‘This Is Not Saigon. This Is Worse Than Saigon.’

[autigeremt 6,644]

5 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Bro, its been that way for 18 years or more. I know plenty of Vets on disability after this war. We should have left by 2003 or 2004 at the latest. 

It doesn't change the reality. I agree with you btw! Iraq should have never happened and we should have hit hard and left in Afghanistan. 

[AUDub 11,153]

27 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

No, we are not retaking it. I dont think at all, But it would have eliminated the huge crowds that we see at the Kabul Airport.

Again, problem is actually getting the people to Bagram. We can't secure the highway without a massive show of force and the amount of people we could ferry via helicopter would hardly make a dent in the crowds in Kabul.

[AUDub 11,153]

21 minutes ago, autigeremt said:

It doesn't change the reality.

So how would you have changed the reality?

[AU9377 4,967]

On 8/23/2021 at 11:34 AM, AuburnNTexas said:

Going well people hanging onto an airplane and falling to their death. People being beaten trying to get to the airport having to bring in 6000 troops because there was no initial plan for an evacuation. They have had plenty to do after Trump like the Border, Inflation, etc. They ignored those things because they didn't want to make Biden look bad. This was so bad they couldn't ignore it. Finally Biden is getting some honest coverage and you are complaining about that. Five minutes after he finally has a few Press conferences his own people are correcting what he said, because to be honest he is not all there.

I honestly believe that when this is done, Biden will get a lot of credit from the average voter.  We are on track to evacuate 100,000 Afghan citizens in addition to every American there.  How many is enough?  I believe today more than ever that there are enough Afghans being evacuated to push back the Taliban if they wanted.  We don't owe everyone in sandals a new life in America. There has to be a cut off.

[AUDub 11,153]

1 hour ago, AU9377 said:

I honestly believe that when this is done, Biden will get a lot of credit from the average voter.  We are on track to evacuate 100,000 Afghan citizens in addition to every American there. 

In the long run, maybe. In the short term it does sting and may even do so as late as the mid-terms. 

But if anything I'm happy a politician is taking it on the chin politically and not wavering over the popular sentiment of the moment. 

1 hour ago, AU9377 said:

How many is enough?  I believe today more than ever that there are enough Afghans being evacuated to push back the Taliban if they wanted.  We don't owe everyone in sandals a new life in America. There has to be a cut off.

This is one of the most unfortunate things that's going to come of this, but that s*** sandwich was baked 20 years ago when we decided to occupy and nation-build. We can't effectively evacuate everyone no matter how hard we try. Some deserving people are going to be left behind.

It's awful, but unless we plan to maintain a military presence there in perpetuity, then it's inevitable. 

[AUDub 11,153]

 

[AUFAN78 3,911]

17 hours ago, AUDub said:

Hey that ******* sucks but you can't really reason with the desperate at all. 

 We had contingencies in place. Dated June 15th. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-speeds-visas-vulnerable-afghans-pullout-looms-congress-wants-more-2021-06-15/

It's a cluster**** because everything collapsed so damn fast, but after the Afghan army unexpectedly surrendered the entire country to the Taliban in 9 days we have evacuated roughly 1 out of every 800 people in Afghanistan with ZERO US CASUALTIES. 

Whether you want to admit it or not the ongoing evacuation is going very well. 

Alright, wingnut.

This was never going to be pretty. There was literally no way to make it pretty. Biden is taking it on the chin but the people dishing the punches either didn't want to withdraw in the first place or are too stupid to realize they're being hoodwinked by a bad narrative. 

This is simply untrue. You are quoting men whose only fighting experience was with the girl next door when they tried to steal her Barbie and she kicked their ass. 

Consult real intel and real soldiers handling the logistics and stop with this sissy boy crap.

There was a plan conceived in 2020 to evacuate all but a few, relatively speaking and that plan was given to the Biden admin. His admin dumped it. 

This withdrawal is being handled poorly as noted by actual military personnel. No amount of Barbie thieves should change your mind. 

[AUDub 11,153]

5 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

This is simply untrue. You are quoting men whose only fighting experience was with the girl next door when they tried to steal her Barbie and she kicked their ass. 

Consult real intel and real soldiers handling the logistics and stop with this sissy boy crap.

There was a plan conceived in 2020 to evacuate all but a few, relatively speaking and that plan was given to the Biden admin. His admin dumped it. 

This withdrawal is being handled poorly as noted by actual military personnel. No amount of Barbie thieves should change your mind. 

