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

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gothuevos said:
Good speech by Biden.
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You really think so? He started out by saying "That I promised that I'll always be straight with the American people" and then promptly tried to blame most of this debacle on Trump's Taliban deal and on the Afghanistan military for not fighting back.

I guess that plays well to his base, but I doubt that convinced many moderate voters. If felt like weaseling out of his personal responsibility to me.

That's kind of depressing, because I was actually starting to like Joe Biden. Those stimmy checks gave me some nice pocket money to spend this summer.
 
fskimospy said:
Good - like I said Trump was right on this too (although now he’s going to lie and pretend he disagrees with it).

We tried for 20 years. Enough is enough.
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Yes but the fiasco over the last 72 hours has been nothing but an epic failure. Im not convinced there was a clear plan to begin with. Withdraw 2500 troops...oops nope send 6000 back. Im thinking whoever planned the exit from Bagram was the intelligent one. Move quickly, in the middle of the night, shut off the power, and wave good-bye.
 
blackangst1 said:
Biden: "What we've learned is no amount of military presence will stabilize Afghanistan. Thats why it is called 'The Graveyard of Emprires'"

4 Presidents have tried to withdraw us from there, Biden is simply ripping the band aid off the wound and letting it bleed.
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I'm not sure I'd phrase it like that but using your analogy the correct phrase is..

He's letting the afghans or taliban do with the bandage on their body as they please rather than dress it again.
 
Pretty good response by Biden.

He answered the question why he didn't begin the process of removing Afghanis that help us sooner.
He did admit it happened faster then they anticipated. That was a duh!
He also didn't blame Trump. Some of you will be shocked.

If you still want to bitch that is your right. You should listen to Biden's speech before responding.

Right or wrong Biden took responsibility. Haven't seen that for 4 years
 
blackangst1 said:
Yes but the fiasco over the last 72 hours has been nothing but an epic failure. Im not convinced there was a clear plan to begin with. Withdraw 2500 troops...oops nope send 6000 back. Im thinking whoever planned the exit from Bagram was the intelligent one. Move quickly, in the middle of the night, shut off the power, and wave good-bye.
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Nobody expected the full collapse to come so quickly. Not even the Taliban. Consequently everybody got caught unprepared. It seems Ghani fled while a ceasefire that would have allowed some breathing room for Kabul was being agreed to and upended that. A significant part of Biden's speech can fairly be interpreted as anger at the Afghan political leadership for fleeing.
 
ultimatebob said:
You really think so? He started out by saying "That I promised that I'll always be straight with the American people" and then promptly tried to blame most of this debacle on Trump's Taliban deal and on the Afghanistan military for not fighting back.

I guess that plays well to his base, but I doubt that convinced many moderate voters. If felt like weaseling out of his personal responsibility to me.

That's kind of depressing, because I was actually starting to like Joe Biden. Those stimmy checks gave me some nice pocket money to spend this summer.
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He didn't blame the deal. He mentioned as a point of fact.

He did blame the Afghan military and government for refusing to fight.
 
blackangst1 said:
Yes but the fiasco over the last 72 hours has been nothing but an epic failure. Im not convinced there was a clear plan to begin with. Withdraw 2500 troops...oops nope send 6000 back. Im thinking whoever planned the exit from Bagram was the intelligent one. Move quickly, in the middle of the night, shut off the power, and wave good-bye.
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I’m kind of torn about it in that I’m not sure what would have been better. I suspect it would be viewed as a clusterfuck regardless.

edit: I think having a better idea that the collapse would be immediate would have been better, but I also suspect whatever actions we took with that knowledge would look like causing the collapse.
 
blackangst1 said:
Yes but the fiasco over the last 72 hours has been nothing but an epic failure. Im not convinced there was a clear plan to begin with. Withdraw 2500 troops...oops nope send 6000 back. Im thinking whoever planned the exit from Bagram was the intelligent one. Move quickly, in the middle of the night, shut off the power, and wave good-bye.
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You are correct. I don't understand the complete shutdown of the airport. Something that important should have been turned over to an Afghan government organization. If none was to be found then US troops should have maintained it along with the Afghans.
 
