Can't get much worse than the current state, but I'm sure Jared Kushner, Mypillow, and Trump's instincts would've f'd this up too.
Afgan withdraw
- Thread starter Grayhead
- Start date
But he didn't and you are doing a terrible job of deflecting.
Or did he?
The whole advanced notice announcement of departure might have been a bad idea.
Let's hope he's trolling. I hope he's not so obtuse that he can't admit this was a shit show. When you have Trump allies, Obama allies and pretty much all of the media saying Biden ****ed this up, he obviously ****ed this up.
Sorry, but the finger pointing and assessing of ownership of this is crazy.
Do you think Trump would have better intelligence? Intel said 6 months, it took a weekend. Can't make a good plan with bad Intel (unless you are smarter than the generals).
Biden pulled the trigger but lots of US officials over the last 20 yrs loaded and aimed.
Do you think Trump would have better intelligence? Intel said 6 months, it took a weekend. Can't make a good plan with bad Intel (unless you are smarter than the generals).
Biden pulled the trigger but lots of US officials over the last 20 yrs loaded and aimed.
Nowhere in anything you've posted shows anyone asking for the withdrawal to be handled as incompetently as your president handled this. Trump wanted us out, but listened to his advisors as to not cause a tragedy like your president did. Even Obama wanted out but knew better than to do it this way. And now the administration fight amongst themselves because they can't hide how poorly this was executed.Sorry, but the finger pointing and assessing of ownership of this is crazy.
Do you think Trump would have better intelligence? Intel said 6 months, it took a weekend. Can't make a good plan with bad Intel (unless you are smarter than the generals).
Biden pulled the trigger but lots of US officials over the last 20 yrs loaded and aimed.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/17/politics/biden-afghanistan-blame-shifting/index.html
You don't seem to understand the difference between the idea of withdrawing the troops and the execution of doing so. He should have never left the air base in the middle of the night with no notice and no proper hand off. You don't need intel for that. Getting our civilians and afghan allies out first is obviously the smart thing to do. Biden had already been told to do this. These are all no brainer things to do. Execution here is key. He failed, but you can't grasp it.Sorry, but the finger pointing and assessing of ownership of this is crazy.
Do you think Trump would have better intelligence? Intel said 6 months, it took a weekend. Can't make a good plan with bad Intel (unless you are smarter than the generals).
Biden pulled the trigger but lots of US officials over the last 20 yrs loaded and aimed.
“Nah, this would have happened however it was done.” That’s what he keeps telling us.
The leader of today's Taliban was released in 2014, in a trade for the traitor Bo Bergdahl(sp) by the great Barrak Obama.
Well stated.
And Bergdahl got a slap on the wrist with no jail time.
That’s a very scary thought. our enemies(China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) will be emboldened by our caricature of a President. Our allies are losing confidence in the USA. We are now perceived as weak and vulnerable. This will not end well for the world.
Most people agree that the way they pulled out of Afgan was handled poorly. This poor decision falls on Joe Biden but let's be honest about it.. he didn't make this call. So who is the one/ones that made this decision?
Great question. The Top Dogs (Blinken, Milley, and the Austen) all are on record (and in full CYA mode) that they did not want the pull out to happen when and how it did. They said this to our brilliant strategist CIC Biden, and he overrode them all.
I guess VP Harris was the last one in the office with Biden, discussing, when he made the call to proceed....but just like the others, she is getting as far away from the decision as fast as possible. She was heard screaming in the White House yesterday "they are NOT going to pin this sh_t on ME!"
So who else is there, that would (lead Biden to) make this bungled call? Susan Rice? What is her role in the administration? Biden wanted to call and get input from Obama, but his handlers shot down this idea.
Maybe it is just as simple and outrageously stupid as Biden just actually making a gut decision all on his own, with apparently zero ability to hear and process info from his defense and foreign policy staff who know so much more about how and when to proceed (...even as woke and incompetent and bungling as these advisors have proven to be....)
are you quoting @blazers or Biden? Could be either. In his (Biden's) speech he only wanted to address the notion of withdrawal, and not the execution of it. Nothing like adding insult to injury by mucking up in a major way and then insulting our intelligence over it. Of course in that regard I could also be talking about @blazers. The rhetoric machine just keeps churning out the rhetoric.
Very predictable reaction to our inept handling of the withdrawal. We lost a lot of face in the eyes of the world.
"I guess VP Harris was the last one in the office with Biden, discussing, when he made the call to proceed..."
the idea that Kamala Harris would even be in the WH while that kind of decision-making is going on is reason to impeach her and Biden.
