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Why Biden is pulling the US -- and NATO -- out of Afghanistan

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This is more American binary rationalization. It's either a success or a failure. There's no middle ground. One thing happens and instant failure and burn it to the ground. For fucks sake...I don't know what people really expected. None of this is normal. Just about everything happening there is on a wire balancing chaos and order.
 
gothuevos said:
I don't blame Biden for this but they will nail him for not "securing" enough of a perimeter around the airport or simply blame him for such a hasty retreat such that "it left us vulnerable." I'm no military expert but I do wonder why we didn't have a bigger perimeter or why we let the Taliban control the one road into the airport.

Regardless, this is just horrible news and does underscore the need to get out asap.
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Gee how do you build a bigger perimeter? Bring in 10,000 more troops to get shot at? There's never been an easy exit option.
 
hal2kilo said:
Gee how do you build a bigger perimeter? Bring in 10,000 more troops to get shot at? There's never been an easy exit option.
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Once you build the perimeter with 10K troops and they get shot at you need to bring in another 25k troops to secure the perimeter around that perimeter. Followed by 100k, followed by another 150k, followed by 200k, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Get folks out and GTFO at this point.
 
We're so naïve and sheltered. Imagine every anti-mask/vax nutter in the US potentially being a suicide bomber for their cause. That's what life is like in some of these places. How do you *really* protect against that 100%?
 
vi edit said:
We're so naïve and sheltered. Imagine every anti-mask/vax nutter in the US potentially being a suicide bomber for their cause. That's what life is like in some of these places. How do you *really* protect against that 100%?
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I mean suicide attacks were still very common even when we had 100k troops there.
 
Exactly. I'm just so over the media on this. It's chaos over there. I still remained shocked at just how orderly some of the boarding processes were looking earlier this week. That's less fighting than I've seen over a Southwest seat.
 
hal2kilo said:
Gee how do you build a bigger perimeter? Bring in 10,000 more troops to get shot at? There's never been an easy exit option.
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Sure there was an easier exit option. Pull out May 1 & hand control to the ANG. Trump & Pompeo had it all set up. When the Taliban takes over, there's nothing to be done other than maudlin posturing. No Afghan refugee problem, either. Dump 'em all. Buh-bye now, Losers.
 
When you guys say “media” are there any specific ones you are referring to?

I mostly watch msnbc and there are several hosts that are going with the, ‘Biden is doing the best he can but the circumstances were never going to produce better results’, type narrative while the other hosts are going with the ‘this is a disaster and Biden is going down in flames’, narrative.

It’s interesting none the less.
 
ivwshane said:
When you guys say “media” are there any specific ones you are referring to?

I mostly watch msnbc and there are several hosts that are going with the, ‘Biden is doing the best he can but the circumstances were never going to produce better results’, type narrative while the other hosts are going with the ‘this is a disaster and Biden is going down in flames’, narrative.

It’s interesting none the less.
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Then on the other hand you have Andrea Michele interviewing Trump sycophant Gen. McMaster at this moment. Yea, liberal media my Fn ass.
 
ivwshane said:
When you guys say “media” are there any specific ones you are referring to?

I mostly watch msnbc and there are several hosts that are going with the, ‘Biden is doing the best he can but the circumstances were never going to produce better results’, type narrative while the other hosts are going with the ‘this is a disaster and Biden is going down in flames’, narrative.

It’s interesting none the less.
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It was more early on and specific for me was NBC morning news. I think they have shifted to a bit lighter tone until today. Then went back into chicken little mode.
 
The situation at the airpot is perfect correspondent bait since it makes compelling content. The tens of thousands of Afghans who have died in recent years, both civilian (some at our hands through airstrikes) and military, don't get this kind of coverage. US media took most of the blood out of the war until now because they'd have to go looking for it and the deaths of Afghans without proximity to US forces really isn't newsworthy to them. This is base exploitation of a tragedy that the country is responsible for.
 
hal2kilo said:
Then on the other hand you have Andrea Michele interviewing Trump sycophant Gen. McMaster at this moment. Yea, liberal media my Fn ass.
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Damn! You've caught it in real-time and I was watching the same thing. He really pissed me off with his wishy-washy treatment of Trump as somehow "equivalent" to those before and after.

