No.
And I noticed you only quoted the first part of my post and didn’t respond to the rest. It’s funny how that happens.
An example from history: Kennedy inherited Eisenhower’s doomed-to-failure plan for the Bay of Pigs invasion, and gave it the go-ahead. It was an epic fuckup. Kennedy didn’t resign, nobody (with any credibility) called for him to resign, and it would have had zero effect on the 1964 presidential election.
Prove me wrong. Who in the Biden administration should be investigated or lose their job over this? You don’t have to name names, just name a role or position, or just agree that there should be an investigation to make such determinations.
Am I wrong in saying you won’t get behind any of that? If not, there’s your basis.
Chrissakes, you asked me a question, and I quoted it and answered the entire question in full, leaving out no part or context. If you think that’s some sort of gotcha, if you can’t discern between brevity and deception, I don’t know what to tell you.
I can’t speak for Gyrate, but I want there to be investigations, I want people to be held accountable, and I want America to learn from this mistake.
I reject the idea the withdrawal was “messed up.” To be frank. Someone point to me the actual serious issues with this withdrawal, I’m not seeing any. No one is attacking our Embassy or our people. If Biden had started a withdrawal six months ago, it would have massively undercut the Ghani government. Biden was giving the Ghani government a chance to try and run the country, pre-withdrawing everyone does not achieve that. The Taliban are letting us evacuate all of our people through Kabul, and we’re running the airspace in the country. I understand that for Trumpers it’s hard to separate hype from fiction. I also understand even the non-Trumper press loves a catastrophe, because it lets them write “articles of concern” and write big boy headlines, and for the broadcast media it lets them fill air time. But aside from some panicked people upset at a few Afghans who got desperate at the airport the other day, there is nothing about this withdrawal that is actually going that bad.
It was specifically stated over a year ago when we agreed to leave that it would be up to the Afghan government to maintain itself. It ceased being an official policy of the United States to prop that government up, so the fact that they basically laid down their arms for the Taliban isn’t Biden “fucking up” anything, it’s literally Biden doing what he said he would and continuing Trump’s own policy–withdrawal and letting the cards fall where they may. The cards have fallen. American lives have not been lost in the process.
Did you see the videos of people falling to their deaths from the C17 that took off from Kabul? Did you see the reports of body parts found in the landing gear of that same plane? 800 passengers on that plane is not a typical PAX capacity.
These are not signs of an organized, smooth withdrawal.
I’ve read a number of assessments like this–and while I think they are spot on with failures in military strategy over the last 20 years, they don’t explain the rapid collapse. The rapid collapse was brokered the way deals are often brokered in Afghanistan–tribal leaders who often have family members on both sides of any conflict in Afghanistan, broker meetings, deals get cut. Most of the provinces fell with minimal or sometimes zero bullets being fired.
I read an article from a former journalist with the Times of London who covered the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and he noted that we should have expected this because the same exact thing happened during that withdrawal. Many areas the communist Afghan state would have local commanders (who belong to say, Tribe X) would meet with Mujahadeen from the same tribe, a tribal elder would set up the meeting. They would come to an amicable arrangement and the communist government commander would agree to a transfer of control. Now the communist Afghan government actually had a stronger core than the Ghani government–they fought some pitched battles in some cases and actually persisted for years after the Soviets left, but they actually turned Kabul over peacefully as well.
We made some mistakes in our design of the Afghan National Army, but they had the capacity to probably avoid being overrun, particularly in cities, where insurgents have serious limitations in their ability to wage large scale assaults against entrenched regular military. But the Taliban being from there, understood that in Afghanistan “deals can be made” that remove the need for such disastrous thing as urban sieges.
Were we trying to withdraw those people?
Yes, that’s why 800 of them were on the plane.
