UPDATE II: The hits keep coming;
UPDATE: I love this segment that pulled the ridiculous quotes from the previous administration. BUSTED!
I was going to write a long rant about our president doing the right thing, but I think Seth nailed it;
Another great perspective;
We should have never gone into Afghanistan as we did.
After 9/11, we should have never declared war, rather we should have recognized that event as a very serious terrorist act, and then sent special ops into Afghanistan to root out Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
But instead, Bush43 gave us a war, actually two, so he could foster what is called internal cohesion through external conflict, which is one of the causes of wars themselves and the impetus that Bush43 used to hopefully garner enough national attention and positive polling to be re-elected in 2004 with an electorate which had denied him the popular vote in 2000, and a dubious victory via the Supreme Court and the Electoral College at best in that same year.
Keep in mind, that Bush43 is the only president ever elected without winning at least a plurality of the popular vote in a given presidential election, who then went on to be re-elected. The Afghanistan War from day one was about re-electing Bush43, it was not about getting Bin Laden or freeing the Afghan people. The failures at Tora Bora and Bush43’s own comment that Bin Laden was not on his mine, as illustrated in a Fahrenheit 9/11 clip, are further proof of this. AND now, Biden has finally freed America – taken the bandage off – from this ill conceived policy from the George W. Bush administration’s war room, political war room, that is.
does this mean you’re all saying trump was right?
lest we not forget clinton’s role in this…and the 8 years obama and biden had to correct it.
i don’t think anyone thought we should be fighting a war there. i agree totally with JKC’s first paragraph. i think most people will be happy we’re out…i know i am. however the execution of the biden withdrawl is an embarrassment and will very likely embolden other idiots in the mid-east, and around the world, who now see us as inept and weak.
A war cannot be won without patriotism. Afghans seem to have always been at war. It’s their way of life. There’s no support for the government and leaders. Their troops will readily retreat. Before entering Afghanistan, the US supported the Taliban against Russia. Russia disgracefully pulled out. Perhaps the Taliban is what works there. What’s apparent is the US can’t continue spending billions in the Middle East. US citizens and associated Afghans should be rescued. Many won’t get out. The best method for fighting the Taliban is now a political and commercial blockade from the rest of the world. China will come in now. Not because of the poppy fields. Because of the rare earth minerals mining. They control world supply. Battery power is gonna get expensive.
The real embarrassment here is not the manner of our withdrawal so much as the fact that to a large degree the Taliban are cooperating with our exodus. Did the Viet Cong cooperate with us? I don’t think so. This cooperation speaks to the level of phoniness of our overall mission there from day one and why no more American blood should be shed there or placed in possible peril.
i’ll say it again, the biden withdrawl is an embarassment.
you can choose on how many levels.
the taliban has been waiting 20 years for this and fighting their civil war for thousands more beyond that. i don’t think “cooperating,” as you call it, for a few more days is a big deal to them.
As I recall, the Taliban offered to arrest Bin Ladin and turn him over – rejected by W.
The whole fiasco in Afghanistan as far as the US is concerned, was started under Carter, when after committing a coup and overthrowing their king (6 years of drought had made him politically vulnerable to his cousin) Daud Khan. Khan asked for US aide and was rejected (because he was a “gasp” COMMUNIST), and then turned to the Soviets. Reagan escalated, using Pakistanis and Islamic extremists as his proxies to “destroy the evil Soviet empire”, then ran off leaving the nation in a hot mess.
The whole problem exists because of outsiders (mostly us) messing around in their country strictly for our own political purposes. Every American President involved has screwed them over – some more than others.
Question:
Who do you think the Americans and Afghan folks that helped us would choose to be president right now?
Head Window Licker in Charge
OR
Donald Trump
JKC – The Taliban are creatures of (were created by) the US. We funded their rise in Pakistan during the ’80s, via the Pakistanis (Reagan). Why would they not cooperate with us. They owe us their existence. This really all goes back – all of it – to the worst President of the US ever – Saint Ronald.
Bush41 claimed the Gulf War ended America’s “Vietnam syndrome”, then along comes his son who reinstated it. That’s the ultimate embarrassment, and as far as I am concerned it’s on the Bush family and not the American people, nor the Biden administration, as long as we prove that we have learned from it. The obsession with this withdraw is like allowing the Bay of Pigs to define the outcome of the Cold War, which would not be right.
Yes, we should not have gone into Afghanistan. In any way, form or fashion with troops.
No one apparently paying attention during the 10 year Soviet occupation of Aghanistan.
There was significant interest in bagging bin Laden prior to 9/11.
Plenty of CIA activity focused on this mission during the Clinton adminstration. A few documented near-miss chances to capture or kill bin Laden during the Clinton presidency.
Different decisions? Different circumstances? Not only might we not have had to enter Aghanistan with troops, but perhaps the tragedy of 9/11 might have been avoided.
Hind sight.
rufusx, you just laid out a history of the truth that the GOP never likes to talk about.
TGfG, it’s my understanding that Clinton was once informed, while playing golf, the US had Bin Laden in their binoculars, but he said “No”. Then Clinton went on to warn Bush43 to not keep his eye off of Bin Laden when they met for the first time when Bush43 was president-elect.
