Biden's Biggest Blunder

Quote: odiousgambit

Jack Keane calls it on June 25th

The contractors want to stay in Afghanistan to work on the airplanes? Somehow I suspect it’s more about premium pay and or benefits we’ve been shelling out than sense of duty.

Quote: rxwine

The contractors want to stay in Afghanistan to work on the airplanes? Somehow I suspect it’s more about premium pay and or benefits we’ve been shelling out than sense of duty.

that makes a difference?

look, I tend to support any president who wants to get us out of these places. Should have happened maybe 18 years ago. If you do it in a stupid way, though, then people are going to notice it was stupid

Quote: odiousgambit

look, I tend to support any president who wants to get us out of these places. Should have happened maybe 18 years ago. If you do it in a stupid way, though, then people are going to notice it was stupid

What was stupid about it
No matter how you handle it, there will be a power vacuum to be filled
There really is no way to get out and not leave a mess behind

Quote: odiousgambit

that makes a difference?

The whole affair is a ROI calculation. Unless you think we primarily went in to give the Afghans a democratic government. Do we try to control terrorists without being in every country? Sure. We already do that. If bin Laden hadn't been persona non grata in Saudi Arabia, he could have just as easily organized that attack there. Heck, he could have planned the whole thing off a boat in Tahiti.

Quote:

look, I tend to support any president who wants to get us out of these places. Should have happened maybe 18 years ago. If you do it in a stupid way, though, then people are going to notice it was stupid

Not sure if it is as stupid as people are making it out to be.

One of the complaints was telegraphing the exact time of the exit. Biden went early, so he satisfied that requirement.

Apparently they have been moving and preparing a core group out of Afghans. According to the administration the Afghan government didn't want him making big movements of personnel early. The idea was not to tip off the Taliban. As we can see, it didn't matter anyway.

Quote: terapined

What was stupid about it

How much evidence do you need? were you ready to say when the Vietnamese were clinging to the last helicopters was a sure sign we left there in a stupid way, but the similar stuff here we see isn't? I wanted us out of Vietnam. I want us out of Afghanistan. I don't want to do it in a stupid way. Are we unable to learn anything?

Quote:

No matter how you handle it, there will be a power vacuum to be filled
There really is no way to get out and not leave a mess behind

what we are seeing is indefensible though. And as we can see, there were people telling Biden and his people they were messing up. They ignored that. They own this.

Quote: odiousgambit

They own this.

Yawn
Its a clusterf**k that nobody really cares about
The conservative drive by media is furious and making lots of noise
Is the base? Hardly. Their minds are on masks and being controlled by Bill Gates via the vaccine
They dont give a crap about refugees.
I care. Lets bring them in. I'm for for that. Accepting refugees.
Do conservatives want to accept refugees or go back into Afghanistan.
I dont think conservatives want either, they just want to whine with no real solutions.
Afghanistan is so far down the list of issues Americans care about
I think I'll yawn again
Wake me up when conservatives start marching on DC due to Afghanistan.

We can apply sanctions on Afghanistan with or without a Taliban deal. But I don't see how we can enforce a deal to hold them to in a city like Kabul without occupying the city. And we can't scare them with just threats if we don't actually attack. And they aren't going to stand out in the open to let us do that. So, you have a shoot up a city of millions from the air.

OR we should have just stayed there. You can't save the place when you leave. I don't see a viable choice to keep them safe without occupation. So complaining that it's bad for the Afghans, then plan to stay.

Quote: AZDuffman

Where on earth do you get that idea? Islam is about no freedoms and the government being all-powerful.

If anything, it most represents global warming believers. Cannot question the belief and must conform government to it.

Yeah, he said, “Right wing,” already.

Biden approval rating plummeting. I guess some people do care. I agree with Trump/Biden decision to remove all troops. Just ALL the experts, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican ALL agree the way he did it was a gross error.

I, like many on this forum, have mixed feelings. The thought of millions of women who have experienced freedoms now essentially being property of their males is abhorrent. But I am not sure if it is the right thing to do, which is to use our military might, to keep them free. I guess there are hundreds of millions of women oppressed in the name of Islam, what difference goes adding another 10 million or do?

Don't blame Biden! This is one of Ron Paul's better pieces lately.

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2021/08/16/kabul-has-fallen-but-dont-blame-biden/

"The rush is on now to find somebody to blame for the chaos in Afghanistan. Many of the "experts" doing the finger-pointing are the ones most to blame. Politicians and pundits who played cheerleader for this war for two decades are now rushing to blame President Biden for finally getting the US out. Where were they when succeeding presidents continued to add troops and expand the mission in Afghanistan?"

"The generals and other high-ranking military officers lied to their commander-in-chief and to the American people for years about progress in Afghanistan. The same is true for the US intelligence agencies. Unless there is a major purge of those who lied and misled, we can count on these disasters to continue until the last US dollar goes up in smoke."


Let's hope there are no IED builders on these planes, or we can expect "Blowback" of epic proportions.