I know in most Conservatives minds, we either wouldn’t be pulling out of Afghanistan until the job was “done” (whatever that means). Or that it would have been executed with clockwork precision. But I think it’s pretty clear that is wishful thinking.
So how do you imagine Trump supporters would spin the situation in Afghanistan if he were running the show?
Obviously it would be some combination of:
I suspect it would look different in one fundamental way – There would be no significant effort to airlift Afghan allies. Trump would abandon them and focus only on American troop withdrawal.
I believe you are correct. I also believe most conservatives wouldn’t care either.
“Obama lost the war” and “Democrats hate the troops”
Absolutely. Trump has already made it clear that he believes Biden is airlifting thousands of terrorists out of Afghanistan.
Not to fight the hypothetical, but I think Trump would do exactly the same thing that he already did: just stall on the withdrawal for 4 more years and let force whoever it was that came after him to deal with it (and the fallout).
It’d be largely Obama’s fault, along with Congress for hamstringing the war effort.
Nah, conservatives welcome Afghan refugees.
“Having paid a price for liberty, immigrants fleeing tyranny understand the importance of freedom.”
And they won’t be eager to join unions and vote for Biden and Pelosi.
Antifa.
Republicans have no qualms about acknowledging reality when it suits them. So I’m this case, it’d be some version of “This was an unwinnable war that had wasted American blood and treasure for decades. Better to get out and cut our losses rather than continue to waste our resources. The chaos following this decision just reflects how poorly developed the Afghanistan government was, which goes to show that ending this quagmire was the right decision. Those who nitpick and complain about facts on the ground when they didn’t have the courage to make such a bold decision are cowards who don’t deserve our attention.”
Don’t forget “Fake news”, “it’s not happening”, and “Look over there at this thing the Evil Liberals are doing!”.
They would continue what both parties have been promoting since Reagan: a combination of neoconservatism to justify military costs while gaining strategic and economic advantages, and neoliberalism to exploit resources in weaker countries.
The fact is every president after Bush Jr wanted to get out of Afghanistan. It’s just… difficult.
Obama thought about it, couldn’t figure out how. Trump thought about it, couldn’t figure out how. Biden thought about it, couldn’t figure out how - but then decided to just rip the bandaid off. That’s not necessarily good.
But the OP’s question is more about “branding”. And the fact is Trump was just BETTER at that. He was a gold-gilded paper tiger.that could talk - and he talked WELL. Let’s give him that, at least. That gold foil origami man made people think he knew and had a plan. He was good at that. So, a good number of people would have lauded him as a great leader even if he made the same flawed decision.
If things went badly under Trump, it would have been blamed on “deep staters” in the military and the State Department that wanted to make Trump look bad.
“How 'bout those Cowboys!” or whatever sports team.
IOW, I think the issue would be buried/ignored.
They would have put all the blame on the Afghan government and/or “terrorists”; the fact that the ANA collapsed like a house of cards would have been the reason listed- without that, it would have certainly gone off without a hitch*, they’d have said. And they’d probably have thrown in a fair degree of condescending and racist commentary about the Afghan troops and their fighting qualities in the bargain.
This is actually likely true; the precipitating event for the chaos was the ANA’s absolute inability to slow the Taliban at all in their advance on Kabul (minus whatever racist garbage they’d have spewed). But that’s not part of the narrative the GOP wants to present - it’s all Biden’s fault, so they’re going to harp on lack of planning, incompetence, and so on, rather than admit that there were some unexpected events that threw a lot of planning out the window, and made things much more ad-hoc and crazy than they might have been. If they admit that the ANA underperformed in a dramatically outsized way, then it takes Biden and the withdrawal planners off the hook.
Think about it this way… had the ANA defeated the Taliban in the field, and the Afghan government was a going concern and Kabul wasn’t in the midst of being invaded, wouldn’t you think the withdrawal would have gone better? Everyone was expecting (probably a bit quixotically) the ANA to put up more of a credible fight. Not necessarily to crush the Taliban, but at least for there to be some give and take- the ANA would win some, the ANA would lose some, but they’d keep in the fight, and keep the fighting outside of the Kabul area.
That didn’t happen- they collapsed like few other military organizations have collapsed, and the Taliban basically showed up at the worst possible time. Not specifically Biden’s fault, but he’s the one being blamed for it. And what were his options exactly? Put another 6000 troops back into Afghanistan to re-defeat the Taliban and prop up the Afghan government? That would have gone over well…
Not sure if you are being serious or not, but one OPed doesn’t make a movement. The Refugee question is yet another crack that divides the Traditional from the Trump republican.
There is no way in heck that Trump would in any way facilitate the importation of refugees from a shithole country like Afghanistan. He wouldn’t bat an eye at fucking over Afghans who helped us the same way he didn’t bat an eye when he fucked over the Kurds in our pullout from Syria.
I’d give Trump a 50/50 shot of following through on his agreement to pullout (i.e. 50% higher than his likelihood to follow through on any similar agreement with any of his mistresses). While he may not like the bad press of the Afghan government falling like a house of cards, cutting a deal with the Taliban to get us out what one of the accomplishments of his administration he was proud of. If he did so I think it would actually probably be much smoother that what happened with Biden. Trump like Biden would leave the nitty-gritty of the pullout in the hands of the military, so the overall execution would probably be about the same. But under Trump you probably wouldn’t have the crowds at the airport. There would be no hold up with vetting because you just let in the ones with a valid US passport and tell anyone else to go take a hike. Pretty quickly people would stop showing up becuase there was no point. So instead of getting blamed for only getting 120,000 Afghans out, he would be praised for getting 6,000 Americans out.
I cannot agree with you here. The tanman could not talk well. And those who laud him for his leadership are doing so because they want that to be true. They wanted him to have a plan and were happy for him to announce he’d tell them the plan in a couple of weeks even when he had no such thing and intended no such thing.
How would they spin it under the tanman? They’re already spinning it as he would’ve done the best ever job, completely ignoring the set-up job he clustered.
Trump isn’t articulate in the way that Obama is articulate. But he is better at branding himself in such a way that he appeals to the sort of people who follow him.
Still cannot agree with him being articulate*. The tanman was not articulate. Those who supported him are those who want that appraisal of him to be true and thus, in their minds, it is true. I do agree that he appeals to the sort of people who follow him and that’s because, as I said, they want their vision to be true.
*Friend of mine and I were walking down the road just after he arrived in Beijing and he said to me, “That’s cool! I didn’t know they had ‘bendy buses’ here”. I told him, “Yeah, and the coolest thing is that bus is more articulate than Trump”.
Not “articulate”. Closer to what YouCannotGargleSand describes. That sort of brash, arrogant style that probably works well selling real estate but is not suited to nuanced collaboration on complex issues. That’s how a lot of sales (and Trump) works. A flashy salesman brimming with confidence presents this picture of what people desire. And because he’s so flashy and confident, they naturally assume he knows what he’s talking about or has the inside track or whatever. Forget what those beancounters are telling you. They are just a bunch of pussies who would rather bury their heads in spreadsheets instead of finding the balls to actually go achieve the possible!