no sense in trying to explain military events to the biggest warmonger on the forum. it would be like trying to explain how polls work to pollster

Even if the Afghanistan war ultimately came to an end under a Democratic president, it was his predecessor Trump who had made the principal decision to pull out and had already set all the necessary plans in motion. We know this because Biden himself has complained bitterly about how Trump had presented him with a fait accompli.

It's quite preposterous of you to give Democrats a bullet point for ending this war when the Democratic president himself says that it was his Republican predecessor who had set everything in motion to such a degree that he, Biden, couldn't make any meaningful changes anymore.

Of course it also directly contradicts Netflix's ridiculous claim that Trump didn't meaningfully deviate from neocon orthodoxy.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 15 2022 02:18pm

Trump pulling out of a 20 year occupation while escalating the drone war nearly 500%, selling massive amounts of weapons to the Saudis, helping the Saudis with their genocide, killing an Iranian general, etc. etc. hardly amounts to a meainingful deviation from neocon orthodoxy.

It's one exception amongst a giant pattern of capitulating to the neocons.

Once again, you look for a single example of "technically right" while actively ignoring context so you can make Republicans look better and Democrats look worse.


Also it's pretty stupid to say Biden couldn't make changes. He could have literally just stopped the plans the second he took office. HE'S THE PRESIDENT. Trump meanwhile didn't set plans in motion until he was basically out the door so he wouldn't have to deal with the fallout.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Oct 15 2022 08:40pm

Biden approved a sale to Saudi

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-approves-massive-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia-united-arab-emirates-to-counter-iran

My claim was not "Biden is better than Trump on foreign policy" it was "Trump didn't significantly deviate from neocon foreign policy". I'm fully aware that Biden is shitty, including helping the Saudis on their genocide and making weapons sales.

Biden and Trump have shown it's the deep state that actually run the country

This is a really stupid talking point.

The people who run the country are billionaires who basically author policy and pass it on to politicians. Both sides are overwhelmingly subservient to people with money, and people with money mostly just want to move the country in a corporate friendly direction.

That's why nothing meaningful has been done about the border under any administration. They just want an easily abused population of illegal immigrants to work without recourse against them.

It's why both parties overwhelmingly voted to move the Israeli embassy to Jereusalem. Lots of people with money lobbied on behalf of the Israeli government.

It's why we kept up the massively ineffective drone war under both administrations. The manufacturers of those drones really liked selling the materials, parts, and weapons to the government.

Once again, you don't seem to actually read my posts. On the last page, I already detailed the numerous instances in which Trump deviated from neocon policy. I'll repeat it to save you some time:

- he resisted attempts to get dragged into the Syrian civil war after Assad used chemical weapons
- he tried thawing the relations with North Korea
- he pulled out of Northern Syria in spite of the outrage from his generals and the foreign policy establishment
- he negotiated a withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban
- he kept the whole Russia-Ukraine situation lowkey; sent javelins and stingers to Ukraine, but didn't do anything else to provoke Russia
- he helped broker historic peace deals between Israel and several Gulf states

So no, it's not just "one exemption to a giant pattern of capitulating to the neocons". If you genuinely believe that, you're living in la la land.
Given how much you love to call me a hack and a victim of right-wing propaganda, you are yourself notably prone to your biases and preconceptions as well as lefty talking points which flat out don't hold up to scrutiny.



Yes, I fully agree here. The problem is that Biden literally made this (stupid) argument to defend his disastrous execution of the Afghanistan drawdown.

I think that way politics works is the president who does something gets the credit, and/or the blame. Sure, we can be nuanced here and acknowledge that Trump set up the deal with the Taliban and Biden basically followed through on that deal. But the war ended under Biden, and he's a Democrat.

The same principle applies if you want to be critical of how the withdrawal went. Biden gets the blame for that. I happen to believe that most of the criticisms of the withdrawal are unwarranted because Biden was often faced with no good choices, but how it went is on him and his administration.

There's also the point that people far more isolationist or "anti-war" than me are full of excuses for why Trump couldn't end the Afghan war in 4 years. You and void are pro-Trump obviously, but to maintain integrity, you should probably be a little more critical.

We could easily expand this discussion outside of Afghanistan. Obama had American troops leave Iraq. He was heavily criticized by Republicans for his light footprint in Syria. Bush and Trump took a much harder line against Iran. Etc etc. Democrats are generally more pro-diplomacy and anti-war than Republicans.

I don't even know how useful "pro-war" or "anti-war" is for framing foreign policy views. A more useful frame is pro-alliances(or traditional American foreign policy post-WW2) vs isolationist. Trump is an (occasionally hawkish) isolationist who has a hostility to our traditional allies and a weird attraction to our foes. That makes the world a more dangerous place, especially when we have to deal with Russia and China throwing their weight around. I can't even imagine how he would've reacted as president to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There's zero chance he would've helped put together the response we've seen from the West.

This post was edited by IceMage on Oct 16 2022 03:41pm

"Early on" Trump listened to the bad guys, but then when he came to his senses in July of 2020, those damn Democrats prevented him from righting all the wrongs and drying every tear.

You're just another lackey arguing for the status quo now mane.... Trump and his people are the establishment. Good luck.