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The Afghanistan Bungle


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On 3/9/2023 at 5:04 AM, DKW 86 said:

We are 100 years away from that. Spending another $TN there would have been wasting the money. They don’t want self rule. Only maybe 5% do. 

you make a good point  

People fail to realize that Afghanistan is a country made up by western nations. The tribes never wanted to form a country. 
 

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On 3/9/2023 at 5:04 AM, DKW 86 said:

We are 100 years away from that. Spending another $TN there would have been wasting the money. They don’t want self rule. Only maybe 5% do. 

Be that as it may, the disastrous, costly exit was not necessary. We could have left in an orderly manner while taking our military supplies and friendly personnel with us. This tragic exit was a good example of Bungling Biden at his finest.

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On 3/18/2023 at 8:41 AM, Mikey said:

No. The exit arranged by Trump had a number of contingencies attached to it. Few if any of them were met but Biden went ahead and made the Taliban rich with billions of dollars worth of our military equipment anyway.  That mindless helter-skelter scramble to exit and damn the consequences was all 100% on Biden.

GOP blames Biden for Afghanistan withdrawal but Trump brokered the deal

Oma Seddiq, John Haltiwanger
10–12 minutes

  • A number of GOP lawmakers slammed Biden's handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
  • McConnell said Biden was to blame for Taliban forces taking over the country.
  • The deal to remove US troops from the country was negotiated under Trump.

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A number of congressional Republicans are criticizing President Joe Biden's handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan amid desperate scenes of Afghans scrambling to get on airplanes out of the country.

Yet the decision to leave the country was originally negotiated under President Donald Trump and allowed the Taliban to strengthen their position against the US-backed government — a circumstance most Republicans skirted around in their criticism.

After Taliban forces took control of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, over the weekend, GOP lawmakers effectively said that the Biden administration was solely to blame for the collapse of the Afghan government.

"The Biden Administration's botched exit from Afghanistan including the frantic evacuation of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul is a shameful failure of American leadership," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on Sunday.

While the highest-ranked Republican senator pointed out that both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past several years had overseen foreign-policy failures in Afghanistan, he placed the brunt of the current situation on Biden.   

"I have never hesitated to express myself candidly when leaders of either party threatened to put politics ahead of reality on the ground," McConnell said. "But as the monumental collapse our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief."

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long opposed a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, also faulted Biden for the crisis in the country.

"It is only a matter of time until al-Qaeda reemerges in Afghanistan and presents a threat to the American homeland and western world," Graham said in a tweet. "President Biden seems oblivious to the terrorist threats that will come from a Taliban-run Afghanistan"

Similarly, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned the president and said he did not carry out Trump's strategy. 

"President Biden owns this mess — the blood is on his hands," Inhofe said in a statement on Sunday. "President Biden did not inherit the current withdrawal from President Trump — in fact, he has deviated from the previous administration's plan and set his own disastrous course."

He added: "Biden needs to admit he made a strategic mistake leading to tragic consequences for U.S. national security and the Afghan people."

President Joe Biden on August 12. Associated Press/Evan Vucci

Some GOP lawmakers also criticized Biden, who had been on planned vacation at the presidential retreat Camp David, for staying silent on the issue as the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Sunday. 

"The American people deserve to hear immediately from their commander-in-chief and to know who's in charge," Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on Twitter.

As the backlash mounted, Biden on Monday afternoon defended his decision to pull out at the White House.

A blame game

While the Biden administration executed the US withdrawal, it was the Trump administration that brokered a deal with the Taliban to pull out US troops. The agreement, signed in February 2020, stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months. The deal was much criticized for acceding to the Taliban demand of not including the Afghan government. At the time, the Taliban already controlled nearly half the country. 

Biden largely upheld the Trump-era deal, though he didn't follow that exact timeline. Many observers said the US's agreement in principle to depart cost it leverage it could have used to compel the Taliban to adhere to the peace deal and a cessation of hostilities.