Oh you guys just gonna start making s*** up now? Awesome. 

[AUFAN78 3,911]

2 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Oh you guys just gonna start making s*** up now? Awesome. 

Ben the Barbie thief apologist. Nice ring.

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16 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

Ben the Barbie thief apologist. Nice ring.

This is the serious forum, 78. Conduct yourself accordingly. 

[AUDub 11,153]

No takers?

16 hours ago, AUDub said:

Let's get down to brass tacks. What would all of you guys that are suddenly foreign policy experts have done differently? 

 

[AUFAN78 3,911]

8 minutes ago, AUDub said:

No takers?

 

Follow intel plan submitted to you during transition or create a new plan with intel and logistical personnel taking the lead. Remove the bureaucrats from planning process. 

Had that happened we would not have abandoned BAFB and evacuations would be near complete with only a small contingency of critical personnel remaining.

[DKW 86 7,426]

8 hours ago, AUDub said:

Again, problem is actually getting the people to Bagram. We can't secure the highway without a massive show of force and the amount of people we could ferry via helicopter would hardly make a dent in the crowds in Kabul.

In 20 years, we never secured the 2 miles from the Embassy to the Airport either. Not in 20 years with $2.6TN

[AUDub 11,153]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

In 20 years, we never secured the 2 miles from the Embassy to the Airport either. Not in 20 years with $2.6TN

Exactly. Hence not a good staging area for evacuation. 

[AUDub 11,153]

18 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Follow intel plan submitted to you during transition or create a new plan with intel and logistical personnel taking the lead. Remove the bureaucrats from planning process. 

The Trump plan was simply to up and have everyone out by May 1st. If you dig for details, you're going to be left wanting. Stopped clock moment to move to end the war, but they left a quandary for us to figure out.

Biden has delayed enough. It's time we honor Doha as agreed.

Quote

Had that happened we would not have abandoned BAFB and evacuations would be near complete with only a small contingency of critical personnel remaining.

To what end? Bagram, as I've said time and time again, is not in a good area to be a potential evac zone. To flex? That's ******* stupid. We're in a negotiated ceasefire and so far it's holding up while we fly out everyone we can.

Edited August 25, 2021 by AUDub

[AUDub 11,153]

And we're doing just fine. We're at 70000 total as of now. 

 

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Yeah great idea, Liz. Let's do it publicly to make them feel weak so they'll put those mortars and MANPADs to use while we're in the midst of a massive airlift. That'll show'em. 

[AU9377 4,967]

7 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Follow intel plan submitted to you during transition or create a new plan with intel and logistical personnel taking the lead. Remove the bureaucrats from planning process. 

Had that happened we would not have abandoned BAFB and evacuations would be near complete with only a small contingency of critical personnel remaining.

The military has planned every bit of this.  The plan you speak of also did not assume that the Afghan military was made up of cowards unwilling to fight for the freedoms they enjoyed.  If Kabul was still unuder Afghan control, would this not be a much smoother process?  Even so, evacuating 100,000 is not small task and that has already been done.

[AUDub 11,153]

5 minutes ago, AU9377 said:

The military has planned every bit of this.  The plan you speak of also did not assume that the Afghan military was made up of cowards unwilling to fight for the freedoms they enjoyed.  If Kabul was still unuder Afghan control, would this not be a much smoother process?  Even so, evacuating 100,000 is not small task and that has already been done.

Not quite yet. We're only at about 70000 and may very well cap 80 tomorrow, which was a number we were initially given as a goal. I don't expect the pace to keep up though and think the over/under by the deadline is 120000.

[AU9377 4,967]

17 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Not quite yet. We're only at about 70000 and may very well cap 80 tomorrow, which was a number we were initially given as a goal. I don't expect the pace to keep up though and think the over/under by the deadline is 120000.

That is right, but still... that is a heck of a big lift.  The Taliban are called fighters because to call them soldiers would be to mischaracterize the nature of the group.  They aren't trained.  They are guys with guns. The truth slaps us in the face, but we ignore it.  The average Afghan supports the Taliban.  That is who they are.  If that were not the case, they could have found enough troops to at least defend Kabul.  We had armed them with every advantage.

We even built interstate highways to connect parts of the country.  I would tell them without hesitation that if they interfered with our leaving in any way, that we would destroy permanently every piece of infrastructure we left behind.  That may be harsh, but it would be deserved in that circumstance.

