What? he acknowledged the success of the last 20 years:
The US intervention has stopped terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a safe base for 20 years. For this, Singapore is grateful. We hope Afghanistan does not become an epicenter for terrorism again.
Are you suggesting Afghanistan didn’t fall to a terrorist group?
I’m saying that contrary to the misleading assertion you quoted from your linked article, Loong did not claim that “America’s ‘awry’ withdrawal of troops led to the fall of Afghanistan”.
Loong’s actual quoted remarks make it clear that he recognizes that the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was inevitable, and it was not specifically the “awry” nature of the final military drawdown that “led to” it.
The quoted statement in your article is spin language attempting to propagate the myth that if Biden had done a better exit then Afghanistan would somehow magically not have been taken over by the Taliban, and therefore the takeover must be Biden’s fault.
Where does it say that? He said the US was successful the last 20 years and hopes it doesn’t become an epicenter for terrorism again. He just left out the words “since it just fell to terrorists”.
He’s not Trump who lacks a mouth filter. That was a carefully worded speech.
Right there in my quoted excerpt:
It’s not absolutely inevitable, but all the indications are that the polarity is highly likely to inflict fatal blows to liberal democracy. Even if Trump fades away, he has been instructive in terms of laying out a path to power in the Republican party. Gerrymandering is only going to ensure that the Republican party doubles and triples down on its extremism.
“Muslims who don’t like America” is not a synonym for “terrorists”.
And the US was successful for 20 years until a few weeks ago. the speech was not a pat on the back. It was a polite acknowledgement of previous US leadership success and a hope it doesn’t become a haven for terrorists.
Yes but terrorists are a synonym for terrorists and that’s what the taliban represented in the region.
The Taliban represents the government of the state of Afghanistan.
I think it has gone up some since Trump is no longer President.
Only in the sense that, say, keeping a vegetative-state patient on a life-support system is “successfully” treating their condition. That is to say, not at all.
If the patient dies as soon as you take them off life support, and there was no prospect at any point in the foreseeable future of being able to get them off life support without their immediately dying, then no, your treatment was not being “successful” right up to the moment you pulled the plug. Your “treatment” wasn’t accomplishing anything constructive at all, in fact.
Conservatives are going to work very hard from now on trying to pretend that our “treatment” of Afghanistan was “succeeding” just fine until Biden pulled the plug and “killed” it. But in fact, the collapse of the US/NATO puppet government was always a foregone conclusion, and Loong is evidently well aware of that.
But so what?
How do allies look at our pandemic insanity and not begin to have serious doubts? How do allies look at the events of January 6th and the endless conspiracy theories and not have serious doubts? How do they look at the erratic foreign policy of the last 4-5 years and not have serious reservations? The US was solely responsible for the global financial crisis of 2007-9 and we’ve not really moved the needle much in terms of reigning in corporate power and inequality, so how do allies look at this and not have doubts? How do Americans look at these same circumstances and not have doubts?
Are you serious? The taliban represents a terrorist group that conquered Afghanistan. they weren’t elected or in any way approved of by the the people of Afghanistan.
For a “conquered” people they sure did stand down and sell their weapons to the Taliban eagerly enough. Was the unelected, corrupt puppet state they replaced any more legitimate?
It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. 60,000 Afghan people died defending their country. And why you’re injecting politics in this is mind numbing considering both parties supported the effort.
You really need to separate Biden from the Democratic party and consider he is responsible for this and not the party.
Were the CCP elected by the people of China? Was Kim Jong Un elected by the people of North Korea? Was the House of Saud elected by the people of Saudi Arabia? I mean, FFS, the Saudis murdered an American-based journalist, and what was our response, lol? Might be time to temper some expectations, eh?
That’s right, 66,000 Afghans did defending Afghanistan while Trump was negotiating with the Taliban without even consulting the democratically-elected government. There’s agreement that Biden is living in a parallel universe with regard to the logistics of the withdrawal, but it would make your posts more credible if you’d also concede that Trump had a lot to do with where we are now. Not just Trump, but yes, Obama, too, and his predecessor, Bush
What would have changed the outcome, in your opinion? Do you imagine that keeping a mere 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan permanently would have forever prevented the Taliban from reasserting control?
If so, ISTM you’re massively deluding yourself. The Taliban negotiated the 2021 full-withdrawal deal with the Trump administration, and since then they’ve simply been waiting for the Americans to pack up and go. If the Americans had suddenly said “nah, actually, the last few thousand of us aren’t going to pack up and go after all”, then the Taliban would have got busy again throwing us out. And to stop that, we’d have had to bring thousands more troops back in.
Is any of that what we should have done, in your opinion?
Majorities of both parties (as well as Independents) also currently support the US withdrawing from Afghanistan. The US people as a whole don’t want to continue indefinitely maintaining the risk, the responsibility, and the expense of keeping an intrinsically failed mission on permanent life support. It hasn’t been working, it isn’t going to work, and we are done.
But yet, you want to lay all the blame for this outcome solely on the current Democratic President, and then complain that other people are “injecting politics” into the situation. Pfft.
You can say the same thing about the French in WWII when confronted with the Blitzkrieg. Did they welcome the nazi regime as their new government? No. Did the world form an alliance against them? Yes.
In the opinion of many Afghanis, their deaths were cynically and pointlessly inflicted by the US occupation in a self-serving power struggle.
As I remarked in a concurrent thread,