Afghanistan 2021...
- Thread starter noble cane
- Start date
Would not at all be surprised if they let most out and hold a few for some very public demonstrations, knowing that there is zero chance of us going right back in once we're gone. They're already two-facing to play the media right now. Holding press conferences in Kabul about how they're they're pardoning everyone, while going door to door executing people elsewhere.
The only hope anyone in Afghanistan has is in Panjshir and that's very dim.
The only hope anyone in Afghanistan has is in Panjshir and that's very dim.
I don’t think questions would have been very constructive yesterday while the situation was still ongoing. It’s armchair quarterbacking to some degree. I do think he should take questions after the event is over.
You know that Trump would have blamed Obama for the whole fiasco if the same thing had happened during his admin, and he likely wouldn’t have even had a press conference. He would have only addressed it at a rally in front of cheering buffoons.
To me, this more of a time for something akin to Reagan’s speech after the Challenger disaster. Explain why what is happening is happening, why it’s important that we see the bigger picture instead of getting caught up in minutia. Minutia will come later. Right now they’re trying to do as much as they can and it’s important that it be done sooner rather than later. That is what the American people need to understand right now. Of course there will be questions. I’m sure there would have been questions if people had seen some of the invasions on islands in the Pacific theater during WWII as well.
I can’t imagine Trump saying “the buck stops with me” or any similar phrase accepting responsibility. It just wouldn’t happen. I vocally complained about him not saying anything like that on this board actually.
Is there a term for the act of saying things like “I accept full responsibility” while blaming everything and everyone else in the same speech? Hypocrisy and gaslighting were the only two I could come up with and neither feels like it exactly fits. Any suggestions?
Last edited:
Man, if this was his Bay of Pigs, then i hate to see his Viet Nam....
Last edited:
Good news is we have kept the airport open. Bad news is the Taliban are preventing people from getting to the airport. We have empty planes taking off…well, 7 people aboard.
www.wsj.com
Taliban Consolidate Control in Afghanistan’s Capital as Thousands Remain Stranded
The Biden administration said Kabul’s airport was open but access remained near-impossible for people struggling to flee, as the Taliban strengthened control and a political leader of the movement returned from exile.
www.wsj.com
Last edited:
I feel for the ones left behind who supported us. They pay the final price in this life.
Kennedy didn’t have much of a Vietnam. It wasn’t too much of a thing for him, at least not in the way we knew it to be later.
It's not historic considering Trump turned over the northern parts of Syria to the Turks and Erdogan who proceeded to mass slaughter the Kurds who had been allies to the US in the war against ISIS and rooting out terrorists. While we had not been there for as long as we were in Afghanistan, the entire world knew what was about to happen when Trump gave that order. And in that situation, Trump was appeasing Putin.Very good article and talks about loyalty and betrayal. I’m general against being the world police or savior of all the downtrodden. There are exceptions though when it comes to those who help you. This is historic.
Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy
Our abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, and staked their lives on us is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided.www.theatlantic.com
At what point does POTUS and his NSC determine it's time to cut from an area where the situation is no-win? We've been there for 20+ years, there wasn't an endgame in sight for Afghanistan and Dr. Strange likely didn't see a winning outcome for Afghans or the US. Every day we remained there the Taliban became more and more resolved.
And this goes way beyond W's policy and entrance into Afghanistan to root out terrorists. This goes back to the early 1980s with the Russian invasion and then Reagan propping up a resistance that would eventually lead to the Taliban fighting against it.
The current issue isn’t about the decision to leave Afghanistan. Everyone agreed we needed to get out. The problem is how we left Afghanistan. When leaving an area you maintain control of said area until your people are gone. You don’t allow your enemy to take control of the city and then try to figure out ways to get your people out. You don’t ignore the advice of your military advisers to keep enough troops in the city to hold the same until everyone had been evacuated. The current situation is a cluster to say the least and could have been largely avoided.
There are other issues with the way left the Afghan army and expectations of the same without air support, intel and other basic tech services. Why we left billions of dollars in weapons for the Taliban to use. However, those are questions for our military. I anticipate there will be many more.
Last edited:
I don't agree we should have left. I feel strongly we needed to keep a military presence there indefinitely to avoid terrorist radicals making it a base of operations against us again. We are too short sighted.
Yeah, ours is a minority position and part of it is because we've had 4 presidents frame winning as "taliban gone, Afghanistan becomes a liberal democracy." All of that was BS. I did think we could set a reasonable goal of maintaining a presence there long term supporting an ally to cement what was a real military victory, all the human rights gains, and prevent it from going back to the way it was.
