Sorry, but with “those are words”, you are leaving the discussion.
These words shape the reality of Afghanistan, of the NATO allies, and of this presidency. If you are arguing on that level, you can question all of politics, and of policies as well.
If you are unhappy with that reply, I repeat:
I think I have to clarify:
You didn’t.
I disagree with your assessment that Biden did not mess up. That’s all.
I agree with your assessment that it was going to be a nightmare, no matter what. But I am upset by the statement Biden gave, and the fallout it causes. And by the impression that HCR is apparently not seeing this.
This, however, has nothing to do with you. I apologize. I shouldn’t have just replied to you, but to the topic, and maybe quoted from your post, or otherwise referenced the ‘not messed up’ part without involving you directly.
This is fair. I agree. I do tend to get pissy when armchair wanna-be pundits call it things like an “unmitigated disaster.” I’m going to push back on that. It definitely could have been done better. As you say, it could also have been done much, much worse.
Not cool. If the actions and decisions were reasonable but the words are pissing you off, you’re probably not seeing the full picture. With diplomacy, there is so much going on behind the scenes that laypeople aren’t in any real position to get worked up about it. My suggestion: if a diplomat (or politician making diplomatic statements) says something that pisses you off, you’re either not the intended audience or you are, and it was meant to piss you off.
That is my point.
The intended audience is quite surely the American voter. This is the President of a military and political superpower wooing voters while the whole world is watching.
I’m suggesting that the intended audience outside the US (thus, diplomatic audience) is someone who is not you.
Maybe the Afgan discussion should be split into its own topic?
Interestingly, the other day I was watching Sky News (UK), and they had a discussion about the clusterfuck that the UK government made about getting their (UK) people out of Afganistan. Their take was that the UK government knew for well over a year about the plans to get out, and the UK government did jack shit about it. Apparently, because they believed that either a) if Trump was still in office he would never keep his promise of pulling out (because he’s never kept any promise, or lived up to any agreement he’s ever made in his life), or b) Biden would see it can’t be done because Trump did not follow though on any of the require preparation, and there was no way to pull out without a shitshow. So, the UK government were absolutely shocked when Biden decided to keep to the commitment that trump made. Apparently, nobody actually believed the US would really leave.
Good idea, so I put them here.
It’s a discussion worth having, but yeah, it’s worthy of its own thread.
I agree. It’s been needing its own thread for a while.
It’s a clusterfuck but hanging on another month, or year was never going to fix it. It’s the culmination of twenty years of failure, of graft and greed from the US, of lies and incompetence in western intelligence and military reports.
And of the simple fact that any imperial client government is inherently corrupt. It’s not that you picked the wrong guys as clients. Those who accept that deal will never be legitimate.
a week or so one of the regular npr politics commentators summarized the withdrawal as “americans lost their stomach for war.”
never have i wanted to throw the radio out the window more than in that moment.
I think that, more than anything else, the Biden Administration put too much faith in Afghan Armed Forces and, as a consequence, was caught completely off guard by how quickly the country fell to the Taliban. I think that the lack of contingency planning for the fall of Kabul seems to reflect a belief that it would happen months into the future or not at all. Biden’s undiplomatic words after the fall also seem to reflect his disappointment in the Afghan Government that the US had been propping up for so many years.
As for what could have been done better, contingency planning should have been a priority from the start of the administration (especially since this outcome was always a possibility, timeframe notwithstanding). Once the Taliban advance was underway, the administration had very little time (less than a week) to react, and I’m not sure what could have been done aside from airstrikes on advancing Taliban forces (which would have escalated the situation) or a very hasty temporary redeployment of US forces to cover the evacuation (not sure on the logistics).
As for the war itself, it was always a clusterfuck that was always going to end this way, and the only real question was “When?”
This is not a popular opinion, I know, but I do believe that it is a blessing in disguise that the Taliban took over the country so quickly. Protracted fighting would have seen endless human suffering, only to end up with the same result.
All too likely both.
We moved out 120,000 people in a very short period of time. That’s a decent sized city worth of people.
The comparison to Saigon being made doesn’t hold water. We moved 7,000 people then.
There was no reason for us to be there for twenty years. There was no reason for us to let Osama escape in the first place. We should have eliminated him on the first pass and never stayed.
All arguments that this was the wrong way to proceed is just war mongering by proxy.
As far as I understand it, it was the largest airlift in history? There were probably more planes going in and out of Berlin during that airlift, but that lasted a year and was not moving people.
I’m inclined to agree. But you know the couple of hundred Americans still on the ground there are going to be a pretext for republicans to claim that Biden should be impeached.
Greatest evacuation, I think. The Berlin airlift may have been larger? But that was bringing in supplies.
Exactly. The logistics of the Berlin airlift was pretty remarkable, but so is getting 120,000 people out of a location surrounded by hostile forces, some of whom were actively bombing the operation. But of course, even if ever single person who wanted to leave had been evacuated, the GOP would find a way to claim that Biden needs to be impeached for it. Hell, he could have gone there himself and supervised on the ground, and they’d STILL be claiming he betrayed America with this.
And part of their base is praising the Taliban while the other part is war mongering.
No good faith there.
I think that nobody expected Talibans to arrive in Kabul so quickly and Afghan troops changing sides. Afghani people that were going in Germany were flying Lufthansa on august 14th and flying Luftwaffe from Kabul on august 16th. Lufthansa carried the passenger from Taskent airport in Uzbekistan.
Taliban taking over the country quickly will be a problem now, because they didn’t have the time to consolidate the administration and people that were in the goverment were scared away and in some cases killed.