Our allies are terrified and rightfully so. All Trump expected was for them to pay their fair share of the financial burden for NATO. Now they see Biden has no common sense regarding foreign policy. He may rival Carter as the most inept, weak POTUS ever. The free world is scared to death right now.
The top dogs have also been wrong for 20 yrs. The execution of the decision sucked. Clearly the timing sucked. Either Biden hates Afghans and lied when he said he didn't want another Saigon or the Intel all-around has been inconsistent and shitty (like the rest of our results there in the last 20 yrs).
It is embarrassing, hopefully the lesson learned is to not nation-build in the middle east.
It's also nice to see so many repubs caring about women's rights in one of the shithole countries.
Once the Taliban take control we need to be ready to ensure that Afghan women have access to contraceptives, abortion procedures and equal pay!
why don't you surprise us once in a while and stray just a little from the party line.
it's possible that he pulled the plug on Afghanistan when he couldn't get his son a lucrative so-called 'job' with some Afghani mining operation. Or maybe he just confused the two countries of Afghanistan and Ukraine...you know they do both have funny spellings.
It's typical for a liberal bonehead to take shots at republican views on women's rights just because they don't think the government should force their employer to give them a paid week off to deal with their menstrual cycle and an assistant to help with the tampons. I don't know of any republicans, or conservatives in general, who don't think women should have the same rights as men.
Apparently it wasn't clear to you. Or did you just realize you were the only one on the planet who didn't have an issue with the execution and changed your opinion? You've got two pages of ignorant posts showing you're late to the party. Don't try to sneak through the back door like you were already here.
Timing was going to suck regardless of the actual WHEN or WHO. The execution at the airport is a mess, but the Taliban was going to take control of the country immediately (violently) regardless of who pulled the trigger or when they pulled it.
You claim 2,500 soldiers was enough to pacify the country, but violence had skyrocketed in the spring to highs since 2000's. The crumbling accelerated as soon as Trump/Pompeo signed the deal.
Afghan forces and leaders were selling their guns & equipment to Taliban starting in 2020 upon seeing "the deal" - they were being bought-out from fear or corruption.
The deal put into motion the withdrawal, in which we promised troop reduction to start in 2020, and since then the Taliban have been slowly gaining territory, buying-off locals, and biding their time.
WAPO:
"The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official."
"Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers."
If the US went back against the Trump deal, we'd have to quadruple our # soldiers and start from scratch in the war, killing more Americans for a war we can't win.
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Carter was never this inept. As a matter of fact, as I always point out when I have the opportunity, it was Carter, at the urging of his national security adviser Zbignew Nahgonnaworkhereanymore (who really hated the Sovietskis), who first started supplying the mujahideen with stinger missiles. Reagan just took the baton from him and stepped it up. Carter did some things I despised, but he did a lot of good things too. I can't think of a single thing that Biden has done that doesn't suck.
There are ways to remove our people covertly from a country, so Taliban hardly knows we are getting the US civilians and troops out... and we have sufficient weaponry / air cover to bomb them if they had violently obstructed our leaving (if they - Taliban - fired shots, blocked roadways, airports, harmed US civilians).
But Biden did none of this. Now it's just "every man and woman for yourself. Try to get to the airport, but we (the US govt / military) can't protect you." Nice!
Now, Biden / the generals are having to redeploy a lot more military to try to find a way to get the 10-11,000 US citizens out, who are largely trapped now by the Taliban. It is touch and go...it could get really messy. There is a lot of reported violence - at least against Afghans - in the last couple days by the Taliban. What are the chances Americans are spared from the Taliban barbarism?
The departure was going to be messy, but it could have been a lot more discreet, covert, supported by US military force; instead of this haphazard cut-and-run, every person fend for him/herself (with zero way to defend self from a bunch of goons who'd love to kill you).
on a video I posted, the key factor was pointed out...when Trump said something regarding our response to bullshit, it was not taken lightly by those who matter (as opposed to the anti-Trump dimwits). When Biden tries to act like we're going to really put our foot down, you can almost hear the snickering from around the globe.
if I may make a friendly suggestion...place statements like the one I bolded at the end of your post, so that we have to go ahead and read it before any credibility you might have had is destroyed.
The release of prisoners was actually built into the deal that Trump/Pompeo crafted. This was put into motion Feb 2020.
The author's credentials:
Frank Figliuzzi is an MSNBC columnist and a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. He was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is the author of "The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence."
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