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Lesson from Afghanistan, who carries water and who does not.

HomerJS

Lifer
Once again the catastrophe on Afghanistan proves people on the left maintain their integrity and evaluation a situation honestly. They don't lie, overly spin, deny, downplay this situation. People in this forum who tend left have given their honest opinions and have not spared criticism of Job Biden on how he handled the evacuation.

The media I generally watch for news has covered this story honestly in my opinion. CNN and MSNBC have spared no criticism for the President and his decision. They have also covered this history fairly accurately how we got here.

Let compare that to the way people in this forum who tend right. They too their cues from the right wing media. there was constant downplaying of the virus. They was outright lying on it's effect on the country. There were declaration not based on science but on political calculations. Take Fox for example, they were on the "hoax" train and it was "no big deal" train and the "it's no worse then a cold" train. Fox was one of the most egregious because the regulation for their on air staff was the complete opposite of what they were telling their minions.

Let's compare the Jan 6 insurrection. The right media and righties in this forum were trying to tell us what we see and hear right in front of us wasn't happening. They lied, overly spun, downplayed. In fact they changed their positions on police because police were attacked by Trump supporters.

Who carries water? Certainly it isn't the left. We stick to principles and evaluate what we see. The right will change their position and lie based on who's team is being effected.
 
lol, how cute.

Not as cute as your faux concern over Americans left in Afghanistan.

As a traitor, have ever had a thought of your own or have you always been a good little soldier? I’m just curious because I’ve never seen you make a post that wasn’t a repeat of something a talking head on the right already said.
 
Well, "the left" on this forum generally considers me on "the right" even though I don't see myself that way. My reaction to the pullout certainly looked nothing like the right wing media narrative:

Maybe they could have executed the pullout better. Maybe there was a vast array of fuck-ups. Maybe the optics will hurt Biden and the Democrats for awhile. As unglorified as Biden's press conference is for him, I agree with almost every point. An immaculate pullout might have bought the Afghan government a month or two, but without the will to oppose them, the Taliban takeover was inevitable. We can't occupy Afghanistan forever.
 
A few nights ago Tucker Carlson did an Afghanistan story, saying that the reason the Afghan army folded so quickly is because they were all on drugs and illiterate. If he were talking of the US forces he’d be accusing them of being too "woke" and allowing too many sjw in the command. He then segued gracefully into a Jan 6 story by addressing himself to “the crowd” that is so concerned about the plight of Afghan women: “what about Ashli Babbit? Wasn’t she a woman?”


David-Rowe-Trumpistan.jpg
 
A few nights ago Tucker Carlson did an Afghanistan story, saying that the reason the Afghan army folded so quickly is because they were all on drugs and illiterate. If he were talking of the US forces he’d be accusing them of being too "woke" and allowing too many sjw in the command. He then segued gracefully into a Jan 6 story by addressing himself to “the crowd” that is so concerned about the plight of Afghan women: “what about Ashli Babbit? Wasn’t she a woman?”


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Weird how the Comply or Die crowd changes its tune when they're the ones not complying.
 
The biggest lesson to learn here is to never enter into a conflict without a plan to win. The first thing the US should have done when it first went into Afghanistan would be to torch every last poppy field in the country and thereby cutting off at least one of their source of funding. Additional funding was probably coming from Saudi Arabia since that's where almost all of the 9-11 hijackers were from. The US could have, should have completely cut off any kind of aid to SA after 9-11.
 
We should have left Afghanistan in 2002.

See, even 2 different people like Nick and myself can find political issues we agree on.

How so? Or are you saying that we should not have went after Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden? That would have meant that Bin Laden would still be alive today, as our presence is what lead us to him on May 2011. Or did you both forget the purpose of our mission there, which didn't change until 2011 after Bin Laden's death?
 
How so? Or are you saying that we should not have went after Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden? That would have meant that Bin Laden would still be alive today, as our presence is what lead us to him on May 2011. Or did you both forget the purpose of our mission there, which didn't change until 2011 after Bin Laden's death?

We should have gone in much heavier, killed OBL at the time, and GTFO. Our entire strategy of going in with a light footprint, supporting the northern alliance, then sticking around to nation build was ill conceived.
 
We should have gone in much heavier, killed OBL at the time, and GTFO. Our entire strategy of going in with a light footprint, supporting the northern alliance, then sticking around to nation build was ill conceived.
Oh? How do you suppose that would have turned out since we didn't know Bin Laden's location at any given time long enough to do so, as he was constantly on the move? Our mission was to squeeze the Al-Qaeda out, and prevent Bin Laden from being able to move around so we could kill/capture him. So how do you come to the conclusion that we where supporting the Northern Alliance, when in fact, they where supporting the US in OUR mission? I also don't think you are taking into consideration of the physical terrain, which is what hampered a lot of the operation of going after Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in the first place.
 
Oh? How do you suppose that would have turned out since we didn't know Bin Laden's location at any given time long enough to do so, as he was constantly on the move? Our mission was to squeeze the Al-Qaeda out, and prevent Bin Laden from being able to move around so we could kill/capture him. So how do you come to the conclusion that we where supporting the Northern Alliance, when in fact, they where supporting the US in OUR mission? I also don't think you are taking into consideration of the physical terrain, which is what hampered a lot of the operation of going after Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in the first place.

You might want to look this over.

 

Sorry, I didn't read a lot of this but enough to respond:

So, your whole position/argument is based on evidence found AFTER the fact about October 2001 that wasn't published until 2009 after 8 years of investigation? Everyone has 20/20 vision when they can take the time to sift thru everything, specially when it's evidence found AFTER the time has come and gone. I guess it's time we invent the hot tub time machine so we can go back in time and give them the known evidence learned years later. So they can correct there decisions, even though it's only circumstantial evidence and not hard concrete evidence.

This quote, all though it's from someone defending their decisions, sums it up quite nicely:

``Finally, most people fail to realize that it is quite
possible that bin Laden was never in Tora Bora to begin with.
There exists no concrete intel to prove that he was there at
the time.''

What if he really wasn't there, and we did go in there heavy as you claim we should. Even the report says we had the forces, but there would have been heavy casualties because of the physical terrain (some thought it was worth the risk). When someone says it's worth a risk, they are banking on them being right without having any actual evidence that fully supports that conclusion. Hence, why it's a risk. Would your solution be, that we do that at all the other raids as well, we conducted with the belief he was there, coming up empty handed? Which leads me back to "how do you supposed that would turn out?" If it is true, that we had a missed chance at taking him out at Tora Bora, that your report says a failure due to wrong decisions (even though that is all based off circumstantial evidence found after the fact) why did it take 10 years to be able to track him down again if our intelligence was supposed to be so good, and why did we have other raids come up empty handed?
 
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