US intelligence agencies who said just 4 days ago that Kabul could fall in 90 days have revised the figure to 72 hours
https://t.co/v2XUuPVcKX

— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) August 14, 2021

Yes, Pat Buchanan is goofy as f@uck, a racist and was tRump before tRump was (except for the part where Pat has a brain). With that said, I have always felt he wrote one of the definitive essays regarding the origins of the Invasion of Iraq. This essay gives one a lot to chew on regarding America's engagement in Afghanistan:

" We went into Afghanistan in 2001 to deliver retribution to the al-Qaida terrorists of Osama bin Laden who perpetrated the 9/11 massacre and to overthrow the Taliban regime that had provided them sanctuary.

This we could and did do. We succeeded.

But by June 2003, Bush and his neocon advisers had expanded their horizons. A global crusade for democracy was now the great new mission. We were going to remake the country. We were going to build a new nation, along Western lines, out of a fundamentalist Muslim country in Central Asia with a long and proud history of fighting and expelling foreign invaders.

What was clear in a few years was that the U.S. military could knock over hostile regimes and rout their regular armed forces. But we could not eradicate a resistance that had time on its side, plus tradition, tribalism, nationalism and an abiding faith that martyrdom and paradise awaited those who died in the cause.

As Napoleon said, "In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one."

The Taliban were willing to fight as long as necessary to expel us and topple the regime we had helped to impose in their place. But we were growing increasingly reluctant to invest the blood and treasure for as long as necessary to impose our will upon what is, after all, their country, not ours

Truth be told, Afghanistan was never a vital interest of the United States but has always been the most priceless possession of the Afghan people. But how the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara of Afghanistan rule themselves, 8,000 miles away, is not our business.

There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought."

Patrick J. Buchanan: Is Afghanistan a failed mission? | Columnists | unionleader.com


https://www.unionleader.com/opinion/columnists/patrick-j-buchanan-is-afghanistan-a-failed-mission/article_c13d0bb0-9e97-5177-b2f3-3aab8767783e.html

oski003 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Stop endless war. Thank you President Biden.

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Is he a liar or incompetent?

---

Neither. It is more like this situation:

oski003 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Stop endless war. Thank you President Biden.

---

Is he a liar or incompetent?

---

I think you're talking about Captain Catastrophe both a liar and incompetent. After 20 years and $3.5 trillion dollars it was time to get out. When is enough enough? How many more families have to become Gold Star Families?

sycasey said:

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oski003 said:

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BearForce2 said:

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May 6, 2021 on Afghanistan

This is same guy who wants to teach CRT at West Point.

pic.twitter.com/EWCh1Pbx0A

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 15, 2021

The Taliban appears to have a more aggressive timeline than the general and Biden.

---

This topic is about how absolutely wrong the commander in chief of our armed forces was when telling the public what would happen during and after the withdrawal of American forces. Okaydo, Sycasey, Dajo9, and Bearister are deflecting and changing the topic to whether we should have had troops there and whether foreign wars are important. I generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan.

However, I am embarrassed by our withdrawal strategy. Perhaps we secretly intended to give Afghanistan to the Taliban in like a week while burning embassy documents, resending in troops, and emergency airlifting personnel out? Our president told the American people we left a great fighting force there to defend democracy! The Bidenists here give excuses and deflect. Are they unable to watch the OPs video? Party over common sense. Sad.

---

The one thing I think is a fair criticism is that Biden and everyone else were clearly lying about whether or not the Taliban would overrun the country. They knew that would happen. Saying otherwise was just intended to make it more politically palatable. So yes, he lied about that. I don't like that part of it; I wish more politicians would just level with the public. But I understand why he did it.

In the long run, it's more important that we get our troops out of Afghanistan, even if we know what the consequences will be. I'm also not convinced the result would be much better even with a "better" exit strategy. What's your evidence that it would be? Seems to me that despite our many decades spent training up their military (through multiple administrations), that country's feeble government was simply no match for the Taliban and would have fallen regardless.

