Taliban taking over Afghanistan again

Trying to blame this horrific blunder on Trump will not help Biden or the DP at all.
Biden has been CIC since 1/6, and he rejected Trumps date for withdrawal.
Republicans leaders may have encouraged Biden to delay. They have been involved in this fiasco.
Trump has not had any sway in DC since 11/20/20.

 

Fo Harris?

 

I would strongly back and investigation of everything related to the end of this war.

What was it that convinced America that we could negotiate with the Taliban and safely exit by May 1 and still have the Afg government surviving in the cities!!

My guess concerning the lack of planning for the evacuation of our allies is that we were running on the belief that Afghanistan was willing and able to defend itself against the Taliban at least in the cities. In that case, evacuation wasn't absolutely needed. Thus the drawdown to 2,500 troops by last January didn't include any evacuation planning.

I'd also point out that when we finally figured out that we DID need to evacuate allies from Afg, the USA presented internal resistance to allowing these people to come to America!

So, we ended up with all sorts of complications related to visas, international negotiations for destinations, capacity for moving people, etc.

 

Trump was a fool, and Biden joined his foolishness, adding dishonor to the tally.
A force of 5,000 would have been sufficient to sustain resistance to the Taliban in relative safety.

 

This IS the result of the Trump plan. There is NO possibility of suggesting that it is not.

Trump's plan called for an even MORE precipitous end - an end that had NO planning for ANY of the repercussions that we ended up facing.

Yes, Biden STOPPED removing troops. You can't claim that was a bad idea.

Your 11/20/2020 date is just ridiculous statement of partisan politics. In no way was that an end to his presidency.

What's really disgusting TODAY is that TRUMP has been ridiculing Biden!!! Trump left Biden with a total cluster of a failed plan. Ignoring that is absolutely NOT possible.

 

For how long?

How long did you serve?

 

Indefinitely. The Brits' Northwest Frontier Force in the 19th century is the model. Afghanistan was always a frontier to be defended, not a war to be won.
I served 34 years.

 

To be defended against what? Jihad? How do you stop an idea?

 

Calling people fools is not useful. It pretends that there were no factors that motivated the various actions, no actual mistakes made in developing information, no military plans that should have been better, no analysis of Afg's strengths and weaknesses that need to be understood and that we failed to understand. Etc.

Just writing it off to stupid presidents is not NEARLY good enough. It's the weakness of ad hom arguments.

I agree that if Trump had not drawn down our forces and had not negotiated with the Taliban we could have continued the 20 years of war into the future.

But, America wasn't interested in carrying this war into the future like that.

We did want an end to that war. Your suggestion that we continue the war was well known as an option, but it was rejected.

 

To be defended against those opposed to the 21st century.

 

A fool is a fool. If the shoe fits . . . And dishonor is dishonor.
Afghanistan was never a war to be won but a frontier to be defended.

 

Define what you mean? Or did you mean to go against Native Americans, Aboriginals or anyone living the "old ways"?

 

I mean preventing the achievement of state control by those who would enforce medieval laws and subjugate women, to take the most obvious examples.

 

I don't believe this view was represented by any significant contingent in America. Certainly no president presented Afg as that.

America saw this war as an opportunity to rebuild the country in our image (more or less), thus allowing our forces to depart.

 

So what? I represent only myself. And I know my view is shared by many others who were there.

 

So do you want us to have Troops in every Muslim country? How about China? Libya brought back slavery along with a few other African countries should we invade them as well?

Are you willing to re-enlist and show us what to do?

 

I'll soon be 71 YOA; my time of active service has passed.
We were attacked from Afghanistan while they harbored terrorists, as I expect they will again.

 

Biden Press Conference.

(1) Look at list of reporters and call on them in order.
(2) Give pre-written responses to question that were staged.
(3) Walk away and take no more questions.​

Where was the question on abandoning the air base in the middle of the night without notice?
Where was the question on not informing our closest allies and leaving them vulnerable?
Where was the question on why we withdrew the military before the civilians?
Where was the question on the billions of military equipment left behind?

This is what we get for having a senile, stupid, and corrupt Democrat in charge. A complicity media that had a hand in putting him there in the first place.

 

I don't believe that was a differentiating feature in the planning.

The difference comes in the view that we must always have significant forces in Afg vs the view that our nation building efforts would result in our forces departing upon success.

If our plan had been perpetual defense by the US military, we wouldn't have had to do the stupendously expensive infrastructure, economic work, etc. that was aime at making Afg independent of us.

I suspect Trump believed he was recognizing success, not turning Afg over to the Taliban by abandoning a mission as you choose to define it.

 

No, we would not have to do any of that. Our objective would simply have been to keep the Taliban out of power, and allow the rest of the Afghans to figure out the rest.

 

Aren't all your questions pretty much answered by our military in their assessment of what they could possibly accomplish given the catastrophic failure of analysis of the capability of the Afghanistan people in defending their cities?

 

Again, I don't disagree that your idea here COULD have been a US plan for how to deal with Afghanistan.

But, that has NEVER been the view of any US president or congress or the American people.

Thus I don't believe it is of interest in analyzing what happened over the last couple years.

It's more of a political question of how America goes to war.

 

Our exit was a dishonorable betrayal.
Afghans were willing to fight. But we abandoned them on the battlefield.
Opinion by Elliot Ackerman
"I have fought in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, as a Marine, and covered a third war, Syria, as a journalist. I’ve seen friends killed and wounded — been wounded myself — and in all three places witnessed the costs of American miscalculation and hubris. In all that time, across the battlefields of my generation, from Fallujah to the Korengal Valley to Kobane, I have never witnessed a more shameful U.S. failure than that of this week. . . .
Afghanistan is not my war. It’s our war. As much as we’ve heard about Afghans giving up the fight, we should not forget who was the first to leave the battlefield: It was us. Tell the Afghan soldiers who fought until they ran out of ammunition and were then slaughtered by the Taliban in Faryab province that they didn’t fight hard enough, or perhaps tell the same to the Afghan commandos who fought all summer in a desperate battles in Lashkar Gah. And we weren’t fighting only the Taliban in Afghanistan. We were also fighting their Pakistani and Iranian proxies who armed and trained them, as well as the interests of the Chinese and the Russians who in coming days will surely be among the first nations to recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

 

As I mentioned, there were those who argued against negotiating an end with the Taliban.

But, America has always seen this war as not being a permanent feature.

I don't like this person's analysis, as the issue has NOT been that there weren't locals willing to fight to the end for their country.

There just haven't been enough of them.

That is a CLEAR factor in ANY analysis. Finding some who will fight to the death does not mean that victory is possible. That is the kind of logic that would lead to an analysis as absolutely horrible as the one that we must have been depending on in allowing America to declare an end to the war and draw down our troops, to be gone by May 1.

China and Russia have taken a free ride on our dime. They have been mining minerals and oil in Afghanistan, with the USA essentially providing security.

Seeing our departure as some big win for those countries needs to have more than one of these totally superficial analyses by people who have VERY different interests and are NOT putting in the effort needed to get a good answer.

 

Same groups we supported against the Soviets...