Afghanistan 2021...
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Most reasonable people understood from the outset that the Biden Admin royally screwed up the Afghan exit. One of the problems when the guy in charged is cognitive limited. I assume changes have been made to account for this in times of crisis….at least I hope
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I thought it was ridiculous that we didn't keep 2500 there until we evacuated completely. And I didn't even look into how useless HKIA was compared to Bagram. If I had known how inadequate HKIA was, I certainly would have been much more irritated that we didn't keep 2500 there. Many people died so Biden and his administration could 'say' unequivocally they were keeping the schedule of a complete evacuation. I wouldn't have been opposed to still having 2500 there today, if we could have done it safely. It pales next to the 130,000 we had there at full strength.
Could have been this.
“You’re Telling Me That Thing Is Forged?”: The Inside Story of How Trump’s “Body Guy” Tried and Failed to Order a Massive Military Withdrawal
In an excerpt from his new book, Tired of Winning, Jonathan Karl reveals how officials were stunned when a presidential directive pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Somalia landed on their desk. Of course, they’d later learn that it wasn’t exactly Trump’s idea.
In
I can't stand listening to this BS. I feel for this guy. He has lost everything. He friends, his arms and his way of life.
Unfortunately, war is awful.
It was chaotic.
The country collapsed. The Trump admin negotiated the handover without the aghan government in Doha. That is outrageous.
3 years into Trump 50 American troops had died in aghanistan? Now, no more die.
Bad things happen in war. WTF did you think would happen when the ANA collapsed and what made you think it wasn't going to happen when the government was kept out.
He offers no alternatives. He doesn't speak Pashtun. He doesn't speak Pharsi. Were we supposed to stay and have it out with the Taliban and lose more troops?
At this point, what was the strategic interest in staying? He had none.
I can't stand listening to this BS. I feel for this guy. He has lost everything. He friends, his arms and his way of life.
Unfortunately, war is awful.
It was chaotic.
The country collapsed. The Trump admin negotiated the handover without the aghan government in Doha. That is outrageous.
3 years into Trump 50 American troops had died in aghanistan? Now, no more die.
Bad things happen in war. WTF did you think would happen when the ANA collapsed and what made you think it wasn't going to happen when the government was kept out.
He offers no alternatives. He doesn't speak Pashtun. He doesn't speak Pharsi. Were we supposed to stay and have it out with the Taliban and lose more troops?
At this point, what was the strategic interest in staying? He had none.
I think we all agree it was time to get out. The way we withdrew was the problem. Not having enough troops to secure a safe and orderly evacuation was a horrific miscalculation as was relying on the Afghan forces to hold the Taliban back during the withdrawal. We were warned they were unreliable and chose to ignore said warnings. Leaving those people behind who assisted us over there was also a poor decision. We knew they would be tortured and killed once we left. We didn’t care. Will make it harder to secure assistance from the populous next go around.
Should the DOD authorized the sniper to take out the bomber who murdered 13 U.S. servicemen….yes. Hindsight is easy though. Not sure why that decision was made. Turned out to have been wrong.
And we chose the wrong place to leave from. There was probably political pressure to leave some of the Afghani's because a certain wing of the Republican party would have had a problem with 'all these afghani refugees we took in'.
It was really an odd decision. Here’s an article from foreignpolicy.com. Fairly good analysis.
Afghanistan Was a Predictable, Preventable Disaster
On the sad anniversary of the chaotic U.S. pullout, Afghanistan is once again primed for terror.
foreignpolicy.com
Not going to argue there re the Pubs. However, many of those people left behind simply couldn’t get to the airport in time. The speed at which the Taliban retook territory was something we hadn’t properly planned and appeared to catch us off guard. If the Biden Admin left those people behind to be killed and tortured due to Pub pressure than all involved should be publicly called out. It wasn’t right.Yes I edited it after you(@lawpoke87 ) posted a like. You might go back and look at what I added.
There were many who were not supposed to go to the airport, they weren't given asylum. My afghani friend who was given asylum, had a father who was a general in the afghani army. He has been on the run ever since the pull out. He is in the hills of Afghanistan, and stays anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months in any one place, constantly running. He was one of many who were never offered asylum.