---

I've been surprised by the reaction of the Afghan people. They seem to be putting up zero fight, do they not care if the Taliban imposes their strict religious laws on them? Or maybe they just agree with the Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

golden sloth said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

BearForce2 said:

---

May 6, 2021 on Afghanistan

This is same guy who wants to teach CRT at West Point.

pic.twitter.com/EWCh1Pbx0A

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 15, 2021

The Taliban appears to have a more aggressive timeline than the general and Biden.

---

This topic is about how absolutely wrong the commander in chief of our armed forces was when telling the public what would happen during and after the withdrawal of American forces. Okaydo, Sycasey, Dajo9, and Bearister are deflecting and changing the topic to whether we should have had troops there and whether foreign wars are important. I generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan.

However, I am embarrassed by our withdrawal strategy. Perhaps we secretly intended to give Afghanistan to the Taliban in like a week while burning embassy documents, resending in troops, and emergency airlifting personnel out? Our president told the American people we left a great fighting force there to defend democracy! The Bidenists here give excuses and deflect. Are they unable to watch the OPs video? Party over common sense. Sad.

---

The one thing I think is a fair criticism is that Biden and everyone else were clearly lying about whether or not the Taliban would overrun the country. They knew that would happen. Saying otherwise was just intended to make it more politically palatable. So yes, he lied about that. I don't like that part of it; I wish more politicians would just level with the public. But I understand why he did it.

In the long run, it's more important that we get our troops out of Afghanistan, even if we know what the consequences will be. I'm also not convinced the result would be much better even with a "better" exit strategy. What's your evidence that it would be? Seems to me that despite our many decades spent training up their military (through multiple administrations), that country's feeble government was simply no match for the Taliban and would have fallen regardless.

---

I've been surprised by the reaction of the Afghan people. They seem to be putting up zero fight, do they not care if the Taliban imposes their strict religious laws on them? Or maybe they just agree with the Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

---

My takeaway is that we've been propping up Afghanistan with troops and billions of dollars for the last 20 years, yet it's clear the Taliban will roll over them as soon as we leave. If the Afghan people don't have the will to fight back against the Taliban at this point, they probably never will. Time to cut our losses and leave them to their fate. For what it's worth, I thought getting out of Afghanistan was one of the few things Trump got right.

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

BearForce2 said:

---

May 6, 2021 on Afghanistan

This is same guy who wants to teach CRT at West Point.

pic.twitter.com/EWCh1Pbx0A

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 15, 2021

The Taliban appears to have a more aggressive timeline than the general and Biden.

---

This topic is about how absolutely wrong the commander in chief of our armed forces was when telling the public what would happen during and after the withdrawal of American forces. Okaydo, Sycasey, Dajo9, and Bearister are deflecting and changing the topic to whether we should have had troops there and whether foreign wars are important. I generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan.

However, I am embarrassed by our withdrawal strategy. Perhaps we secretly intended to give Afghanistan to the Taliban in like a week while burning embassy documents, resending in troops, and emergency airlifting personnel out? Our president told the American people we left a great fighting force there to defend democracy! The Bidenists here give excuses and deflect. Are they unable to watch the OPs video? Party over common sense. Sad.

---

The one thing I think is a fair criticism is that Biden and everyone else were clearly lying about whether or not the Taliban would overrun the country. They knew that would happen. Saying otherwise was just intended to make it more politically palatable. So yes, he lied about that. I don't like that part of it; I wish more politicians would just level with the public. But I understand why he did it.

In the long run, it's more important that we get our troops out of Afghanistan, even if we know what the consequences will be. I'm also not convinced the result would be much better even with a "better" exit strategy. What's your evidence that it would be? Seems to me that despite our many decades spent training up their military (through multiple administrations), that country's feeble government was simply no match for the Taliban and would have fallen regardless.

---

As for criticizing the exit strategy, it could easily have been better as clearly evidenced by the fact we pulled troops out then sent them back to evacuate. That is clear evidence. Without more information, I can't go much farther than that which is why my posts have focused on the message communicated to the American public, which makes Biden look like a clown. Fortunately for Biden, the press is in his pocket so he won't look like too much of a clown.

You defend him by implying he is not incompetent and saying politicians lie, and you understand why he lied here. Why did he do confidently tell lies to the public in this situation? Why are you justifying it? Are you sure it's not merely because he is on your team?

---

I just said that I don't like the lying but I do like the end result of being out of Afghanistan. I'm not sure how I can make this clearer?