After the negotiations, Trump began slimming down the US's presence. By mid-January, there were only about 3,500 troops in Afghanistan. To put this into perspective, there were more US troops deployed to Washington, DC, as a result of the January 6 insurrection than the number deployed in Afghanistan.

An Afghan special-forces officer told The Washington Post that Trump's withdrawal deal demoralized Afghan troops and made them feel as though a Taliban takeover was inevitable.

"The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself," the officer said.

Trump on Sunday criticized Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that the president didn't follow the plan he crafted. But outside the original timeline, in which US troops would've fully pulled out in May, Biden hardly diverged from Trump's peace agreement. 

Biden in a statement on Saturday placed blame on Trump for the chaos in Afghanistan, saying that he'd inherited a deal that "left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001."

From Bush to Biden, US presidents failed in Afghanistan

There is ample evidence that the US withdrawal has been rushed and sloppy, particularly when it comes to helping vulnerable Afghans who assisted the US during the conflict. But the US's ultimate failure in Afghanistan cannot be laid at the feet of a single president or administration.

The war in Afghanistan has been chaotic from start to finish, with US troops often unsure of their mission as multiple administrations — both Republican and Democratic — misled the public about the state of the conflict.

Over the years, Americans were repeatedly told that the US was turning a corner in Afghanistan, but there was rarely evidence to back that up. The US invested $83 billion in training and equipping Afghan forces, with little to show for it. The Afghan military consistently struggled with endemic corruption and discipline issues, exhibiting few signs that it could defeat the Taliban without US assistance.

Every president who has overseen this war made decisions that exacerbated the conflict in various ways.

President George W. Bush speaks at his first news conference after his reelection on November 4, 2004, at the White House. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001 under President George W. Bush, who within the first month of the conflict rejected an offer from the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden in exchange for the US to stop bombing the country. In May 2003, the Bush administration declared that "major combat" was over in Afghanistan. As time would show, this was exceptionally premature.

President Barack Obama drastically ramped up America's troop presence in Afghanistan in 2009 — a move that Biden opposed as vice president. In 2014, Obama shared a timeline to bring US troops home by 2016. He declared an end to the US combat mission in the country in December 2014, but the war was nowhere near finished — and US troops remained in Afghanistan when Obama left office.

While Trump promised to end "forever wars," he relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2017, and under his watch, civilian casualties in the county rose 330% from 2016.

Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April. The Taliban continued to make gains across the country throughout spring and into summer, raising fears of an eventual takeover. Last month, Biden rejected the notion that it was "inevitable" the Taliban would regain power and expressed confidence in the Afghan military. Within a matter of weeks, the Taliban was back in control of Afghanistan.

There's no doubt that Biden and his advisors got much wrong about what would transpire in Afghanistan, but recent events are a product of years of poor decision-making by the US. Like other empires before it, the US has learned the hard way that no amount of military might and money can fundamentally change a complex country like Afghanistan. 

 

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Afghanistan was a mistake. We should have gone in and left. 

It was a horrible, expensive, dangerous mistake.

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9 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

GOP blames Biden for Afghanistan withdrawal but Trump brokered the deal

Oma Seddiq, John Haltiwanger
10–12 minutes

  • A number of GOP lawmakers slammed Biden's handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
  • McConnell said Biden was to blame for Taliban forces taking over the country.
  • The deal to remove US troops from the country was negotiated under Trump.

Thanks for signing up!

Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go.

A number of congressional Republicans are criticizing President Joe Biden's handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan amid desperate scenes of Afghans scrambling to get on airplanes out of the country.

Yet the decision to leave the country was originally negotiated under President Donald Trump and allowed the Taliban to strengthen their position against the US-backed government — a circumstance most Republicans skirted around in their criticism.

After Taliban forces took control of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, over the weekend, GOP lawmakers effectively said that the Biden administration was solely to blame for the collapse of the Afghan government.

"The Biden Administration's botched exit from Afghanistan including the frantic evacuation of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul is a shameful failure of American leadership," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on Sunday.

While the highest-ranked Republican senator pointed out that both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past several years had overseen foreign-policy failures in Afghanistan, he placed the brunt of the current situation on Biden.   

