Any undifferentiated argument along the lines of "we should sacrifice unlimited amounts of X if it saves just a single one of Y" are completely stupid and shortsighted, no matter what X and Y are. Abortion is not an exception.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 2 2021 09:06pm

https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-call-before-afghan-collapse-biden-pressed-ghani-change-perception-2021-08-31/
https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/biden-pressured-ghani-to-create-perception-taliban-wasnt-winning/



Looks like "leaked transcripts of calls with foreign leaders" now goes both ways
Joe Biden's call with Ghani was leaked, and includes these whoppers:




Haven't seen anything about this in the thread even though its 3 days old.
Biden was directly asking Ghani to lie publicly to project a farce that the security situation was still tenable in Afghanistan while Biden knew the Taliban was winning, and kept feeding Ghani bullshit about propping him up even as the Taliban were taking over the rest of the country.
It appears Biden was less interested in either fending off the Taliban or staging an orderly withdrawal, and instead more interested in managing public image back in America and boosting his own poll numbers.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Sep 3 2021 12:26am

Sounds like a nothingburger. Biden, just like any reasonably informed observer, clearly knew that the Taliban would eventually take over the country and wanted to keep up plausible deniability on this fact until the withdrawal becomes irreversible. So he needed the Afghan government to project strength/confidence/normalcy. Not so much to boost Biden's approval numbers but more to keep the military-industrial complex and their attack dogs in the media at bay until there are facts on the ground.

Therefore, Biden (unsuccessfully) tried to get Ghani to lie on his behalf so that the farce could be kept up until the US withdrawal would wrap up. This does not mean that Biden already knew or anticipated at the time of this phone call that the Taliban would sweep the entire country in record time while meeting next to no resistance.


So all these transcripts confirm is that Biden was willing to throw Afghanistan to the Taliban, something that Trump was willing to do as well and that enjoys majority support among the American public; and that his execution of this plan was incompetent.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 3 2021 01:03am

My interpretation of this is that he wanted the Afghan government to project strength in hopes of slowing down any sort of Taliban advance. If the Taliban thought they would face considerable resistance in taking provincial capitals, things may have gone differently. Obviously that's not a good strategy because the Taliban could easily call the bluff (and boy did they do that). This is basically the Saddam strategy.

Biden even specified he was talking about the view of 'the world', not just Afghanistan let alone what the Taliban thought. Not sure how much more bluntly a world leader can ask another world leader to lie for them to make their policies look better than they are
Its especially belied by the fact that Biden was blowing smoke up Ghani's ass like it was an inverse hookah when it came to that very threat of a Taliban advance. That's not mixed messages, that's full blown denialism.
If Biden's goal was to project strength even if it was a lie, in order to dissuade the Taliban out of fear of their advance- then why would he be telling Ghani that he has the Taliban outmanned and outgunned and insisting he would come out on top in a fight?

The most charitable interpretations of this are some pretty colossal incompetence, the less rosy picture is that Biden was working one of his wink wink deals like Ukraine

There's no point in projecting strength to the rest of the world (America included) because the proof will be in the pudding. How does delaying the truth by a month help Biden? It seems to me that this is a pathetic attempt to boost morale for Afghans.

I put a lot more stock into believing in the short-term, kneejerk reactions of people to events without greater thought to strategy. Not approaching everyone as if they are a chessmaster. Is it unbelievable that Biden could have just seen bad press on Afghanistan on the 5 o clock news and heard other world leaders complain to him about the situation, and so he just went to Ghani and asked him to make the situation look better? From what I've seen, most administrations are just scrambling from crisis to crisis every month and trying to make things look better than they are.

I really don't see how "bluff strength to intimidate the taliban to cover our actual weakness" and "the taliban have no chance against your massive, throbbing, veiny, 300,000 strong army" can be reconciled on the same train of thought.
But they could be consistent if Biden actually was deluded into thinking that Ghani had the upper hand and was just getting bad press.

It would also be consistent if Biden was not convinced that the Afghan military can fend off the Taliban in the long run, but thought they could hold the cities long enough for the US withdrawal to wrap up and go smoothly. (Which was all Biden really cared about at this point, since he and his strategists surely knew that no one would give a fuck about Afghanistan anymore once the Western troops are gone.)

To me, it seems as if Biden haphazardly tried to mind trick Ghani and the Afghan government/military into finally putting up a fight against the Taliban, so that the timeline for his own withdrawal doesn't get disrupted.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 3 2021 05:07am

“I’m not a military guy, so I’m not telling you what that plan should precisely look like, you’re going to get not only more help, but you’re going to get a perception that is going to change in terms of how , um … our allies and folks here in the States and other places think you’re doing,” Biden said.



The main takeaway is that Biden appeared completely unprepared for the prospect of an imminent Afghani collapse. His tone makes it clear that he was in complete denial about the seriousness of the situation.



I agree. Biden needs to explain why he thought the Afghanis were going to fight a bloody, pointless war which they and everyone else knew they would ultimately lose.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Sep 3 2021 05:54am

Well I guess the obvious answer is that his intelligence community and top military brass were focused on empowering female haircuts and arguing with civilians on twitter about the feminization of our military.
And... I don't mean that just as a sarcastic jibe either. I actually think our military brass have so abdicated their responsibility to lead our troops and craft war strategies that they have left us completely blindsided by easily predictable turns in a conflict, just so they could focus their efforts on a social justice agenda instead.
One of those parables about a decadent society collapsing inwards seems appropriate.

Why is it that everyone who was supposed to be involved in the command structure of this war was so wrapped up in social issues they couldn't see it coming when the Taliban did exactly what I could have told you they would do twenty fucking years ago, when I first predicted it?
I've heard plenty of grumblings about how the top command has been growing worse for some time, not just under Biden, but its ultimately his responsibility, and Trump's failure too if he failed to clear house when these jokers were being useless.
Obama dealt with the military by hoarding powers into the executive and micromanaging their affairs and calling shots on individual drone strikes. Trump dealt with them by giving their leash slack and letting them do as they pleased at an arm's length. Biden is dealing with them by fiddling with them as rome burns