With Trump (and Bush) both the lying and the end result were bad.

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

BearForce2 said:

---

May 6, 2021 on Afghanistan

This is same guy who wants to teach CRT at West Point.

pic.twitter.com/EWCh1Pbx0A

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 15, 2021

The Taliban appears to have a more aggressive timeline than the general and Biden.

---

This topic is about how absolutely wrong the commander in chief of our armed forces was when telling the public what would happen during and after the withdrawal of American forces. Okaydo, Sycasey, Dajo9, and Bearister are deflecting and changing the topic to whether we should have had troops there and whether foreign wars are important. I generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan.

However, I am embarrassed by our withdrawal strategy. Perhaps we secretly intended to give Afghanistan to the Taliban in like a week while burning embassy documents, resending in troops, and emergency airlifting personnel out? Our president told the American people we left a great fighting force there to defend democracy! The Bidenists here give excuses and deflect. Are they unable to watch the OPs video? Party over common sense. Sad.

---

The one thing I think is a fair criticism is that Biden and everyone else were clearly lying about whether or not the Taliban would overrun the country. They knew that would happen. Saying otherwise was just intended to make it more politically palatable. So yes, he lied about that. I don't like that part of it; I wish more politicians would just level with the public. But I understand why he did it.

In the long run, it's more important that we get our troops out of Afghanistan, even if we know what the consequences will be. I'm also not convinced the result would be much better even with a "better" exit strategy. What's your evidence that it would be? Seems to me that despite our many decades spent training up their military (through multiple administrations), that country's feeble government was simply no match for the Taliban and would have fallen regardless.

---

As for criticizing the exit strategy, it could easily have been better as clearly evidenced by the fact we pulled troops out then sent them back to evacuate. That is clear evidence. Without more information, I can't go much farther than that which is why my posts have focused on the message communicated to the American public, which makes Biden look like a clown. Fortunately for Biden, the press is in his pocket so he won't look like too much of a clown.

You defend him by implying he is not incompetent and saying politicians lie, and you understand why he lied here. Why did he do confidently tell lies to the public in this situation? Why are you justifying it? Are you sure it's not merely because he is on your team?

---

I just said that I don't like the lying but I do like the end result of being out of Afghanistan. I'm not sure how I can make this clearer?

With Trump (and Bush) both the lying and the end result were bad.

---

Well, you said above he was neither a liar nor incompetent. Turns out now you agree he at least lied about this. Fair enough. Good day sir.

---

Not sure where I claimed that Joe Biden never lies, but okay.

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

oski003 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

---

Perhaps the armed forces and CIA knew what they were doing under Reagan? JK.

Biden ****ed up here. Plain and simple. It doesn't have anything to do with Reagan, Trump Bush, or Obama. Biden inherited a bad situation and he ****ed it up.

---

Yes I agree the administration ****ed this up. I think the question is whether it would have been possible to achieve a different outcome without maintaining our military presence indefinitely and continue to spend tens of billions per year (last I saw was $45b in 2018 but I don't know how comprehensive that is). I know this doesn't look like success, but I don't know what success would look like. I suspect very few do. The military experts on TV say that our primary purpose was anti-terrorism and not nation building and that our continuing presence wasn't necessary. I guess we will see if increased terrorism results.

Hopefully we don't screw our local allies on the ground the way Trump did to the Kurds. We absolutely can't hang people out to dry like that.

If after countless billions of dollars and 20 years of preparation, the Afghan forces you trained get routed in a week, it was never going to work out.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 15, 2021

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

---

When it comes to training the Afghan army, how much was done by the US Army, how much was done by the various state National Guard units and how much was done by "private security contractors"?

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

golden sloth said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

BearForce2 said:

---

May 6, 2021 on Afghanistan

This is same guy who wants to teach CRT at West Point.

pic.twitter.com/EWCh1Pbx0A

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 15, 2021

The Taliban appears to have a more aggressive timeline than the general and Biden.

---

This topic is about how absolutely wrong the commander in chief of our armed forces was when telling the public what would happen during and after the withdrawal of American forces. Okaydo, Sycasey, Dajo9, and Bearister are deflecting and changing the topic to whether we should have had troops there and whether foreign wars are important. I generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan.

