Biden mucked it up.....

[NatMorton]

Aren't we all long used to endless cowardly displays of presidential abdication of accountability by now? The bar is so low at this point that who cares what Biden does? He's still better than the other guy.

I care.

 

[NatMorton]

What we do know is this: Trump wanted out, and he was willing to do so quite summarily. Who knows how that would have gone if the generals had not talked him out of it.

See post #25.

 

[jnug]

Thank you for reminding us of a real world example of how Biden can change Trump foreign policy when he believes it's the right thing to do. (And thank you for, consequently, helping prove my point that blaming the Trump agreement in this matter was complete BS.)

Ah Trump ripped up the JCPOA. But I guess that does not count in your world, whichever world that is.

Biden had every right to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and if you have not noticed, half the country is on fire, 1/3 of it is in drought. So it might be time to stop the Climate Change Denial BS. Its not a great argument to make these days.

 

[MAGAnificent]

What we do know is this: Trump wanted out, and he was willing to do so quite summarily. Who knows how that would have gone if the generals had not talked him out of it.

Trump would have at least been prepared for a safe evacuation and would have held onto the Bagram base until it was completed.

 

[brothern]

And in others statements blaming Trump and blaming the Afghanis. Which statements should we believe are how he feels about it?

You did not watch the speech. Here is the transcript,

I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces. That’s why we’re still there. We were clear-eyed about the risks, we planned for every contingency. But, I always promised the American people that I will be straight with you. The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.

So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometime without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

To distill that even further, sequentially what Biden said was,

1. I take full responsibility for the decision.
2. The situation deteriorated faster than I expected, because the political leaders and military gave up.
3. The fact that they gave up confirms to me that my decision was correct.

The speech wasn't an abdication or shifting blame on anyone. In many words Biden was literally saying, "I was right and I told you so."

 

[NatMorton]

Ah Trump ripped up the JCPOA. But I guess that does not count in your world, whichever world that is.

Biden had every right to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and if you have not noticed, half the country is on fire, 1/3 of it is in drought. So it might be time to stop the Climate Change Denial BS. Its not a great argument to make these days.

On no, this looks like a Biden blunder. Quick, everyone, talk about Trump, talk about climate change, talk about George Bush, talk about ... about ... anything! But my God, we've got to move the narrative off of Joe!!!

 

[jnug]

Trump would have at least been prepared for a safe evacuation and would have held onto the Bagram base until it was completed.

Hey its not obvious that a guy that rides hookers raw dog would be prepared to do anything safely.

 

[SoCal]

Let’s hope he was telling the truth, because if he wasn’t, we will learn it soon enough. I feel so sad for what the women and girls of the nation will have to go through now.

He blew the exit, I feel for the women too, but that's not on Biden's head...

 

[jnug]

On no, this looks like a Biden blunder. Quick, everyone, talk about Trump, talk about climate change, talk about George Bush, talk about ... about ... anything! But my God, we've got to move the narrative off of Joe!!!

You're the guy that said Biden has shown little reluctance with regard to Trump era orders. This is an International agreement with a non-nation state and the only international agreement Biden has reversed is the Trump Paris Accord order.

 

[Acadia]

Give me a break. Biden should have and Trump would have told the Afghan govt that these were his people and he was obligated to protect them. because Trump has a spine he would have told them to go to hell. Evaacuation of my people tarts when i say so.

The same agreement with Trump is not perceived the same as with Biden, obviously. The Taliban sees Biden as the old, doddering man he is.

 

[lwf]

I care.

How politically convenient to all of a sudden pretend that it matters if a president refuses to take accountability. Maybe Biden should blame conservatives and the conservative media for always being on his case and treating him unfairly? Maybe it's ultimately their fault the Taliban retook the country?

Or maybe this was always going to happen as soon as American left? Whomever won the election in 2020 was going to own the political blowback from this final withdrawal. Trump set a date of May to have all Americans out of Afghanistan. Trump and the Republicans were claiming Biden wasn't moving fast enough to get American troops out. Now that it's finally done, they're blaming the consequences of withdrawal on Biden? How does that work, exactly? What should he have done differently? What would Trump have done differently if we all had trusted him to accomplish the same goal of getting out of Afghanistan and voted for him in 2020? And what would Trump's excuse have been if the same thing happened?