As swift as this was, it is hard to believe that this was not orchestrated behind the scenes. Afghanistan didn't even put up any resistance whatsoever. This was a "handover" to the Taliban. There is no winning with this kind of setup. we could stay there ad nauseum and the outcome probably would have been the same. I am not trying to excuse Biden but the whole thing stunk no matter what we did. At least he tried to own it.
 
HomerJS said:
Who are the "they". Think the women of this country want strict Islamic rule?
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Who do you think the "they" are?

The "leadership" of Afghanistan, or those that should be the leadership.

Of course I don't think that the women want strict Islamic rule. We however cannot fix every wrong in the world and it is foolish to think we can. It is their culture and their issue to sort out.
 
fskimospy said:
I’m kind of torn about it in that I’m not sure what would have been better. I suspect it would be viewed as a clusterfuck regardless.

edit: I think having a better idea that the collapse would be immediate would have been better, but I also suspect whatever actions we took with that knowledge would look like causing the collapse.
Click to expand...

As long as the Afghan military and police refuse to fight for their own country, we had zero chance of getting out elegantly. Either way, it is a clusterfuck and its only natural Biden will be criticized for it.

Just read an article on MSN there are several troops that have crossed the border into neighboring countries, military hardware included.
 
gothuevos said:
Good. Regardless of whatever mistakes have been made thus far, there is still ample time to try to get as many people out.
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The Pentagon previously stated that the goal was a 5k per day airlift capacity. Which doesn't account for other militaries either AFAIK. Seems to indicate an evac of SIV applicants/families and perhaps others in the offing.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
Biden is undoubtedly the sole responsibility for the vast array of fuck-ups of pulling out. No question, no doubt. He is the sole executioner on the actual pull-out.

He is in no way responsible for the overall mission that was the complete failure of invading and occupying Afghanistan for 2 decades - though he is certainly a PART of the military industrial complex that feeds off him.
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Yep, he's responsible for the Afghan forces walking away from their posts and choosing not to stay and fight. You know, like he is the President of Afghan and the Leader of those people.. dude, you are seriously fucked up in the head.
 
cscpianoman said:
As swift as this was, it is hard to believe that this was not orchestrated behind the scenes. Afghanistan didn't even put up any resistance whatsoever. This was a "handover" to the Taliban. There is no winning with this kind of setup. we could stay there ad nauseum and the outcome probably would have been the same. I am not trying to excuse Biden but the whole thing stunk no matter what we did. At least he tried to own it.
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Yeah this is looking more like a handover by the Afghan government.

Biden said their government didn't want an earlier exit by the US because they feared it would cause panic. Well to me it looks like they(Afghans) weren't ready for the facade to disappear so soon until they had plans to runaway into the night.

There must have been an agreement between the Afghans and Taliban for a complete handover. You cant explain away how there were no notable skirmishes or battles at all.
 
HomerJS said:
Pretty good response by Biden.

He answered the question why he didn't begin the process of removing Afghanis that help us sooner.
He did admit it happened faster then they anticipated. That was a duh!
He also didn't blame Trump. Some of you will be shocked.

If you still want to bitch that is your right. You should listen to Biden's speech before responding.

Right or wrong Biden took responsibility. Haven't seen that for 4 years
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I agree it was a good speech by Biden.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
Once again, Snowden is correct as the pawns of this forum go to their doggie bowl to slurp up some more b-b-but Trump!


https://twitter.com/x/status/1426929643412656130
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And yet your previous post attempted to make it precisely such a "Trump vs Biden" thing.

Clearly it's a disaster that started with the misjudged decision to invade the country in the first place (or maybe even with Reagan's decision to back the Mujahadeen against the Russians - probably should have let the Russians get on with it, having been sucked in by their own version of neo-cons, who forgot Lenin's discovery that you couldn't spread the revolution on the point of a bayonet). Then continued with 20 years of a mismanaged (and probably corruptly managed) occupation/colonial war, under Bush, Obama, and Trump. Biden certainly seems to have made a particular mess of the final end-game, but this is really the responsibility of the US (and the rest of NATO) as a whole.