"I have never hesitated to express myself candidly when leaders of either party threatened to put politics ahead of reality on the ground," McConnell said. "But as the monumental collapse our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief."

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long opposed a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, also faulted Biden for the crisis in the country.

"It is only a matter of time until al-Qaeda reemerges in Afghanistan and presents a threat to the American homeland and western world," Graham said in a tweet. "President Biden seems oblivious to the terrorist threats that will come from a Taliban-run Afghanistan"

Similarly, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned the president and said he did not carry out Trump's strategy. 

"President Biden owns this mess — the blood is on his hands," Inhofe said in a statement on Sunday. "President Biden did not inherit the current withdrawal from President Trump — in fact, he has deviated from the previous administration's plan and set his own disastrous course."

He added: "Biden needs to admit he made a strategic mistake leading to tragic consequences for U.S. national security and the Afghan people."

 

President Joe Biden on August 12. Associated Press/Evan Vucci

Some GOP lawmakers also criticized Biden, who had been on planned vacation at the presidential retreat Camp David, for staying silent on the issue as the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Sunday. 

"The American people deserve to hear immediately from their commander-in-chief and to know who's in charge," Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on Twitter.

As the backlash mounted, Biden on Monday afternoon defended his decision to pull out at the White House.

A blame game

While the Biden administration executed the US withdrawal, it was the Trump administration that brokered a deal with the Taliban to pull out US troops. The agreement, signed in February 2020, stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months. The deal was much criticized for acceding to the Taliban demand of not including the Afghan government. At the time, the Taliban already controlled nearly half the country. 

Biden largely upheld the Trump-era deal, though he didn't follow that exact timeline. Many observers said the US's agreement in principle to depart cost it leverage it could have used to compel the Taliban to adhere to the peace deal and a cessation of hostilities.

After the negotiations, Trump began slimming down the US's presence. By mid-January, there were only about 3,500 troops in Afghanistan. To put this into perspective, there were more US troops deployed to Washington, DC, as a result of the January 6 insurrection than the number deployed in Afghanistan.

An Afghan special-forces officer told The Washington Post that Trump's withdrawal deal demoralized Afghan troops and made them feel as though a Taliban takeover was inevitable.

"The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself," the officer said.

Trump on Sunday criticized Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that the president didn't follow the plan he crafted. But outside the original timeline, in which US troops would've fully pulled out in May, Biden hardly diverged from Trump's peace agreement. 

Biden in a statement on Saturday placed blame on Trump for the chaos in Afghanistan, saying that he'd inherited a deal that "left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001."

From Bush to Biden, US presidents failed in Afghanistan

There is ample evidence that the US withdrawal has been rushed and sloppy, particularly when it comes to helping vulnerable Afghans who assisted the US during the conflict. But the US's ultimate failure in Afghanistan cannot be laid at the feet of a single president or administration.

The war in Afghanistan has been chaotic from start to finish, with US troops often unsure of their mission as multiple administrations — both Republican and Democratic — misled the public about the state of the conflict.

Over the years, Americans were repeatedly told that the US was turning a corner in Afghanistan, but there was rarely evidence to back that up. The US invested $83 billion in training and equipping Afghan forces, with little to show for it. The Afghan military consistently struggled with endemic corruption and discipline issues, exhibiting few signs that it could defeat the Taliban without US assistance.

Every president who has overseen this war made decisions that exacerbated the conflict in various ways.

 

President George W. Bush speaks at his first news conference after his reelection on November 4, 2004, at the White House. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001 under President George W. Bush, who within the first month of the conflict rejected an offer from the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden in exchange for the US to stop bombing the country. In May 2003, the Bush administration declared that "major combat" was over in Afghanistan. As time would show, this was exceptionally premature.

President Barack Obama drastically ramped up America's troop presence in Afghanistan in 2009 — a move that Biden opposed as vice president. In 2014, Obama shared a timeline to bring US troops home by 2016. He declared an end to the US combat mission in the country in December 2014, but the war was nowhere near finished — and US troops remained in Afghanistan when Obama left office.