Why is that? We don’t control what random Afghan civilians do. Those people rushing to grab onto a plane are tragic and terrible, but that’s not something we’re in charge of, we aren’t the government of Afghanistan and it isn’t our job to control their people. Our goal for the withdrawal is the orderly removal of U.S. personnel, which has been ongoing with no loss of life (no one has breached our Embassy or even attacked it, and we’ve removed the flag and destroyed all important documents), and for the processing of visas for Afghans who will be allowed to come to the United States. We have a deal with the Taliban negotiated by General Frank Mckenzie in which we’ll be left alone to utilize the Kabul airport to evacuate those people. There’s a huge number of Afghans panicking trying to get out of their country. That has zero to do with our withdrawal because we are not responsible for the 39 million people who live in Afghanistan, anymore than we are responsible for the millions of migrants roaming around Mexico because they don’t like things in Honduras and Guatemala.
From what I’ve heard, it’s the opposite. The Generals told him withdrawing this way was a bad idea, and wanted to keep a force of a few thousand soldiers to keep the peace. Biden refused to lusten.
As for his taking responsibility: In his speech with the magic ‘the buck stops here’ boilerplate he also went on to blame Trump, the Afghan army, and Afghan political leaders.
Biden basically said, “The buck stops with me, but I made the right decision. But Trump tied my hands and the Afghan military and politicians failed.”
That’s not just my take. I’m seeing headlinex today like, “Biden blames everyone but himself for Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.”
BTW, when was the last time a politician of either party who said, “I take full responsibility for…” ever actually acted on that? Usually such things are said more to shut down the accusations than to actually take responsibility for something by suffering consequences.
We packed 800 terrified Afghan nationals on that aircraft. Had there been any conceivable way for that aircrew to get more people on board, I know they would have, but they were forced to leave people behind.
I’m not sure what you’re saying – we were in charge of those specific 800, but not the hundreds more who were chasing the aircraft down the runway?
We clearly felt a responsibility to evacuate Afghani civilians, and we clearly did not have the capacity to do evacuate as many as we needed to. That’s a failure of execution.
I’ll note that for the first time in twenty years we have a President who did what he told us he would do in Afghanistan. Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump all indicated we were not in Afghanistan forever, but none ended out military deployment there. Biden said he would, and he did what he said. The people voted for it. It is naive to think a place as terrible and backward as Afghanistan was going to be a happy and wonderful place after we left. But we’re going to reap the benefits of Biden’s smart move in the years to come. Not just the $45bn/yr we won’t be spending in Afghanistan (which by the way is more than all but 8 countries even spend on their entire military), but the tied up air resources, the strategic focus it’s taken from CENTCOM all these years etc etc. It was time to leave.
I mean that is actually just your take because you deliberately misrepresented how he said it. He first noted the terrible situation Trump left him with–5000 terrorists in Afghanistan set free due to Trump’s “deal” and a drawn down U.S. force of 2500 which had abandoned most major military bases. THEN he goes on to say that regardless, he is the President, the buck stops with him, and he stands behind his decision.
It’s very different to say he made that comment THEN whined about Trump, when in fact what he did first was correctly frame it (it being the entire country of Afghanistan) as a clusterfuck, but then say he was taking full responsibility for the situation.
And here’s the thing about those Generals man, they have never once agreed with anything but “More troops more troops more troops.” We actually tell the Generals what to do, not vice versa. These guys would have us there for a thousand years if we left them to their own devices.
Good to know that the Afghan army and Afghan political leaders bear no responsibility for what happens in Afghanistan.
Or: Biden listened to the input from the military point of view, and then factoring in all social, political, economic and humanitarian considerations, came to a different conclusion.
Potato, po-tah-to.
I’m pretty sure that plane in question was evacuating people to the UAE, most of those are not Afghans we are responsible for (i.e. they won’t be getting U.S. visas.) We evacuated them for humanitarian reasons, which is a nice thing to do, but it is not part of the mission of our withdrawal, nor is it our sole responsibility. There are other NATO member countries with airlift capacity who can pitch in to take refugees to various destinations around the world, but it generally is not U.S. responsibility to transport refugees as a general rule, no.
What the hell do you want-Biden to admit that he personally secretly ran that ware for the last twenty years?
Straight to the victim-blaming. Unbelievable.
For many years on this board I’ve reliably been a voice arguing with liberals, against Republican cronyism and gangsterism. And I will continue to hold that same position, I will continue to vote for Democrats as I have in every election since 1992, because it’s necessary and important. But Christ I wish I had never seen this side of you, of us. This is really depressing.