There was a deadline that the Taliban were respecting. It’s very easy to speculate about how we could have just ignored that. There was an isis bombing during our evacuation that cost 13 American servicemember lives. What do you suppose the Taliban would have done after Trump’s deadline had we broken his agreement?
I didn’t attack the source, I tried to provide background that might question the source’s intent.
Exactly what some would like, give them a reason to demand we have another 20 years of war nation building!
We’re not attacking the source. We’re questioning the source’s credibility. And anyone who authored a book titled Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack is probably not going to be an objective writer.
I don’t see a way to sign up for free on their subscription page. Even 10 articles a month costs $4.
I did. I clicked on the article. It prompted me to sign up for a free membership. I entered my email. They sent me an email and I created a password. Then I was directed back to the article.
He, and all columnists, are not objective. He used mainstream media sources (AP) and directly quoted Angela Merkel. Its fair to attack his conclusions but its silly to dismiss his arguments because of a book title he likely didnt have a say in creating.
I got no such offer when I clicked on the article.
From the opinion piece,
{…} Our NATO allies were in Afghanistan only because America was attacked on 9/11, and there were more NATO than U.S. forces in Afghanistan when Biden made the decision to withdraw — so his surrender undermines the credibility of the entire alliance. {…}
Oh, that’s what happened?
OK, let’s assume that August 31st rolls around, the day on which we had agreed to withdraw on and which the Taliban were honoring and giving us sage passage, and when the Taliban asks why we haven’t left yet, Biden says “I think we’re gonna stay for awhile, we’ll tell you later how long we’ll be here for.”
Is it your assumption that the Taliban is just gonna be cool with a continued indefinite occupation of their territory?
Jesus Christ some people can’t understand the simplest things to do…
And yes Biden destroyed any sense of good we ever had.
Again, this is not remotely true. The people making these arguments don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. At best they’re speaking with a ton of hindsight bias, and even then don’t actually have a different, better plan, not with knowing ahead of time what was going to happen.
This specific article is alleging that Biden should have stayed in Afghanistan longer so that our allies could get out more civilians. This misses the mark in multiple ways. First off, Biden’s first duty is to the Americans over there, and protecting them. As he argued, he had to get them out as quickly as possible once things went sour. It was all we could do to actually get Americans out of harms way before the agreed upon end date.
But, possibly more importantly, the primary issue was that some countries had trouble getting out civilians. Civilians are people who chose to remain. They’ve had plenty of warning, and countries had been pulling people out as much as they could, but a lot of people were not ready to leave before the Taliban took over. Biden already didn’t have the authority to make US civilians leave, and he had even less authority to make other civilians leave.
But, most importantly, due in part to negotiations with the US: the Taliban agreed with safe passage for those who wish to leave Afghanistan. So the problem that these countries have? The US helped make it better. Now, granted, the Taliban is having trouble keeping its promise, but it makes sense that they would do this. You don’t want to have a bunch of dissidents hanging around. It’s better to get rid of them. It’s also better if foreigners have safe passage in Afghanistan, as that allows them to get people in to mine their minerals, which is the primary source of Afghanistan’s income.
There is nothing in this article that seems to describe something that Biden did wrong. It does not have a strategy that would actually be better than what actually happened. And it very much overstates how other countries feel about the US in regards to this. It makes way too many leaps in logic to come to its conclusion.
Almost like it started with the conclusion, and then used the facts to fit it.
Jesus Christ that is totally different from “We can access it by signing up for a free account.”
Excellent post @BigT .
Hang on to those semantics, Czarcasm, that’s all you got.
US forces are NATO forces.
The Taliban are a conquering force so it really isnt their territory. Withdrawal should have been coordinated with our allies and all at risk Afghanis should have been evacuated before we left. The Taliban do not have the forces to threaten us. When the last person who needed to leave Afghanistan was withdrawn then we leave.
Biden campaigned on a promise to work closely with our allies and to repair the damage that the Trump presidency caused. He is instead out Trumping Trump with his disregard for our allies. To not communicate with them is shameful. The blood of those left behind unnecessarily will be on Biden.
Biden did nothing wrong? He refused to keep our European allies informed and actively ignored them. This is the opposite of his campaign promises to repair damage that the Trump Administration caused with our NATO allies. But I guess Angela Merkel doesnt know what she is talking about, right?
Huh??? The US now has the same position on having combat troops in Afghanistan that the UK adopted in 2014. Doesn’t that make us more allied rather than less?
Like it or not, the Taliban is the de facto government of Afghanistan, and has been since the “elected” president skipped town for Dubai with $169 million in a suitcase.
It was. The date of departure wasn’t a surprise - everyone’s known it since the beginning of the year.
Not our call to make.
They certainly had the power to make things very difficult for us if we wanted to, and we would have suffered American casualties, both civilian and military, if we’d had to fight our way out. How many deaths would you consider acceptable, considering that as-is we made it out with only 13 casualties during the evacuation?
Which, from a practical standpoint, means forever, since there’s no rush to leave if there’s no deadline.
And he has. We’re back in the Paris Accord and the WHO, and he’s not cozying up to Kim Jong-Un and Putin and Duterte.
Working with our allies doesn’t mean “do whatever they tell us to do”. The US military is not World Police, and it’s not our job to lay the necks of our troops on the line, indefinitely, for their citizens. We spent 20 years in Afghanistan with nothing to show for it - we didn’t “spread democracy” or “liberate” anyone, we just propped up a kleptocratic regime that was hopelessly corrupt and couldn’t stand on its own without an indefinite flow of American blood and treasure. Biden was right to get us out and he made it known when we were leaving - it was on our allies to help their own people instead of expecting us to do all the heavy lifting, and anyone who’s still there knew the job was dangerous when they took it.