While Trump promised to end "forever wars," he relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2017, and under his watch, civilian casualties in the county rose 330% from 2016.

Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April. The Taliban continued to make gains across the country throughout spring and into summer, raising fears of an eventual takeover. Last month, Biden rejected the notion that it was "inevitable" the Taliban would regain power and expressed confidence in the Afghan military. Within a matter of weeks, the Taliban was back in control of Afghanistan.

There's no doubt that Biden and his advisors got much wrong about what would transpire in Afghanistan, but recent events are a product of years of poor decision-making by the US. Like other empires before it, the US has learned the hard way that no amount of military might and money can fundamentally change a complex country like Afghanistan. 

 

The planning was adequate. The execution was criminally incompetent.

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3 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Afghanistan was a mistake. We should have gone in and left. 

It was a horrible, expensive, dangerous mistake.

 

Just now, jj3jordan said:

The planning was adequate. The execution was criminally incompetent.

maybe so but we were talking about making the taliban rich which mikey said biden did when in fact Trump did.

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2 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

 

maybe so but we were talking about making the taliban rich which mikey said biden did when in fact Trump did.

Bush43, Obama, trump, Biden ALL mishandled this. We ****** this up on an epic scale.

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11 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

A number of GOP lawmakers slammed Biden's handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Biden failed to hold the other side to the agreements Trump had put into place. An orderly withdrawal was in Trump's plan. Characteristically, Biden bungled the deal.

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ok i got you mikey.

2 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Biden failed to hold the other side to the agreements Trump had put into place. An orderly withdrawal was in Trump's plan. Characteristically, Biden bungled the deal.

 

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On 3/19/2023 at 10:10 AM, Mikey said:

Biden failed to hold the other side to the agreements Trump had put into place. An orderly withdrawal was in Trump's plan. Characteristically, Biden bungled the deal.

Not true. The deal was that the Afghan government in power and its army would continue fighting the Taliban, based on the training and materiel that the U.S. and Allies had provided. The Afghan government and army did not follow through. They mostly invited the Taliban in with welcoming arms. But based on the Trump deal, the U.S. was required to get out. If the Afghan military were not willing to fight for their own freedom/country, surrendering to the Taliban, well, the U.S, was still required to get out.

Fact is, all of America was tired of the loss of lives of American soldiers, the loss of billions of dollars annually. Everyone wanted out. But just like in Vietnam, when the U.S. pulled out, the government we had been propping up surrendered to the enemy.

This is not a Biden failure. It's not a Trump failure. It is actually stupid US foreign policy dating back to the Bush administration. Like Vietnam, it was a no-win war that the U.S, should never have been in.

 

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Anyone who was actually interested in a non partisan way could have seen what was going to happen when,,, the Afghan government was not invited to participate in the talks with the Taliban.

There was never a clean way out.  The same people complaining now would complain about the loss of life and expense of a more protracted exit.  The complaining is partisan politics, nothing more.

The entire endeavor was bungled.  The exit is probably the least of it.

 

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44 minutes ago, icanthearyou said:

Yhe entire endeavor was bungled.  The exit is probably the least of it.

Bungling Biden's tragic exit was the worst of it.

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10 hours ago, AURex said:

Not true. The deal was that the Afghan government in power and its army would continue fighting the Taliban, based on the training and materiel that the U.S. and Allies had provided. The Afghan government and army did not follow through. They mostly invited the Taliban in with welcoming arms. But based on the Trump deal, the U.S. was required to get out. If the Afghan military were not willing to fight for their own freedom/country, surrendering to the Taliban, well, the U.S, was still required to get out.

Fact is, all of America was tired of the loss of lives of American soldiers, the loss of billions of dollars annually. Everyone wanted out. But just like in Vietnam, when the U.S. pulled out, the government we had been propping up surrendered to the enemy.

This is not a Biden failure. It's not a Trump failure. It is actually stupid US foreign policy dating back to the Bush administration. Like Vietnam, it was a no-win war that the U.S, should never have been in.