However, I am embarrassed by our withdrawal strategy. Perhaps we secretly intended to give Afghanistan to the Taliban in like a week while burning embassy documents, resending in troops, and emergency airlifting personnel out? Our president told the American people we left a great fighting force there to defend democracy! The Bidenists here give excuses and deflect. Are they unable to watch the OPs video? Party over common sense. Sad.

---

The one thing I think is a fair criticism is that Biden and everyone else were clearly lying about whether or not the Taliban would overrun the country. They knew that would happen. Saying otherwise was just intended to make it more politically palatable. So yes, he lied about that. I don't like that part of it; I wish more politicians would just level with the public. But I understand why he did it.

In the long run, it's more important that we get our troops out of Afghanistan, even if we know what the consequences will be. I'm also not convinced the result would be much better even with a "better" exit strategy. What's your evidence that it would be? Seems to me that despite our many decades spent training up their military (through multiple administrations), that country's feeble government was simply no match for the Taliban and would have fallen regardless.

---

I've been surprised by the reaction of the Afghan people. They seem to be putting up zero fight, do they not care if the Taliban imposes their strict religious laws on them? Or maybe they just agree with the Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

---

My takeaway is that we've been propping up Afghanistan with troops and billions of dollars for the last 20 years, yet it's clear the Taliban will roll over them as soon as we leave. If the Afghan people don't have the will to fight back against the Taliban at this point, they probably never will. Time to cut our losses and leave them to their fate. For what it's worth, I thought getting out of Afghanistan was one of the few things Trump got right.

---

Completely agreed. You can only help someone or some people for so much, at some point they need to stand on their own.

Unit2Sucks said:

---

oski003 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

---

Perhaps the armed forces and CIA knew what they were doing under Reagan? JK.

Biden ****ed up here. Plain and simple. It doesn't have anything to do with Reagan, Trump Bush, or Obama. Biden inherited a bad situation and he ****ed it up.

---

Yes I agree the administration ****ed this up. I think the question is whether it would have been possible to achieve a different outcome without maintaining our military presence indefinitely and continue to spend tens of billions per year (last I saw was $45b in 2018 but I don't know how comprehensive that is). I know this doesn't look like success, but I don't know what success would look like. I suspect very few do. The military experts on TV say that our primary purpose was anti-terrorism and not nation building and that our continuing presence wasn't necessary. I guess we will see if increased terrorism results.

Hopefully we don't screw our local allies on the ground the way Trump did to the Kurds. We absolutely can't hang people out to dry like that.

If after countless billions of dollars and 20 years of preparation, the Afghan forces you trained get routed in a week, it was never going to work out.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 15, 2021

---

There's an argument that Biden and current military leaders f***ed up the timeline and underestimated how quickly the Taliban would take over. Maybe they could have done that better.

Even so, I'm not sure what a "good" exit would have looked like either. I guarantee that if we had waited longer there would have been people complaining that Biden was dragging his feet and wasting resources that way. There was going to be a mess no matter what; we're just quibbling about how big it was.

Biden's position:

Quote:

---

When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessorwhich he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. Forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. Forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choicefollow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our Forces and our allies' Forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict. I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistantwo Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.

---

I think this tweet is fairly accurate regarding the response we are seeing from a lot of people.

As those deployed overseas said years ago: “America is not at war, the military is at war. America is at the mall.“
For many Americans, now claiming to be enraged about Afghanistan is mostly performance art and a mild case of a guilty conscience. They’ll get over it. At the mall.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 15, 2021

sycasey said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

oski003 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

---

Perhaps the armed forces and CIA knew what they were doing under Reagan? JK.

Biden ****ed up here. Plain and simple. It doesn't have anything to do with Reagan, Trump Bush, or Obama. Biden inherited a bad situation and he ****ed it up.

---

Yes I agree the administration ****ed this up. I think the question is whether it would have been possible to achieve a different outcome without maintaining our military presence indefinitely and continue to spend tens of billions per year (last I saw was $45b in 2018 but I don't know how comprehensive that is). I know this doesn't look like success, but I don't know what success would look like. I suspect very few do. The military experts on TV say that our primary purpose was anti-terrorism and not nation building and that our continuing presence wasn't necessary. I guess we will see if increased terrorism results.