(I also put it down as another crime on Blair's rap-sheet.)
 
blackangst1 said:
Yes but the fiasco over the last 72 hours has been nothing but an epic failure. Im not convinced there was a clear plan to begin with. Withdraw 2500 troops...oops nope send 6000 back. Im thinking whoever planned the exit from Bagram was the intelligent one. Move quickly, in the middle of the night, shut off the power, and wave good-bye.
Click to expand...

They had one contingency plan for a quick withdrawal from Kabul if a Taliban takeover of the city was imminent. They had planned it for months and had staged 6000 troops nearby to be ready at a moment's notice.

They activated that plan on Wednesday. It was too late. The dominos (provincial capitals) all fell way too quickly and only then did it become apparent the Afghan forces had made a deal with the Taliban all along. You know it caught everyone buy surprise because so many upper class and middle class Afghans were still inside the city this weekend. If they had seen it coming, they would've already left (from Biden's WH statements it seems some even had visas and weren't planning on using them until Sunday.)

I linked a WaPo story earlier with the details. I'm not saying mistakes weren't made. The biggest mistakes I'd pin on Biden were a) not restarting the special visa program fast enough (not sure how hamstrung he was by Congress though) and b) abandoning Bagram airbase too early, thus not providing enough air cover for Afghan forces defending the roads to the capital.
 
Clear plan? CLEAR PLAN? CLEAR PLAN?
These people are Taliban. The entire area is Taliban. This is their nature.
The ONLY clear plan would be to GET OUT and get out ASAP!!!!
Blame Bush, blame Trump, and go ahead and blame Biden, however....
It WAS JOE Biden and ONLY Joe Biden who got us out of something we should have never been in the first place. Joe Biden is the only president that had ""THE CLEAR PLAN"", and that clear plan was TO GET OUT.

And as far as the evacuation goes, are hundreds of Afghanistan's clinging to airplanes trying to flee really any different than hundreds of hispanics trying to flee to the US border???? Doesn't every person whether it be Mexico or Afghanistan want to live in America? People want to live in America, they want to flee their current situation and get out, is this so shocking to understand????

Here is the truth....
Despite American attempts, Afghanistan's are Afghanistan's. And the Taliban are a lot more like Afghanistan's than are American's like Afghanistan's. So, this is why our experiment to bring America society into Afghanistan's was doomed from the start. Now obvious, Afghanistan's soldiers rather align with the Taliban values than with American values. American trained Afghanistan's soldiers had no desire to fight against the Taliban, period. That was NEVER gonna to happen despite the pie in the sky belief from the Bush administration that Afghanistan's WOULD JUST LOVE the America way of life.... but over there, NOT here.

The best line so far was from ex CA governor Jerry Brown who said THE VERY PEOPLE NOW CRITICIZING JOE BIDEN ARE THE SAME ASSHOLES THAT GOT US INTO AFGHANISTAN IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Well, he maybe didn't say the word assholes, but he surely meant assholes....
So you want truth? THERE is the truth. Assholes got us into Afghanistan, and assholes would have loved for America to stay in Afghanistan, FOREVER! So when you see Join Ernst on Fox News criticizing Joe Biden, there is one of the assholes. Join Ernest, THE ASSHOLE OF MANY.
 
K1052 said:
Nobody expected the full collapse to come so quickly.
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I disagree. Where do you think all of these Taliban came from so quickly, from France? Out of the Afghanistan woods? From Taliban space ships? The Taliban were right there all along and all the time and in the thousands because this was and still is THEIR COUNTRY. When America was in Afghanistan training where do you think these Taliban were living? They were right there in Afghanistan. A takeover like this and happening so rapidly was inevitable and totally foreseeable because Taliban were right there all the time waiting for this.

Every oppressed person be it hispanic living in Mexico or Afghanistan wants to be an American. But shit.... republicans won't even let those Hispanic immigrants at our border into the country, so you think they will let a bunch of oppressed Afghanistan's into our country?
You know... this old world would be so much better off WITHOUT republicans.
Someone take care of that. 😉
 
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