 

[lwf]

Trump would have at least been prepared for a safe evacuation and would have held onto the Bagram base until it was completed.

The arbitrary May deadline and Trump's inability to plan ahead strongly argues against this. Where is Trump's plan for the withdrawal, and how does it differ from Biden's aside from being much more rapid?

Maybe we don't know what Trump's plan was because no plan ever existed?

 

[MAGAnificent]

The arbitrary May deadline and Trump's inability to plan ahead strongly argues against this. Where is Trump's plan for the withdrawal, and how does it differ from Biden's aside from being much more rapid?

Maybe we don't know what Trump's plan was because no plan ever existed?

In Trump's plan, the withdrawal date was conditional to conditions on the ground. His goal was certainly withdrawal,.. however the timeline was not written in stone.

 

[MAGAnificent]

Hey its not obvious that a guy that rides hookers raw dog would be prepared to do anything safely.

That's not an intelligent response. It's an attempted wind up.

 

[Cameron]

Thank you for reminding us of a real world example of how Biden can change Trump foreign policy when he believes it's the right thing to do. (And thank you for, consequently, helping prove my point that blaming the Trump agreement in this matter was complete BS.)

Biden reentered the Paris Agreement after Trump backed out of it. Biden actually restored the US's word on that one. Going back on a prior POTUS's international commitment is pretty unusual.

I'm not entirely clear on the terms of the Trump-Taliban deal, but my vague understanding based on reports is that the US promised to withdraw it's forces by May 1, 2020, and in return the Taliban promised to ceasefire against Americans and sever ties to terrorist groups. If Biden were to breach then the Taliban certainly could also breach. He had already moved the date back twice to August 31. As the US withdrew the Taliban swept in.

I think the mistake here was in not getting out whoever we intended to get out before this point in an organized manner.

 

[MAGAnificent]

Biden reentered the Paris Agreement after Trump backed out of it. Biden actually restored the US's word on that one. Going back on a prior POTUS's international commitment is pretty unusual.

We never should have been in the Paris Agreement to begin with. Without advice and consent from Congress, our involvement in that accord had no real legal standing, without ratification from the Senate. Obama knew it would never be ratified. That's why he went rogue and signed it on his own.

 

[MrWonka]

Here is what should have happened: pretty much anybody could have foreseen the manner in which the Taliban quickly took over

Really? Then why didn't Trump do this in any of the last four years?

 

[pocket aces]

Give me a break. Biden should have and Trump would have told the Afghan govt that these were his people and he was obligated to protect them. because Trump has a spine he would have told them to go to hell. Evaacuation of my people tarts when i say so.

As usual you spout nothing but bullshit. Trump was punked by the Taliban. It's too bad the cultists can't see it.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Biden addressed it in the speech.

First, the Afghanistan government refused to permit or allow the US military to begin large scale evacuations. Their argument was that the evacuation would cause a panic and tip the odds to the Taliban even further than what they were already.

Second, a number of SIV eligible Afghans simply refused to leave.

The SIV eligibles that refused to leave were still holding out hope - - just as so many in our military and at DoD, that things would go smoothly.
Sorry, but I think just might be a position favored mostly by people who are slightly higher on the totem pole.
I am not clairvoyant, nor do I have an inside line to the type of people these Afghan SIV refuseniks were, but my instinct tells me that they felt they had the luxury of time.
Scratch the surface of the typical Afghan refugee, maybe an ordinary farmer or someone who just runs a stall in the market, and I bet they do NOT feel they have the luxury of time.
And that's what tells me that the refuseniks may be part of an upper middle class.

There's something else.
When my paternal grandfather smuggled his wife out of Germany to live in the London Underground, and when he smuggled his only son, my father, to New York, he too felt he had the luxury of time.
After all, he said, "The Gestapo won't touch me, I am the banker to the Rothschilds, I am too important."