Shameful. If we’re going to ask people there to assist us and they follow through on their commitment we have an obligation to take care of them once we decided to leave. This isn’t about politics. This is about doing what’s right. What’s moral. Hopefully we make the effort and get him and people like him out of that area to the U.S.
I don’t agree it was time to get out. Even for people who don’t care about the humanitarian aspect, there were at least as many strategic reasons to maintain a presence there as there is anywhere else in the world, particularly considering who our top geopolitical enemy is now. I can agree to disagree with the paleocons though. It’s the people who suggest any opposition to immigration makes you a heartless racist and any opposition to abortion means you hate women, and at the same time argued in favor of abandoning millions of little girls to lives as sex slaves that are truly disgusting to me. The venn diagram of people taking those two positions is almost a perfect circle.
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Me neither.
I fully expect another terrorist incident to hit us at some point that was planned in a Taliban protected area of Afghanistan. They are an atrocious group.
We would need to know more. Plenty of people over there who fight for money. And change sides quickly. Im not sure everyone in that line of work needs to be walking around the shopping malls of Dallas. Whether they helped us out of convenience or profit or lust to kill common enemies or not. Someone that prominent must have surely been vetted in advance and found to be a person of concern.
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Seeing how it's a career military family, father a long time general, and 2 out of 3 male children are in the army as well, I kind of think it's a legit family. But you are missing the fact that my friend is here. So the friend who was a soldier is here, but not the father who was a general. Any more questions you want to pose.
I get it. Better than you might imagine. That was an extremely complex conflict with multiple over lapping allegiances. Guys on our side, inside their military and out, often times weren't always on our side. And if you compromise yourself, the national security of the United States isnt particularly interested in the reasons why or what else you might have done to help us. Assuming he was vetted and wasn't extended a visa, and that's a big if, there are often reasons why, even unknown to their patriotic and loyal sons. Biden isnt to blame for everything. Often times people are to blame for their situation, regardless of their noble intentions. You can't automatically make the romantic leap that Hollywood wants to put forward that everyone who helped us over there deserves to be brought over here and that none of them are a security risk once they arrive. Many if not most deserve a chance to live their lives in peace in this country, even those who have no aspirations of ever self-identifying as an American. But not all. We've got good people doing good work in that area. If someone like an Afghani army general wasn't cleared to enter, I would not be asking what mistakes were made in not getting him in, I would be wondering what mistakes he made so that he could not be included.
You act as if we gave asylum only to those who deserved it, and the rest we left. From the # of people we left over there, that ostensibly is not true. I realize there are security risks for bringing everyone, and we can't do that. That is not to say that those are the only ones we left over there. My friend knows of several who were left over there whose lives are at extreme risk, some of which are already dead now, and a number of which are on the run like his father.
The point of me telling his story was to honor those who were left behind that shouldn't have been. Of course he won't know every individual's full story, and have absolute knowledge of who should have been brought over, and who should not. But that he and his friends in the army, several of which I know, say that there is a great many of them who should have been brought,(whether his father is one of those or not) and does not change the fact that out of those great many, several should have been given asylum.
It will affect our need for assistance over there in the future. It also might even affect those in another country who remember how we left there. We all already know about the issue that some over there when vetted, would not be allowed to come here because of problems in their history. You are not telling us anything new. But you pointing out reasons why these specific individuals may not have been offered asylum seems like an excuse to justify actions over there.
As a follow up and example, not everyone serving in the United States military is loyal to the United States. And not everyone serving in allied foreign militaries have agendas aligned with the United States such that their entry into the United States, without strict monitoring, is appropriate. Not every father has the same allegiances as his sons. Granted, this example is extreme, but it demonstrates my point.
Hussein Aidid immigrated to the United States when he was 17 years old. After he graduated from Covina High School outside of Los Angeles, he joined the military. He was a combat veteran of the First Gulf War serving in the United States Marine Corps. His Marine Corps service also included operations related to Operation Restore Hope, the Bush Administration's efforts to secure food for the population of Somalia that was being impounded by war lords to entice men to join their gangs.