Edited August 25, 2021 by AU9377

[homersapien 11,388]

11 hours ago, AU9377 said:

The military has planned every bit of this.  The plan you speak of also did not assume that the Afghan military was made up of cowards unwilling to fight for the freedoms they enjoyed.  If Kabul was still unuder Afghan control, would this not be a much smoother process?  Even so, evacuating 100,000 is not small task and that has already been done.

Cowardness was not the problem with the Afghan army as much as the corruption which started with their officers and went right up to the head of the government.  The whole system was based on siphoning off American dollars, not patriotism.

[homersapien 11,388]

Can we pursue democratic values without military intervention? We better try.

Whatever the human rights violations perpetrated in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, we would not have gone to war there if the Bush administration, Congress and the public (initially very supportive of the war) had not believed there were weapons of mass destruction. And had the Taliban not harbored al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, we would not have invaded, no matter how horrific the treatment of women and girls.

Isolationists like to claim that we insist on going to war “to impose democracy” on others. We do nothing of the kind. We entered two wars for national strategic interests (however misguided), and stuck around for 20 years in one of those conflicts trying to foster and instill democracy. We do not go to war against many repressive regimes — from Cuba to Venezuela to Belarus. Instead, we use other means at our disposal, including economic carrots and sticks, and devise mechanisms (e.g., The Global Magnitsky Act) to punish abusers.

The Bush administration gave “democracy promotion” a bad name because it became synonymous with military intervention. The effort to create a values-based foreign policy in which we aid democracies and punish despots must by political and military necessity not rest on willingness to invade every bad regime. Part of the lesson of both Afghanistan and Iraq is that over-reliance on hard power to change political, cultural and religious conditions leads to unsustainable quagmires. There must be a different way to defend democracy.

The test for President Biden is whether he can put meat on the bones of his pro-democracy foreign policy as he delinks it from military operations such as Afghanistan. That is the challenge at his so-called summit of democracies in December. Can we promote and defend democracy and its advocates through an organized effort to expose corruption in despotic regimes, push back against authoritarian disinformation campaigns and promote women’s rights without U.S. soldiers on the ground? Fine speeches are not enough. Biden’s team must advance policy that extends beyond rhetoric.

With regard to Afghanistan, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a joint statement on Tuesday with foreign affairs committee chairs of other Group of Seven nations, which read in part: “The key criteria for recognition [of the Taliban] should include, but not be limited to: repudiation of all cross-border terrorism, including al-Qaeda and associated groups; equality of rights for girls and women; protection of minority ethnic and religious groups; commitment to democratic elections; and ending all narcotics-related activity.” The statement continued: "There is little indication from its past or present behavior that the Taliban is committed to any of these principles so the G-7 countries should be prepared to isolate the Taliban and impose robust sanctions should violations reach an agreed threshold.”

In other words, whether it is repression of women in Afghanistan or the Uyghurs in China, we need to construct a foreign policy in collaboration with allies that punishes, contains and isolates despotic regimes that deny universal human rights. At the same time, we must help bolster regimes on the knife’s edge between authoritarianism and democracy (e.g., Ukraine) by supporting them against authoritarian aggression and by cajoling them to pursue measures (e.g., rooting out corruption) that help foster democracy.

We've seen evidence of Biden’s willingness to sanction countries such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China for their human rights abuses. Whether those have been robust enough is a fair subject for debate. (I would argue they should have been stiffer.) Going forward, Biden should be judged on his ability to create a multilateral pro-democracy foreign policy that does not rely on military intervention or continuation of fruitless wars. Indeed, we dare not make democracy policy a hostage to military action, for the latter, as we have seen, rarely can command the support of the American people over an extended period of time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/25/can-we-pursue-democratic-values-without-military-intervention-we-better-try/

 

Of course, this just begs the question of how we promote democracy in our own country.  We'll be a piss-poor example until that happens.

[AUDub 11,153]

83000 since August 14th. Goal met. 

[DKW 86 7,426]

13 hours ago, AUDub said:

Yeah great idea, Liz. Let's do it publicly to make them feel weak so they'll put those mortars and MANPADs to use while we're in the midst of a massive airlift. That'll show'em. 

Someone do the world a favor and shoot that old bastich between the eyes. He is the number one reason we are in this situation in the first place. 

As longh as we are out by 8-31...I think anything past that might be grounds for for a new war of some magnitude.

[SLAG-91 1,483]