I give Biden credit for the Afghanistan withdrawal. Let’s face the facts; we were not accomplishing anything in Afghanistan. The hardest thing for any President to do is admit America isn’t winning a war and ending it. It’s much easier to promise future victories, keep the war going, ignore the growing casualty list, and make it the next President’s problem.
Bothsiderism is nonsense. America has one political party that works and one political party that doesn’t.
Oh absolutely it was time to go. In retrospect, could we have left without the chaos and have gotten all of our equipment and weapons out? I don’t know.
Bullshit. Extremism is exactly what is moving the Republican Party today.
I give Trump the credit and blame for it. By the time Biden took office there was no going back; all Biden could do is what he did, which was to gain some extra time for the withdrawal. We needed to go, but Trump ensured that we left in the worst possible way.
I didn’t mean to suggest that both sides are equivalent in all things. Both sides are utterly dedicated to their beliefs, and any attempts to dissuade them only cause them to cling to those beliefs more closely. In that way, the sides are similar. That’s why I think that Velocity’s promotion of extremism, from one side or the other, is misguided. Extremism is what got us into our current stalemate; it won’t get us out.
Personally, I think that one side’s beliefs are in everyone’s best interests and supported by evidence; in that way they are different.
Under the same timeline constraint? Probably not.
It was pretty clear the military had gotten into an entrenched mindset and thought the can would be kicked further down the road, as it always had been up to that point.
Yet another POTUS coming in and saying “you have 6 more months, and this time I mean it!” would sound a lot like what the last 2 guys said.
Less school shootings.
Yeah. Didn’t think much of the snacks. The beer OTOH was terrific.
If what we have now in American politics is trench warfare then we need to start leapfrogging over the Maginot line. I’m sick of playing by the rules when the other side decides to either ignore the rules or make up their own on the spot. Nobody is supposed to get money landing on Free Parking.
What some people call extremism, people reading the historical record in the future will call intestinal fortitude. History was not made by people like Alexander the Average, Catherine the Okay, and Attila the Ho-Hum. Lincoln did not get the Confederacy folded back into the United States because he asked nicely.
I feel if the Afghani people hadn’t managed to form a stable government that could resist the Taliban after twenty years of our support, it wasn’t going to happen.
Atilla and Alexander at least were ruthless mass-murderers and conquerors. The world doesn’t need more Putins. Extremism is the cause of much of the world’s greatest evil.
I’d just like to point out that while history has remembered these leaders:
- Alexander’s conquests did not long survive him.
- Catherine was good for Russia overall, and I don’t know enough to critique
- The Huns ceased to exist as an ethnic group not many centuries after Attila
- It’s pretty clear from US demographics and sociology that the Confederacy was not just “folded back into the United States,” but remains a distinct region which is has some problems. Most of these existed before the 1860s, and I can’t blame Lincoln for what happened after his death, but it’s pretty clear that while the Civil War ended slavery officially, it didn’t actually solve most of the problems with the South.
Great Leaders are fun in historical context, but for actual real life, people who do the slow, hard, boring work of instituting sustainable changes are a lot more valuable. I think Biden is doing this, against heavy odds. I still rate him below Obama, because I think the hope and charisma are important, but I’m surprised at how highly I rate Biden when I think about it.
Krugman has a blog post about the manufacturing boom, created (according to him) by the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS act, both Biden initiatives:
(That’s not a gift link, as I’m running short)
So, score one for Biden and one for those in this thread who says that Biden doesn’t communicate his accomplishments well.
We got our equipment out. At least all the important equipment. What was left behind was equipment that belonged to Afghanistan. I don’t see anyway that we could have taken back everything we gave the Afghan Army.
The big cock up was the people. Not getting out our allies was the biggest fuckup. It was partially the fault of every president involved but the end rests on him. I know the administration patted themselves on the back for resettling refugees but I know too many people who went back in to rescue their friends and allies without government help.
If they’re in everyone’s best interests and supported by evidence, then how are they extremism?
I’d be satisfied if Biden’s efforts helped the Democratic party attain dominance for not many centuries after he’s gone. 
Point taken. I just want the Democratic Party to emulate Winston Churchill rather than Neville Chamberlain. And the “slow, hard, boring work” is being actively undermined by those who seem to determined to turn this country into a fascist theocracy. Or plutocracy. I just don’t know if we can rely on another miracle of Dunkirk to save us. We may have to go directly to D-Day.
Oh I am with you 100% on that one!
They’re not.
It only takes extremism on one side to end the compromises that are required in our system of government. I’m not sure exactly how to fix that, but I’m pretty sure that more extremism (from anybody) will only make it worse.
Ending the Viet Nam war tanked Lyndon Johnson’s career. Biden is still standing.