In 1993, after Hussein had left the country with other US Marines, his father, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, seized control of Somalia after successfully destabilizing the country through tactics which included obstructing the humanitarian aid that his son was trying to secure for his country. If you are wondering why the US military had a son serving in a force that was invading a country partly controlled by his father, incredibly, Aidid was the only member of the United States Armed Forces that spoke Somali at the time and was deemed mission critical.
He became a naturalized U.S. Citizen not long after.
Mohammed Farrah Aidid was the leader of Somalia on 3 October 1993 when he personally ordered attacks on U.S. military personnel, mainly Delta Force operators and United States Army Rangers, so called Task Force Ranger, in retaliation for U.S. military actions authorized by President Clinton that resulted in the deaths of several of his followers. These events were dramatized in the book and film called "Black Hawk Down."
In 1996, Hussein Aidid left the United States to return to his native country of Somalia, where he assumed leadership of the portions of the country controlled by his father, after his father had been killed by a rival faction. This was a promotion from his $9 an hour job in California and somewhat complicated by the fact he was still a reservist in the Marines. It didn't go well. At times he cooperated with western nations like the United States, but also authorized military and paramilitary actions against rivals against the interests of the United States. He eventually resigned and renounced control of his portions of Somalia in support of peace. He fled to Eritrea and has engaged various lobbying firms in the US to assist him with garnering enough international support to return to Somalia as their elected leader.
Son was not the same as the father. Some could reasonably suggest that in the end, neither was loyal to the United States, even if one was appropriate to enter and remain and even serve in our military. Reasonable people making risk assessments that impact the national security of this country could conclude your friend, like Hussein, could be an appropriate person to admit as a refugee on humanitarian or propaganda grounds. That does not immediately presume that his father is similarly suitable.
Hussein Aidid immigrated to the United States when he was 17 years old. After he graduated from Covina High School outside of Los Angeles, he joined the military. He was a combat veteran of the First Gulf War serving in the United States Marine Corps. His Marine Corps service also included operations related to Operation Restore Hope, the Bush Administration's efforts to secure food for the population of Somalia that was being impounded by war lords to entice men to join their gangs.
In 1993, after Hussein had left the country with other US Marines, his father, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, seized control of Somalia after successfully destabilizing the country through tactics which included obstructing the humanitarian aid that his son was trying to secure for his country. If you are wondering why the US military had a son serving in a force that was invading a country partly controlled by his father, incredibly, Aidid was the only member of the United States Armed Forces that spoke Somali at the time and was deemed mission critical.
He became a naturalized U.S. Citizen not long after.
Mohammed Farrah Aidid was the leader of Somalia on 3 October 1993 when he personally ordered attacks on U.S. military personnel, mainly Delta Force operators and United States Army Rangers, so called Task Force Ranger, in retaliation for U.S. military actions authorized by President Clinton that resulted in the deaths of several of his followers. These events were dramatized in the book and film called "Black Hawk Down."
In 1996, Hussein Aidid left the United States to return to his native country of Somalia, where he assumed leadership of the portions of the country controlled by his father, after his father had been killed by a rival faction. This was a promotion from his $9 an hour job in California and somewhat complicated by the fact he was still a reservist in the Marines. It didn't go well. At times he cooperated with western nations like the United States, but also authorized military and paramilitary actions against rivals against the interests of the United States. He eventually resigned and renounced control of his portions of Somalia in support of peace. He fled to Eritrea and has engaged various lobbying firms in the US to assist him with garnering enough international support to return to Somalia as their elected leader.
Son was not the same as the father. Some could reasonably suggest that in the end, neither was loyal to the United States, even if one was appropriate to enter and remain and even serve in our military. Reasonable people making risk assessments that impact the national security of this country could conclude your friend, like Hussein, could be an appropriate person to admit as a refugee on humanitarian or propaganda grounds. That does not immediately presume that his father is similarly suitable.
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