Sure.. all kennedy did to prove he was "strong on communism" was send planes, tanks, patrol boats, napalm, agent orange and 16000 "advisors"... then he sanctioned the overthrow/assasination of Diem ... before he could become fully involved he was removed from office and his successor did his dirty work..
Joe and his successor still have a chance.. especially if they think that being strong on terrorism (cause we all know communism isnt a threat) will get them reelected.
I would have never given up Bagram... too strategic in relation to Iran and the region.
Kennedy inherited the "advisement" efforts from Eisenhower. In fact there was strong evidence that in June 1963 Kennedy was being advised on how to pull out of SE Asia without seeming soft on communism. The growing military complex in the US including the Joint Chiefs and contractors were not appreciative of this. After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson reversed that strategy course into full blown military action...which endeared him to the war operation folks. Johnson was a Texas hawk in that regards. The problem in Vietnam, as is the case in Afghanistan, is every time we ramped up our troop numbers, so did the other side...except you didn't know exactly who was on the other side. Both of those places also had the added conundrum of having 100s of different ethnic groups being lumped into a geopolitical boundary (see also Yugoslavia)...not all of these ethnic groups had the same political and cultural goals so it's difficult to get them to be behind a single cause. And believe it or not, there is a good portion of the world who doesn't hold the notion of democracy at the same level we do...and they don't necessarily appreciate having it rammed down their throats when we decide they should
Given the efficiency of jihadists to put shredded documents back together, i guess we should applaud the fact that they burned everything...
Having been through that for the reasons you list, we paid a steep tuition for a lesson that we didn't learn. Invading a distant country that had a geography, culture, religion, and language we didn't understand along with not being table to tell the good guys from the bad guys is a loser's game. If you do it, you can't leave without losing and eventually you'll be probably forced out anyway.
In VN we took over from the French who were being driven out as part of decolonization movements that started at the end of WW2. We were just a replacement colonizer. We were never going to 'win' over the population. Why do it? The Red scare/dominoes, even though the VN had been pushing back against the Chinese for centuries.
In VN we took over from the French who were being driven out as part of decolonization movements that started at the end of WW2. We were just a replacement colonizer. We were never going to 'win' over the population. Why do it? The Red scare/dominoes, even though the VN had been pushing back against the Chinese for centuries.
The exit out is Morally and Strategically a disaster.
Need to take care of those who helped us for up to 20 years.
Unless of course they have a half a milllion $ to buy one of his sons fingerpaintings...
Women still love him. does he get a pass from metoo, because he's dead or a democrat?
Very little question now that there will be Americans left in Afghanistan. My guess is some will never be accounted for
As many appeals to sympathy as veterans want to make, it doesn’t excuse the fact that there isn’t a legitimate reason for either of our nations to be in Afghanistan. He asks for “patience” with I nation building process there akin to what we had in SK. The logistics of SK were completely different. I would ask him… what did the British appetite for military “patience” do for many of their dominions throughout the years? Heck, Britain has been in Afghanistan 3 times and the problems we’re seeing with arbitrary boundaries between Pakistan and Afghanistan are remnants of their mistakes hundreds of years ago.
I mean you can ignore the fact that he publicly bitch slapped Joe Biden to the approval of the entire british house of commons if you want to. But to me that's pretty embarrassing for an American president. Donald Trump's unseriousness and general ignorance damaged American reputation badly, but I'm not sure if it will hold a candle to what this Afghanistan pull-out and every decision made since it started is going to do. NATO allies are calling it the biggest foreign policy disaster since NATO's founding.
And you don't even believe your first sentence. Reasonable people can disagree on whether we should be there, but the legitimate reasons for being there are obvious this week and will be even more obvious in the years to come.
Last edited:
No. There are not legitimate reasons to be there anymore than there are legitimate reasons to invade Russia, China, NK, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, or Vietnam or half of Africa. The only legitimate reason we had to be there was a Saudi Arabian man who was killed in Pakistan 10 years ago.
I do believe it. Evil happens in the world. The people you’re “helping” have to want your help. (Unless the oppressive regime you’re dealing with has continually showed imperialistic / expansionist tendencies and has attacked the US or an ally a-la Japan / Germany)
A bit odd. The people handing the toddler up don’t seem that distraught after he’s taken. I would expect them to at least have some emotion. I wonder if maybe the parents were already over the wall? Complete speculation.
Similar threads