Hopefully we don't screw our local allies on the ground the way Trump did to the Kurds. We absolutely can't hang people out to dry like that.

If after countless billions of dollars and 20 years of preparation, the Afghan forces you trained get routed in a week, it was never going to work out.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 15, 2021

---

There's an argument that Biden and current military leaders f***ed up the timeline and underestimated how quickly the Taliban would take over. Maybe they could have done that better.

Even so, I'm not sure what a "good" exit would have looked like either. I guarantee that if we had waited longer there would have been people complaining that Biden was dragging his feet and wasting resources that way. There was going to be a mess no matter what; we're just quibbling about how big it was.

---

I can't see that it makes much difference if the Taliban takes over a week from now or a year from now. Maybe more people would have time to flee in the longer case.

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

sycasey said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

oski003 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Afghanistan has had problems forever, I'm not sure that there was ever going to be a good exit for us or the country. That doesn't mean that the way we did it was fine (starting with Trump's completely unplanned announcement) but I don't think any armchair experts are bringing any master foreign policy skills to bear on this topic. We should have taken greater efforts to prepare for this but I have no doubt that one way or the other the Taliban were going to take over the country.

A thing that puts western imperialism in perspective for me. In the first Sherlock Holmes story(1887) Watson is recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the modern tv adaptation(2010) he’s also recovering from a tour in Afghanistan. They didn’t need to update it.

— YakubinMag ✡️🇵🇸🤦🏽‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 13, 2021

I think the fact that our CIA trained the Taliban under Reagan is something that gets overlooked way too often. Rambo even worked with them in Rambo III. I'm not quite sure why the CIA did a better job training the Taliban than we did training the Afghan army, but we are where we are.

---

Perhaps the armed forces and CIA knew what they were doing under Reagan? JK.

Biden ****ed up here. Plain and simple. It doesn't have anything to do with Reagan, Trump Bush, or Obama. Biden inherited a bad situation and he ****ed it up.

---

Yes I agree the administration ****ed this up. I think the question is whether it would have been possible to achieve a different outcome without maintaining our military presence indefinitely and continue to spend tens of billions per year (last I saw was $45b in 2018 but I don't know how comprehensive that is). I know this doesn't look like success, but I don't know what success would look like. I suspect very few do. The military experts on TV say that our primary purpose was anti-terrorism and not nation building and that our continuing presence wasn't necessary. I guess we will see if increased terrorism results.

Hopefully we don't screw our local allies on the ground the way Trump did to the Kurds. We absolutely can't hang people out to dry like that.

If after countless billions of dollars and 20 years of preparation, the Afghan forces you trained get routed in a week, it was never going to work out.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 15, 2021

---

There's an argument that Biden and current military leaders f***ed up the timeline and underestimated how quickly the Taliban would take over. Maybe they could have done that better.

Even so, I'm not sure what a "good" exit would have looked like either. I guarantee that if we had waited longer there would have been people complaining that Biden was dragging his feet and wasting resources that way. There was going to be a mess no matter what; we're just quibbling about how big it was.

---

I can't see that it makes much difference if the Taliban takes over a week from now or a year from now. Maybe more people would have time to flee in the longer case.

---

That's about it.

oski003 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Biden's position:

Quote:

---

When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessorwhich he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. Forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. Forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choicefollow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our Forces and our allies' Forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict. I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistantwo Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.

---

I think this tweet is fairly accurate regarding the response we are seeing from a lot of people.

As those deployed overseas said years ago: “America is not at war, the military is at war. America is at the mall.“
For many Americans, now claiming to be enraged about Afghanistan is mostly performance art and a mild case of a guilty conscience. They’ll get over it. At the mall.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 15, 2021

---

What did the Taliban agree to in the deal cut at Camp David? What were the terms of the deal? Was it to hand the country and government to th Taliban? Was it renegotiated by Biden to do so? If so, why Biden's tough talk about the trained Afghani army protecting democracy?

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Let's assume that the Taliban aren't good faith actors and breached their deal. Would anyone support Biden going back to war?

The Afghan forces gave in immediately so it's pretty obvious there is no way to withdraw and not have this be the end result. The way it went down was ugly.