seems fitting the lifelong swamp demon who helped vote us into this mess is still in govt and is at the head of the ongoing colossal failure. Kabul in disarray and China buddying up with the Taliban. pathetic.

Obama was a 2nd term state senator in Illinois and Trump a private citizen when these wars kicked off. both of their administrations tried measured steps to reduce our presence to get out of Afghanistan, and the prior one had a negotiated, agreed-upon plan with all parties involved. but then the current administration said “nah we will do it our way”. Look how that went. Well 81 million people support this (including all privileged lefties here) so there’s that

Not gonna lie, I'd have preferred 100% that the Biden Administration had followed the Trump Administration's withdrawal plans and timeline. That being said, I'm 100% in support of us getting out as well. I'm fully aware of the short term damage the Taliban are likely to inflict. On the flipside, give it a few months, things'll settle down, and overall, Afghanistan should return to some form of stability.

Now the only question is, will the Taliban go back to a relatively benign government/military force like they were in the late 90's or will they opt to go international out of spite?

This is what everyone besides the neocons wanted though. As far as I'm concerned, the only real feminists are John Bolton and George W Bush.

getting out is correct. botching terms so that the opposite force says fine we’ll do whatever we want is another typical swamp move


everyone wanted us to botch preset strategy and negotiations so we could do things haphazardly? where?

For all the people who gave shit to Hussein Obama regarding trusting Iran, I'm surprised that anyone would trust the Taliban of all groups. Do you believe them that women will be able to work and be educated? I certainly don't.

I think the hope was that the Taliban would only be able to capture rural areas and the Afghan police/military could protect the cities. Clearly that's not the case and that's a failure of our intelligence agencies as well as our state department for letting corruption fester for YEARS. What's strange to me is that our military ceased combat operations at the end of 2014. Like, why was this even an issue for people?

iran is on the up and up when it comes to the nuclear deal. john “swiftboat ketchup social climber” kerry and the media said so

do i expect Afghanistan’s rulers (whoever they may be) to eliminate their religious practices? no.

the issue is this is yet another botched attempt at nation-building, and somehow the lifelong politician moron who voted for it’s start is trying to absolve himself by claiming “he ended” - it when all people over the world see is Kabul’s airport looking like an American peaceful protest

that wasn't a pullout. that was a shameful retreat.

It is a mixture of both. Material circumstances do shape social and political arrangements. Farming the Nile required elaborate irrigation, which in turn required extensive social organization and cooperation. The fact that most ancient Nile civilizations were set-up along those lines isn't an accident. At the same time, culture has an enormous impact on top, and it can take on a life of its own. In the present circumstance, the Afghani state is corrupt and poor. Local leaders still maintain a great deal of autonomy. There is nothing that these people are fighting for to risk their lives against the Taliban, nor is there any reason for the Afghani state (as it was yesterday) to exist.

We didn't have the gall to dictate terms and set-up a government overseen by foreign, competent officials. It's the desire to not be seen as occupiers, which we certainly were, that has led to the present result.

Yes, this was a botched attempt at nation building but I think it would have been fine if we kept the force there for 50+ years. Alas, the past administrations and the current one failed to sell that as a good idea to the American people. That's a separate issue though.

What I'm curious about is why sticking to the May timeline developed by the Trump administration was superior to the current one. If the intel agencies say one thing and everything is based off of those plans, why would the dates matter? Should we have used military force?