If you look at the British Empire 1919-1921, they were stumbling around in, you guessed it, Afghanistan and Mesopotamia (Iraq), though I think they hung around in Iraq until about 1930 or so, IIRC.
I’ll answer. The answer is “no.”
I’m in the camp of @Martin_Hyde and others here that, while the past few days seen some sickening events and mistakes clearly were made, this withdrawal is not a “disaster” and certainly not one of the magnitude calling for a president to resign.
If it had happened under Trump? Yeah, I probably would have piled on a little harder, because he would have long since destroyed any benefit of doubt. (Plus, he would have blamed everyone but himself, refused to even say magic words of taking responsibility, and denied that any Afghans were killed, injured or left homeless.) But no, I would not have called for his resignation.
ETA: What @Jas09 said.
I appreciate your honesty. I think we really need to look at the past 50 years of US presidential history and ask ourselves honestly how that norm is working out for us. Spoiler: it’s harmful.
I, for one, just want to thank you for both asking and answering your question on, at least, my behalf! Saved me a lot of time!
Like I said, I think Biden should have started a temporary deployment of several thousands troops like a week ago (he realized this and started it a few days ago), it was a mistake not to do so, not a massive mistake. We’ve also basically gotten lucky the Taliban has shown zero willingness to seriously fuck with us. They absolutely could have made a rush for our Embassy and taken American hostages, they could be massacring people trying to get to the airport. Instead they’ve left the diplomatic quarter alone and have inked a deal with us for transporting people to the airport and airlifting them out. Every indication is the Taliban is looking to consolidate control and they understand a shooting battle with us isn’t the way forward at this moment. So some of what has made Biden’s mistake of not sending guys in for 5 or so days too late, is the Taliban aren’t really looking to go after us.
But the people saying we should’ve done stuff months and months ago, are wrong for reasons I’ve already laid out.
FWIW I was a major critic of Trump, but I never had an issue with him wanting to get us out of Afghanistan. I have always tried to keep abreast of the Afghan conflict using direct sources that the military releases, from my time in the military I actually kind of enjoy reading some of their official reports and analysis. The thing is even those reports were off base, while those reports made me quite sure since about 2016, 2017 or so that things were going south there whenever we left (the military knew back in 2006, but they didn’t release those reports publicly), and I supported Trump’s decision to get us out. I was critical of aspects of it that I feel Trump fucked up–I think pushing Ghani to release 5000 Taliban for, as far as we can see, was no benefit to Afghanistan or America was a colossal mistake and I suspect there’s almost certainly elements of that deal we aren’t privy to, and we should be.
But ultimately my assessment of Trump is just like Biden–I agree with what he was trying to do (get us out), I think he made some mistakes in the process.
There’s that deflection, right as I said. I must be a master hypnotist or something.
Well, since you already know everything everyone thinks and all their motivations… who are you arguing with? And why?
Ohhhhh… is that just you patting yourself on the back for being soooooooo very clever?
Corruption and having a government that was easily influenced by things like illicit trade probably doomed Afghanistan from the start. Biden didn’t lose this war. Trump didn’t either, but if anything, he put the pro-government alliance in a treacherous position by essentially committing us to withdrawal and giving up leverage. That emboldened the Taliban, who knew they could just sit back and wait. Biden would have caught hell from some but he could have reconsidered the timeline and agreement to withdraw.
Yes, I’m deflecting! Maybe if you didn’t dishonestly ask the question in the first place you’d have gotten a better response.
Yeah, years from now when things are calmed down and people make sober assessments of how we “could have won”, I think there’s a number of decisions we could have made differently. I’m not really sure victory was ever there, but the way we conducted ourselves was flawed from start to finish.
Other than some civilians briefly running onto the airport runway the military evacuation is going very well. The Taliban is exercising such control as is possible over their militias, Afghan civilians and US personnel are being allowed access to the airport. The airport is in operation and flights are arriving and departing. Events are unfolding much as expected.
Taffeta, darling.
I’m quoting you out of order, because I wonder if releasing the prisoners wasn’t the first part of a quid pro quo, with the second part being the not fucking with us on our way out.
(And unlike Trump, the Taliban actually sticks to their side of a deal.)
Are those goalposts really lightweight? Because you seem to move them pretty easily.
Taffeta, sweetheart.
If Trump said “the buck stops with me”, I’d probably fall over from shock.
The buck didn’t even slow down with Trump.
Probably not. I don’t recall demanding Trump resign for any of his foreign policy disasters. Or domestic failures, for that matter. If you’d asked me, “Should Trump resign?” I’d have said yes, of course, because I really didn’t like him being president, but it wasn’t something I was “calling for.”
I supported impeaching Trump both times, but that was because he was committing crimes, not just badly executing foreign policy.
Unless he’s referring to a literal dollar bill, which he then pockets.
Well, absent a parliamentary system where the head of government is also the head of the ruling party, I don’t really see how it could be otherwise. Who would pressure the head of the executive branch to resign? What kind of standard could ever be applied impartially? How would Presidents act if they knew that they would be called on to resign 3-days into a mission if the pictures on TV look bad enough?
I think this knee-jerk reaction stuff is a bit misguided. Let’s see how this all plays out and what the final situation is before we declare this the worst thing since Saigon. Stated American policy, at least when this thing got started 20 years ago, was to remove a regime that was supporting terrorists and capture and/or kill those that masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Those goals were met at least a decade ago.
The fact that a repulsive regime will be left in charge is regrettable, but not that different than any number of regimes around the world. I don’t see much call for Americans to go in and overthrow those governments.
Trump did preside over a disaster exactly like this when he abandoned the Kurd’s, calls were made for his resignation, he ignored them.
As Biden will.