He was wrong, and he paid for his mistake with his entire fortune, ransomed out after two and a half years of almost daily beatings.
He finally ransomed himself out to the tune of twenty-five million Marks in GOLD, worth some 430 million dollars today.
And he arrived in America a broken man, nearly blind and almost deaf, and barely able to walk.
And his route to America took many years because our own government wasn't eager to take Jewish refugees after the war started.
He spent several years in London, more years in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and only arrived finally in 1949.

He thought he had the luxury of time like so many who are under siege.
And I think it is a pattern of thinking common to people who are normally blessed with good fortune and/or safer circumstances.
Those people clinging to our military aircraft at the airport never held any such delusions.

 

[phoenix2020]

I don't think there was much Biden or America in general could have done differently. If we were there in hopes of setting up a sustaining Western style democracy with strong individual freedoms, regardless of how ill-advised that was, removing its most ardent advocates from the country would have dashed those hopes, no matter how slim. "We're leaving and your country is going to #$@$! after we're gone, better get out now!" would have been much worse than what is currently happening.

I found Biden's speech reasonably effective; his point that we spent a trillion+ $ and two decades to train hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers who ditched their uniforms without a fight in three days was pretty darn compelling - if that's how far they're willing to go, then they are not ready for our style of governance.

That said, there was no reason we couldn't have maintained a strong peacekeeping force for a month in Kabul, with security for the city borders, airport etc. so that if things did go as they have, at least there would have been some orderly contingencies for the civilians who will be hardest hit by this. That there weren't is incredibly sad.

I find the deflections vis-a-vis Trump to be silly and irritating. Of course he would have done worse - he's a buffoon, a grifter, a liar and has terrible judgment. However it wasn't his job to organize the withdrawal this summer; that job fell to his replacement, the new CiC, and while Trump would have botched it like everything else he touched, I was expecting more of Biden.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

Question: If you're the President, and you've received bad intelligence (As was possibly the case) and bad planning (as was definitely the case), who do you fire if you are so inclined?

 

[ataraxia]

Let’s hope he was telling the truth, because if he wasn’t, we will learn it soon enough. I feel so sad for what the women and girls of the nation will have to go through now.

They are the ones raising their men to do this stuff. The culture teaches them that anything else means you are not a good and modest woman.

I suspect it is the same mindset that leads a woman like Michele Bachmann, who wanted to run for the presidency of the country, to say this about how she is a “good woman”:

““My husband said ‘Now you need to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.’ Tax law! I hate taxes—why should I go and do something like that?” she told the audience. “But the Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.”

Bachmann said she never had taken a tax course, “never had a desire for it,” but “I was going to be faithful to what I felt God was calling me to do through my husband.” Later, when the opportunity to run for Congress arose, “my husband said, ‘You need to do this,’ and I wasn’t so sure.” She became sure two days later, after praying and fasting with her husband.”

The Submissive Michele Bachmann

The lawmaker follows the biblical injunction that women should obey their husbands. Is that problem?

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[noonereal]

Here is what should have happened: pretty much anybody could have foreseen the manner in which the Taliban quickly took over, and Biden should have had “freedom flights” for the Afghanistanis who worked with Americans going for TWO OR THREE MONTHS in order to move tens of thousands out of harms way instead of waiting until almost the very last minute. There is no way that so many of them can now get to the airport and they will be left to the “mercies” (not!) of the Taliban. Biden mucked it up good and there is no way that he can begin to explain that.

I agree and yet you have to grade him above Bush, Obama and Trump who did not have the balls to pull out.

 

[Craig234]

I'm not entirely clear on the terms of the Trump-Taliban deal

trump agreed to withdraw all US forces and give them the country. They agreed to say they were investigating Hunter Biden.

 

[Hamish Howl]

Biden addressed it in the speech.

First, the Afghanistan government refused to permit or allow the US military to begin large scale evacuations. Their argument was that the evacuation would cause a panic and tip the odds to the Taliban even further than what they were already.

Second, a number of SIV eligible Afghans simply refused to leave.

I am unsure why we'd give a shit.