time to strengthen the alliance with India.
 
Justin Amash, of all people, likely has the best brief summary of the complete failure of our "nation building" efforts in Afghanistan.

 
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