The facts over the last year or two require the simplest inferences toward a conclusion. I call my conclusion the "Two Principles of the Art of the Deal".

1) Capitulate to your enemies, call it negotiation, and do it without regard to including those who rightfully deserve a place at the table and without regard to people affected.
2) Put policies in place that prohibit your friends from taking refuge in your country to escape the effects of your capitulation.
 
www.spiegel.de

The Entirely Predictable Failure of the West's Mission in Afghanistan

In early July, I met with a leading Taliban military commander. I asked when his fighters would arrive in Kabul. His answer: "They are already there." How the Afghanistan mission failed and what happens next.
www.spiegel.de www.spiegel.de

well that's pretty damning....

The great tribal council meeting in Kabul in June 2002 "was the moment when it failed," recalls Thomas Ruttig, who was a UN official from Germany at the time, but who later co-founded the Afghanistan Analysts Network. "The moment when U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad brought back the warlords." They were the men who had destroyed the country in the earlier civil war, but who had helped the U.S. government of President George W. Bush in the fight against the Taliban.

Khalilzad and others forced the tribal council to include 50 additional men on top of the elected representatives – militia leaders who had ruled with fear and aggression before the arrival of the Taliban. They were men like Mohammed "Marshal" Fahim, a Tajik leader who stood accused of perpetrating massacres and kidnappings. And Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek leader who murdered several hundred imprisoned Taliban and later had his opponents raped with bottles. Both of them would go on to serve as vice president of the country. The new holders of power remained uncompromising. They immediately set about exacting revenge on their former enemies and plundering the new government.
 
Republicans seem to want Kamala Harris to be president and for her to re-invade Afghanistan.

We're in a deeply weird place because we can't or won't come to terms with the last 20 years.
 
K1052 said:
Republicans seem to want Kamala Harris to be president and for her to re-invade Afghanistan.

We're in a deeply weird place because we can't or won't come to terms with the last 20 years.
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Probably guarantees Trump or whomever they run in 2024.
 
gothuevos said:
Probably guarantees Trump or whomever they run in 2024.
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I don't think it's that strategic. Though following form it looks like a lot of Republicans want to strike the Taliban who probably aren't responsible. Doing so would certainly make the extraction of any remaining American citizens impossible and likely condemn them to arrest or worse fates.
 
K1052 said:
I don't think it's that strategic. Though following form it looks like a lot of Republicans want to strike the Taliban who probably aren't responsible. Doing so would certainly make the extraction of any remaining American citizens impossible and likely condemn them to arrest or worse fates.
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We should stick to the timeline and get out at this point. It would be a bad idea to retrench our forces.

I don't necessarily want US citizens to get left behind, but there have been multiple warnings in this year alone that they should leave Afghanistan. At this point, they're looking like the people that don't follow mandatory evacuation orders before a fire or hurricane.
 
K1052 said:
I don't think it's that strategic. Though following form it looks like a lot of Republicans want to strike the Taliban who probably aren't responsible. Doing so would certainly make the extraction of any remaining American citizens impossible and likely condemn them to arrest or worse fates.
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I'm not saying I agree with them, only that it will be politically easy now for them to drag Biden. His approval ratings are already in free fall even before the 10+ American deaths today.
 
Brainonska511 said:
We should stick to the timeline and get out at this point. It would be a bad idea to retrench our forces.

I don't necessarily want US citizens to get left behind, but there have been multiple warnings in this year alone that they should leave Afghanistan. At this point, they're looking like the people that don't follow mandatory evacuation orders before a fire or hurricane.
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Yea, adhere to schedule I think is the only thing to done. Those Americans who either have chosen to remain or were unable to get out will have to try after we hand over the airport via commercial means. They had plenty of warming.
 
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