It was ALWAYS going to end this way... ALWAYS.

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8 hours ago, Mikey said:

Bungling Biden's tragic exit was the worst of it.

No, The US Taxpayer shelling out roughly $2TN to the MIC, namely Haliburton, was the worst of it all. 

We could have fixed SS or fixed M4A.

Edited by DKW 86
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1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

It was ALWAYS going to end this way... ALWAYS.

 

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This is what I am moving closer to accepting with regard to Iraq, Afghanistan etc.  I realize that it isn't as simple as being able to point the finger to one decision.  I believe that we, being primarily the U.S. and U.K., at some level, concluded that we needed to cut a ridge through the middle east and eliminate the capability of several groups operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.  That isn't a popular thing to say as an elected official.  Therefore, we began justification after justification leading to the eventual occupation.  We are still in Syria and Northern Iraq today, but it seldom gets mentioned.

Those motives were hijacked by our military industrial complex, which recognized the incredible windfall of tax dollars that would flow their way.  Many many men have been made wealthy beyond comprehension by way of government contracts to build and develop the machinery of war.  The reason China can compete with us in terms of military hardware is that their cost is a fraction of the cost we pay for these items.  From ships to ammunition, we pay enormous profit margins, where China simply pays a modest wage.

I believe that George W. believed he was doing the right thing with respect to Iraq.  I question the push that came from Cheney, simply due to the massive amount of money his corporation made and is still making in Iraq today.  By the time Obama took office, the draw down in Iraq was top priority.  Afghanistan was the wound that wouldn't heal, but nobody was ready to amputate the leg just yet.

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5 hours ago, AU9377 said:

This is what I am moving closer to accepting with regard to Iraq, Afghanistan etc.  I realize that it isn't as simple as being able to point the finger to one decision.  I believe that we, being primarily the U.S. and U.K., at some level, concluded that we needed to cut a ridge through the middle east and eliminate the capability of several groups operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.  That isn't a popular thing to say as an elected official.  Therefore, we began justification after justification leading to the eventual occupation.  We are still in Syria and Northern Iraq today, but it seldom gets mentioned.

Those motives were hijacked by our military industrial complex, which recognized the incredible windfall of tax dollars that would flow their way.  Many many men have been made wealthy beyond comprehension by way of government contracts to build and develop the machinery of war.  The reason China can compete with us in terms of military hardware is that their cost is a fraction of the cost we pay for these items.  From ships to ammunition, we pay enormous profit margins, where China simply pays a modest wage.

I believe that George W. believed he was doing the right thing with respect to Iraq.  I question the push that came from Cheney, simply due to the massive amount of money his corporation made and is still making in Iraq today.  By the time Obama took office, the draw down in Iraq was top priority.  Afghanistan was the wound that wouldn't heal, but nobody was ready to amputate the leg just yet.

Pretty much spot on.

Permanent War is the MIC Business Model...They own Congress and enough Defense Committee Chairs, and likely Chairs, for the next 10-12 years that income for the firms is guaranteed. For them to make money, bombs must be dropped, missiles must be aimed and used, and men, women, and children must die. This really is blood money. Now they have the perfect war. They sell arms to the US, which gives them to Ukraine to use. And almost no American Casualties. Its the Balkans all over again. They want wars just like this and they have the means, they own enough Govt Leaders and they directly own most of the media. This is the Hearst Issue all over again. Many widely believe that William Randolph Hearst realized his power by owning the press and drove the narrative that caused the Spanish-American War. Most now know that the reporting by the Hearst papers was complete crap. Hearst drove the American public just about mad with salacious coverage. In History Class they called it Yellow Journalism

http://www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_journalism.html#:~:text=After the sinking of the,the first press-driven war.

The Maine is now believed to have blown up by a coal bunker fire that was next to a small bunker that ignited the bigger bunker. There was no mine, no attack, no act of war. But...The Sinking of the Maine lead to stories of American Women living in Cuba getting raped <er> etc etc etc.... Next thing we have a War to Free the Cubans and to take the overseas possessions of Spain, a dying colonial power.

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