Not sure why Joe, or his advisors, thought this was the way to go in his messaging in early July...
Replies to: Not sure why Joe, or his advisors, thought this was the way to go in his messaging in early July...
It seems quite possible that Biden isn’t in the regular loop of knowledge anymore.
(no message)
He seemed to say he didn’t want to telegraph the truth as the losers said it would cause a complete
collapse (that happened anyways). That explains the lying bullshit. It doesn’t explain the lack of preparation for the collapse.
Doesn’t really even explain the lying bullshit.
You receive an assessment that the situation is dire. Smart move is to change your approach to address the situation. Even if committed to leaving on same timeline, get the fucking interpreters out. Keep Bagram until the end for contingencies. Get the extra troops in before the panic sets in.
The absolutely dumb move is to lie and pretend everything is OK.
Be stupid or be a liar, but don’t be a stupid liar.
I get why he lied. Agree that strategy should have been changed as quietly as possible.
It wasn’t.......obviously.
Happily, he headed straight back to Camp David after the speech to brainstorm more contingencies.
(no message)
It was still the right move to get out. If anything their complete collapse proved it.
They wanted us to fight for what they wouldn’t.
Agree that the execution was horrible, and he deserves the heat for that. It was gonna be bad and embarrassing no matter now we did it as they were not going to fight with us gone. What happened just assured it would be as embarrassing as possible.
Meh. I was ambivalent on the general concept of withdrawal.
But if this was the inevitable result, then it was a bad move. I think for these reasons:
1) Nobody thinks clearly about the commitment in Afghanistan versus other long term US commitments. We have been in South Korea for 70+ years…Germany for 75+.
True, there are not daily combat risks for US soldiers now at this moment…but there have been many times over the past decades when there were risks.
2) The 9/11 attacks were planned, practiced, and executed from Afghanistan while the Taliban were in power. There is some PR about them being kind and gentle now…but any reasonable person would assume that is bullshit.
3) Holy Shit, we just handed billions of dollars of defense materials to the Taliban. You can try to blame the Afghans for that…but I doubt there were many professionals advising Biden that this was not a gigantic risk.
4) Best of luck, women and girls of Afghanistan.
Regarding point 4: The US supposedly spent $800M on a "Respect Women" campaign in Afghanistan.
I'm sure the women will be fine.
Good analysis.
(no message)
There are clearly reasonable arguments for not completely leaving. You’ve got 3 of them there.
In response to 1, that is certainly true, but those countries would fight for their nations unlike these guys who literally wouldn’t. No amount of 4xtra time would save that situation.
2 is your best reason and that is a real concern. We will now have to stop them from outside the country or be ready to go back in and pulverize them. The taliturbans may have gotten the message on that and may want to avoid the risk of us coming back. Time will tell.
3 was gonna happen no matter when we left and we would have to keep funneling war material in there as well as the continuing human cost of combat deaths.
4 is sad but their army should have thought of that before they just gave up.
I am still sympathetic to the urge to leave.
Just kind of overwhelmed by the result of this particular method of leaving.
What about the F-16s?
(no message)
Maybe they can hire some renegade Americans.
As far as I can determine, neither Chris nor Dim understand that Afghani pilots trained by the USA are now Taliban pilots. Ditto the maintenance guys.