Where did you hear this?
Fair enough. I’m pretty sure we know almost nothing about that specific mission, so I can’t say with any certainty who those civilians were or what our responsibility to them was. I do know that videos of desperate civilians falling to their deaths from a USAF aircraft is not an image that anyone wanted spreading around the globe as we withdrew in extreme haste and chaos from our 20 year clusterfuck. My personal stance is that that’s an indication that we could have handled this better; it’s an indication that mistakes were probably made; and it’s an indication that an investigation is necessary.
Is that a controversial stance? I didn’t think it would be.
For Sale: ARVN Afghan Army rifle, never fired, only dropped once.
Some unreliable source, no doubt.
Repeating right-wing warhawk jokes from the Vietnam era like it never even happened.
Here it is on full display, folks.
I assume he’s talking about this NYTimes piece from April., which he’s already posted in this thread.
If that’s where it came from, why didn’t he say so?
He kinda did when he posted the link the first time, but I’m not going to speak for him.
I have said elsewhere that if I am to fault Biden with anything it is likely that he took too long to deploy troops to help with the withdrawal. But I should frame that–that error is one of maybe 5 days, not one of 5 months. Months ago if we had staged a big deployment to “facilitate the withdrawal” it causes all kinds of issues. For one, the question would be “what withdrawal? Are you saying the Afghan National Government is going to collapse?” At that point, Biden was still advocating that Ashraf Ghani try to you know, actually run his country. Putting it out there that we expected the government to fall, would have actually helped cause it to fall, probably earlier than this week.
And pre-evacuating our people makes little sense. Our diplomats and staff know the risks of serving in a country like Afghanistan, it is their job to stay until the end, not to be moved out 6 months ago. The Afghan locals who worked with us, the whole reason we’re giving them visas is they were helping to further our mission in Afghanistan. Moving them out of country six months ago isn’t them furthering our mission in Afghanistan, it is actually us telling the 99.9% of Afghans who won’t be getting those special U.S. visas “hey we’re pulling out all the people we care about, who happen to be some of your political higher ups, good luck.” That would directly have contributed to instability in the country.
A decision was made a very long time ago, arguably back in 2002, that we were not in Afghanistan permanently. We, the collective we, have had our political leadership say over and over again that we are not making an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan. You could argue that maybe was part of the problem, the locals always knew we were only there temporarily, whether that meant 5 years or 20, temporary is temporary. We didn’t say things like that when we setup bases in Germany, Japan or South Korea.
Once the decision was made that we would only be in Afghanistan temporarily, until murky, shifting and ill defined goals were met, the reality is there would always be a point where someone has to decide “okay when do we leave?” Maybe we should have made a permanent commitment to Afghanistan–I personally disagree with that, but in the context of the commitments we had made, I would argue the time to leave was when we realized our efforts there were never going to satisfy our ostensibly stated goals. I think we knew that in 2006, as per multiple reports that were produced internally for the Bush administration. I think Obama knew it again in 2011, Trump knew it in 2016, and Biden has known it himself since 2011. Within all that strategic framing, someone had to pull the plug, and it was always going to go bad when we did. The only real alternative was and is a permanent commitment to Afghanistan. For all the people crying about Joe Biden’s fuckup, are you willing to make a permanent U.S. commitment to Afghanistan? Open ended in nature, that will continue no matter the conditions on the ground?
I think that’s fair, and I’d agree with this. The failures were within the last week, not months. You said upthread, “Someone point to me the actual serious issues with this withdrawal, I’m not seeing any.” I think desperate civilians literally killing themselves trying to board USAF aircraft is a serious issue with the withdrawal. If we had no chance of evacuating them, we should have at least had ample security in place to keep them safe while our aircraft departed.
I guess we can debate whether or not that failure was “serious,” but to me, preventable loss of human life represents a serious failure.
I didn’t think I needed to re-post a cite I had already posted?
Aside from tye NY Times article I linked:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-wanted-to-leave-afghanistan-he-knew-the-risks-11629214842
So to me serious issue would be loss of U.S. personnel or assets, our Embassy being overrun etc. Things like we saw when Saigon fell or when the Iranian revolution captured our Tehran Embassy. Nothing like that is really happening here, there is a groundswell of panic in Kabul, but there’s been little actual “trouble” from the Taliban vis-a-vis our diplomatic withdrawal. I don’t think we are responsible for governing the entire city of Kabul, or controlling what goes on there. A bunch of desperate Afghans at the airport is heart breaking, but what exactly are we supposed to do, start shooting them to clear them out of the way?
I keep emphasizing–a President disagreeing with his commanders isn’t an intrinsically bad thing, it’s actually his job to disagree with commanders whose ideas do not match what the President believes is the national interest.
The problem with listening to the commanders who keep saying “let’s just send a few thousand guys back, until things are stable” is Obama came into office ready to leave Afghanistan, and he bought that same argument, and did the “Afghan Surge.” Then he slowly stood down forces but we still had like 14,000 in country with Trump took over. Trump wanted to leave, and fast, and did move a lot out, but he was convinced to tap the breaks because he was convinced “well if you keep removing everyone things will get too unstable, let’s keep a few thousand til it’s stable.” Now Biden takes over and is told “let’s just send a few thousand more back, until it’s stable.”