IMO, Bush43 kept his eye off so he could use a Bin Laden terrorist attack as a stepping stone to Iraq, except 9/11 was far graver than anyone could have imagined, and that event complicated but also gave Bush43 and his Neo-con friends new opportunities and justifications.
What the fuck do people think it looks like when invading forces leave? Here’s a recent project on Allied Forces withdrawing following WW2.
“ When US troops took Munich on 30 April 1945, the widely held conviction was that they would be well-behaved and considerate towards German civilians. In Chapter Three, the author notes that this impression quickly evaporated: the arrival of US soldiers in Upper Bavaria was accompanied at first by widespread looting and destruction, and then rape. According to the Military Prosecutor General, German women were more frequently injured, beaten unconscious, abused more frequently in front of husbands or relatives and more frequently penetrated orally or anally by GIs than by the British or French.â€
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/09/book-review-crimes-unspoken-the-rape-of-german-women-at-the-end-of-the-second-world-war-by-miriam-gebhardt/
the ultimate embarrassment to me is american citizens needing to show passports for the privilege of being beaten up, quite possibly with american weapons, before they can leave that sh*thole. point fingers at whoever you want to for the past mess… plenty of blame to go around for sure…and no doubt we don’t belong there. today however is 2021, where cave dwellers may actually have nukes, not 1961. this biden weak ass clown show will be hanging all over us for many, many years to come.
In 3-6 months the media will be on to some other crisis (like Covid raging again in our country because half of Americans won’t get a shot) and we won’t ever hear the ‘A’ word again until 2023 when the presidential campaign is in full swing. I chuckled this week listening to Belfrage talk about this for 4 days straight and saying ‘Unbelievable’ 20 times a minute. Most Americans don’t care, I personally don’t, the writing was on the wall, this is what happens when you prop up a war with 2.2 trillion dollars. If the Afghanistan people are so concerned about what is happening, maybe they need to pick up their guns and fight for it instead climbing into the wheel wells of airplanes. That’s what Americans did during the revolution, we told the British to go to hell and we forced them out.
DL – the revolting Americans (consider that phrase as a descriptor of our founding fathers) also forced out British Loyalists – many of them fled to Canada.
There has been a centuries long dispute as to where the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan (arbitrarily drawn BY THE BRITS) lies. that arbitrary line effectively splits the Pashtun (the Taliban) traditional territory in half – half in Pakistan and half in Afghanistan. The Taliban are in actuality acting as agents for Pakistan in claiming more territory My prediction in this is eventually, Afghanistan will be split up much like the former Yugoslavia along ethnic lines, with a portion of it (South and East) becoming part of Pakistan and the rest a few small independent nations. And like the Balkans (Yugoslavia) they will be based on ethnicity and language differences.
Do not forget Dick the Cheney’s desire to put in a pipeline in norther Afghanistan for his company in 1999 and the country’s Taliban rulers walked out of the Texas meeting. Dick the Cheney brought ignorant young whippersnapper W to power to get the pipeline done. Now what happens to the the pipeline?
The United States is highly competent at fighting wars when the objective is clear, victory is the only option and a large share of the public supports the engagement.
Our country has rarely been good at sustained commitments in murky conflicts where the goal is a vague “political settlement†that is neither victory nor defeat.
We ought to have learned that lesson long ago. Afghanistan has taught it again. It’s why President Biden finally said: Enough.
Biden’s decision to withdraw is a cold, realpolitik judgment, as he underscored in remarks on Sunday. His prism, he said, rested on the questions: “Where are our national interests? Where do they lie?†However brutal the Taliban is, however reactionary and oppressive it might be toward women in particular and dissenters from its purist religious doctrines generally, U.S. interests would not be served by extending our military commitment any longer.
E.J. Dionne Jr. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/22/afghanistan-outcome-is-bad-biden-was-still-right-say-enough/
Biden’s must not be much of a Catholic as anyone can tell you to pull out your valuables BEFORE you finish.
Typical CNN viewer would blame everyone else except the guy who decided to complete step 2 before step 1.
Everyone with integrity would agree that we needed to be out of there and anyone with integrity should agree that our government should have pulled our civilians out before our troops. Any other debate is simply childish.
Our president told the American people that the Taliban was incapable of taking over the country, then 3 days later told us they thought it would take the Taliban 3 months to overtake the country. That right there is grounds for the I word!
Those as the facts.
LJL – I am just sometimes in awe of how anyone can sit here and think this guy didn’t make one of the biggest blunders of our time. Anyone who has been in the military for more than 5 seconds knows that when you leave an area you do 1 of 2 things with your equipment and sensitive items.
Option 1 – Take them
Option 2 – Destroy them so your enemy cannot use them
Now when/if we have to go back now we can face the enemy with our own equipment – I can’t make this sh!t up! HOW IS THIS EVEN DEFENDABLE. You can pull out but, I am sure a group of high school kids could have came up with a better plan
The fact this clown didn’t do this nor get the Americans out and all the poor saps who helped us before he pulled out is inexcusable. The entire world is roasting this guy yet we have people in this country and on this blog defending this is ridiculous.
