LOL look at you crying Eeyore.

If our dear leaders prove to be as dumb as you WW3 will be inevitable.

Reading isn't your friend, is it? Or is it just one of those language barrier things they didn't teach you in your English classes?

You're not fooling anyone, Dmitriy.

You're the one crying even louder now Eeyore ^^

Git gud scrub

This post was edited by Djunior on Mar 26 2022 10:47am

We were there 20 years, and the government/military fell in less than a week. Maintaining a presence there indefinitely to prevent the Taliban from taking over was a reasonable position, but I happen to disagree with it.

The evacuation was a success. We got most Americans out, and plenty of Afghans, in a very short amount of time. Again, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that Biden made any major mistakes as it relates to the Afghanistan pullout.

Thousands of Americans were left behind and were left at the mercy of the Taliban. Thankfully the same reasons the tribal leaders folded instantly are the same reasons the Taliban as a whole was disinterested in holding American hostages. It could have been an Iranian hostage crisis on a much larger scale, or a massacre, but the Taliban weren't a group of fanatics with a geopolitical ideology driving them. When we did rush people out at the last minute, we did it in the most disorganized and disastrous way possible, with mob crushes and people swarming planes and falling off them to their death. There's no way to claim any of that shitshow was necessary and couldn't have been avoided by an organized withdrawal. The white house was completely asleep at the wheel. Instead of veering into traffic head-on, we crossed the center line into an empty lane, careened into a ditch and only got some dings. That's not a credit to the driver.

The State Department told Americans to leave the country months before the withdrawal.

Many of the criticisms about Biden ending a 20 year war have the presupposition that it was completely hopeless to expect the Afghan government/military to hold out against the Taliban for any extended period of time. America staging a massive operation to pull out tens of thousands of Afghans(and remaining Americans in the country), or trying to pull out the military hardware we gave the Afghan military, would've guaranteed the collapse, and Biden would've been rightly ridiculed for abandoning an ally that we spent two decades trying to assist. It would've been a far more shameful moment for America.

Let's drill down on a couple things you mentioned, because there's consequences for everything. What should Biden have done about the Americans left behind, who chose not to listen to the State Department, and who were scattered around the country? Be specific. Should he have violated the timeline he established with the Taliban, and surged troops back into the country to retake parts of Afghanistan? The Taliban probably gave us assurances that Americans would not be harmed, and could leave eventually, so restarting the war doesn't make much sense.

Regarding the mess at the airport... we were trying to get as many people out of there as possible. Sure, they could've been more restrictive, then we wouldn't have videos of desperate Afghans falling to their deaths, but the consequence would be fewer Afghans able to leave the country.

When you deal with the reality of every decision, I can't find a major mistake from Biden. There were no easy choices.

putin is right and you are wrong

Its not my job to plan out the logistics of a withdrawal. If it was, I'd have a plan to track down Americans, I'd figure out the amount of flights necessary, stage it before the timetables. After the Taliban takeover, what we saw from the administration was a total lack of a plan, complete silence. We rushed people haphazardly into emergency flights while chaos unfolded at the one airport left open. In the end, that chaos was so unwarranted given the lack of aggression from the Taliban that we would have been better off if the military hadn't tried to evacuate people at the last minute at all, and just let the Taliban control the airports and let people filter out at their own leisure. Then at least we wouldn't have troops firing warning shots at mobs, bombs massacring panicked mobs and people literally falling out of planes. In the end, thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans we wanted to evacuate were left behind anyway.
What 'plan' we had was hinged both on the belief the Taliban wouldn't be able to rapidly take over the country, and that the Taliban were hostile and any Americans left behind would be in danger. Both mistaken beliefs that led to unnecessary chaos and death. And its easy to nitpick by giving specifics about what we could have planned in advance with a better understanding of those two points, like keeping Bagram open and using it to evacuate people, worrying less about airfield security and more about chartering additional flights, rounding up Americans much earlier, etc etc. That's with the benefit of hindsight and I don't think its fair. What I do think is a fair criticism is to point out how Biden responded once our plans fell apart and the situation on the ground changed.

That's the big point. What we could have planned differently with different knowledge, versus how Biden reacted once he knew the situation had changed and the plan fell apart. A good leader, a good commander-in-chief, would immediately start managing the crisis and taking responsibility and directing the military. We look to presidents to guide us in times of emergencies, that's why the founding fathers created the executive branch in the first place, to have decisive leadership for matters that a deliberative body are ill suited to handle. And Biden was asleep. Figuratively, literally. The white house let the disaster unfold without any comment, Biden didn't lift a finger, Jen Psaki turned off her phone and refused to talk to reporters. Afghanistan fell and the Biden administration twiddled their thumbs. They abdicated any responsibility for managing just how big or small a disaster it would be, and got pretty lucky that relatively few people died given the scope.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 26 2022 06:44pm

So Biden’s policies have nothing to do with gas prices rising?
Nothing at all?
You’re lying to yourself if you believe that

Ah man, we really need to elect you. "I'll just do it. Screw important details" I'm sure that'll be a great administration.