Maybe it’s never going to fucking be stable. If that’s what we’re waiting on to leave, we’re never leaving.
So you admit that you made the claim on no actual basis whatsoever, much like you’ve made several previous claims in this thread without basis. And now, in order to deflect from this, you’re demanding that others disprove your unsupported assertions rather than offering any evidence for yours beyond rampant speculation.
And then to tip another barrel of poison into that well, you’re demanding that I meet a specific standard - to be judged suitable by you - and if I don’t somehow meet your entirely arbitrary standard you’ll declare victory.
That is some spectacularly poor arguing. It’s not my job to “prove you wrong” as your the one making the claims and assuming the burden of proof, and you’re clearly unable to prove yourself right. You messed up and then when called out on it kept doubling down, and then blamed others for it. I mean, a poster of any integrity would accept responsibility for their mistakes and then, presumably, resign from this messageboard (if I understand how this metric works).
That said, I’ve made it clear in multiple threads that while there was never any way to leave Afghanistan a stable democracy, the method in which this withdrawal was carried out was a major disaster for which Biden was responsible. Please forgive me if I happen to think that there’s a bit of grey area between “Everyone in charge is fired or resigns and Biden walks the streets in sackcloth and ashes, flagellating himself” and “Nobody is held accountable for anything at any time” but then my geopolitical worldview is a little more nuanced and less simplistic that some’s.
Do I think mass resignations/firings are excessive and counterproductive? Yes, for reasons I and others have already given. Do I want there to be an investigation? Probably, although it’s still very early and the thing is still happening now so investigating right now would be stupidly premature and - again - counterproductive.
Mostly what I want right now is to avoid making things worse and to start fixing what has gone wrong as best as possible, with a clear post-mortem investigation about why things were fucked up so badly in the first place in due course. And if resignations follow from that, I’m fine with that. But it won’t be Biden resigning, for - again - the reasons I’ve already meticulously explained.
Sure, the final collapse was achieved by the Taliban through brokered deals as also explained in the last para of my quote. The question is what were the conditions that led to Afghan army commanders taking those deals. Because the Afghan army has been fighting hard for years and lost more than 50,000 soldiers. The last month is absolutely not representative of their long-term performance. Something changed and that plausibly was the yanking of US support services on which they were dependent.
My assessment of impacts that influenced the change: the release of thousands of Taliban prisoners as part of the peace deal, rampant corruption that led to untold millions of dollars going into the pockets of a few rather than preparing the country for defense, and brokered deals for surrender to the Taliban that occurred prior to the American withdrawal.
Our largest failure was in not adequately planning for the evacuation of Americans and American allies (read the thousands of Afghans who worked for the US during the conflict and their families). Beyond that, there was no “neat” way out of this conflict. We should have left once it was clear Osama wasn’t there. We definitely should have left once Osama was dead. Our goals had been met. Our choices were to make Afghanistan a permanent satellite or GTFO. Americans wanted to GTFO.
You can argue about how we withdrew, but Biden stepped up and did what should have been done years ago. Endless conflict because Presidents don’t want to look bad is horrifying, even evil.
Does anyone know what this even means:
The positive consequences of withdrawal include reduced spending on Afghanistan, fewer Americans dieing there, etc. I’m not seeing these affected much by its execution.
The negative consequences of the execution include advanced weaponry falling into Taliban hands, perception of us by other countries that may affect their interactions with us, etc.
I’m not sure what of these are being “deflected”. Maybe it’s like that low-information “held accountable” phrase that pops up now and then.
Ah, here we go (more or less):
Maybe it’s a demand for punishment. Because that would improve . . . something
Oh, don’t worry. If Republicans regain majorities in either house, there will be investigations up the ying yang – Benghazi squared. Get ready to see Kamala Harris with her hand raised every other week.
Should Democrats hold fair-minded investigations while they have the majority? Quite possibly. Will those head off the witchhunts when the GOP regains power? Not bloody likely.
Oh come off it. I’m asking you what your position is, and nobody can know that except for you. I think if I were wrong, that you don’t want consequences for any of the Biden admin, you’d be the first to tell me. But you’re not telling me I’m wrong, so logic would suggest that I’m right and you can’t admit it. You’re the only person who can say, and you’re not saying.
This is a rich vein of comedic irony coming from the guy who wanted me to prove my “principles” by writing a performance review of the past N presidents, without even clarifying what those standards were supposed to be. I did ask.
All while you and every other liberal in this thread (except myself) are going to continue squirming like a worm in hot ashes when I ask the very simple and obvious question: had Trump presided over a disaster like this, would you be calling for his resignation over it? Of course you would. You can’t answer “no” because it’s obviously an untenable position, and you dare not answer “yes” because it would reveal your inconsistency vis-a-vis Biden. That’s why you’re going to continue deflecting.
I will be another liberal that doesn’t believe I would have called from Trump to resign if he presided over this. Honestly, I would never call for any President to resign over anything that wasn’t impeachable (which this clearly isn’t). And even then I would probably only call for them to resign if I felt it were likely they would actually be removed from office. So basically Nixon, or perhaps Trump over the Jan 6 insurrection if I felt that (a) there were enough GOP Senators with the courage to convict him and (b) he wasn’t going to be out of office in a few weeks anyway.
Presidents just don’t resign. It’s not part of our political system. If they fail they are to be removed by the legislature or the voters.