I’m not defending how Biden handled this, I agree, should have gotten the people out months ago, and secured the weapons. That aside, our little 20 year experiment in that country has been a total and utter disaster. How is it that the greatest military in the world, that has spent 20 years and 2.2 Trillion training an army has failed so miserably? I would love to hear that answer. Now I get it, I don’t blame the soldiers on the ground, but someone needs to investigate how our military commanders could have f’ckd this up so bad? Biden’s hands were tied by that last idiot who had 4 years to get out and signs a deal with the Taliban as he is walking out the door. A total setup. Trump knew he wasn’t going to beat Biden, Trump told his voters not to vote. No candidate in the history of this great nation has ever done something so idiotic.
So I agree, the pullout has been handled poorly, but the 20 year march to this point has been a waste. Time to leave and never look back.
Also, just think of all the infrastructure we could have built in this country over the past 20 years with that kind of money? To do the simple math that would have been like giving all 50 states, each state, each year, $2.2 billion for infrastructure costs. Instead we wasted it on cavemen with funny hats. Before the pullout started about a month ago someone asked the question about where the money went on a political talk show. And this person said that the Military Industrial Complex took it all and congress gladly obliged.
Scott – YOU CANNOT put what JUST happened on anybody but Biden. As you say we have been there 20 years, spanning 4 presidents so putting this on Trump is just factually incorrect.
We have the strongest military in the world, he could have secured people, equipment, and refuges THEN moved out.
NO ONE IS DEBATING THIS WAS A BAD IDEA TO BE IN THIS HOLE FOR 20 YEARS!!! Our country has not won a war since WW2 because they all become political wars You only win wars when you take off the gloves and persecute your enemy to the fullest like we did Japan and Germany. I DONT like that but, that is the only way to win. There is a reason Afghanistan is the graveyard of Empires, you cannot win there, period!!
This guy screwed it up royally so instead of pointing at the last 3 guys, lets focus on the guy who said he could fix everything. This is the worst debacle and screw up I have seen in my lifetime. I bet dollars to doughnuts we will have hundreds if not thousands of American Hostages there soon and it will make the Carter hostage situation look like Childs play. Maybe this guy can 1 up his former president and send 2 pallets of Cash in exchange for the hostages he ends up creating.
There is no getting around this, Biden ALONE is responsible for this mess and it was easily preventable period. The fact even the MSM is beating him up, as left wing as they are, is very telling
“We have the strongest military in the world, he could have secured people, equipment, and refuges THEN moved out.”
They have been telling US civilians to get out for months. Trump was doing it while he was in office. In fact, most of the contractors working with our military were gone. Much of the civilians left are contractors exploiting big dollars and others who are trying to do non-profit work who probably shouldn’t have been there to begin with. I know saving the wild dogs is a heart-felt task but I don’t think we should have to risk our military because you wait until the last minute to leave. The fact is, many had no intentions of leaving with the US and were planning on relying on the afghan army to remain intact so they could continue their mission work. Most of the equipment was meant for the Afghan army so unless you wanted to leave them with nothing, I don’t see how we could change that. Now, Biden has been working to get our Afghan allies out. I guess he could have pulled a Trump and ghosted everything in the middle of the night like he did with the Kurds. They had ISIS marching them to their executions the following week. The same thing would have happened to the afghans had we tried to leave without helping. Anyone who thinks this could have been a slower withdrawal without casualties is severely mistaken. The second they gave word it was time to leave, they would have had a stampede just like what happened. There is no slow withdrawal once those afghan allies knew the gig was up soon. Listening to trump toads talk about how he would have done so much better just makes me laugh. The old grifter left all our allies to die the year prior and you think he would have attempted to save them at the risk of our soldiers? Don’t make me laugh. I guess it comes down to whether we allow thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of afghans to be slaughtered, or we risk a few of our own to save thousands of lives. I’d like to think our soldiers were willing to take the risk, as many have shown by volunteering to stay to help get their allies out. This was definitely a crappy exit but they all knew it was going to be crappy. I’d love to hear how you think this was easily preventable without an extended occupation that could have resulted in years of fighting and more attacks as the Taliban peace deal Trump signed was broken.
Conservative- You must remember with Modern Democrats its politics before country or countrymen.
A democrat will burn a flag and abort a baby before calling each other morons.
The fact that they’ve spent the last 6 months undoing everything Trump did for 4 years , but now say they had no choice but to follow “Trump’s Taliban Deal” is proof, their not smart enough to be embarrassed anymore.
Six months from now, we won’t even be talking about Afghanistan except to read from time to time that the Taliban and US drones cooperated in taking out a ISIS cell.
Biden’s decision is not the worst foreign policy decision of our time. Could it have been handled better? Maybe, but the 13 soldiers we recently lost were losses we would have sustained over the next thirteen years without Biden’s pullout. So, it’s safe to say that Biden’s strategy has ended it for us from the fourteenth year and beyond, while most others would have allowed American deaths to continue in Afghanistan beyond the thirteenth year.
“I once wrapped a baby in a flag”…. “What do you think of that?”….