Biden/Harris Presidency Discussion Thread

The opening paragraph is absolutely not true!

The Trump Administration, largely excluding the Afghan Govt from the process, 'negotiated' a flawed deal with the Taliban, and signed it in February 2020. The House Armed Services Committee decided, on a Bi-partisan basis, that the deal was a badly constructed one, and voted to put the brakes on it, through an amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act. The amendment required that additional conditions would need to be met before troop numbers were reduced be!ow thresholds of 8,000 and 4,000. The Trump Administration ignored all this with wingnuts like Matt Gaetz bleating that such conditions would 'unfairly tie the Administration's hands'. By the time Trump left, BOTH the 8,000 and 4,000 thresholds had been blown away, and only 2,500 remained at end of January! So, if ANYONE ignored your much-touted Bi-partisan 'conditions', it was not Biden, but Trump!

But, that's not the meat of most sensible discussion here. Having a pop at Trump is not the objective of previous posts as I read them! Most posts seem to agree that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a **** show, but also seem to agree that it would always have been so, given that the original mission was flawed, the region was totally misunderstood and the medium- to long-term strategy was absent from US thinking. Centuries of history were ignored and no 'end-game' was ever drawn up. Pumping billions of $$ into a totally-misunderstood, tribal society to re-crsate an army that was taught to rely on US air-power for its tactical 'army-ing' was doomed to failure once that air-power was withdrawn! The Afghan army knew that, once the agreement between the US and the Taliban was forged, largely excluding the Afghan Government, it would be on the outs, so why would it fight 'to the death' when the US had signed a deal with its enemy that largely excluded them?

If we're going to have/continue a sensible/respectful discussion on the current crisis, can we at least base it on verifiable information and not on Fox News talking points alone!

And you can now add a further 5,000 who were released from Bagram prison today, to the volatile mix. Can you.imagine how this 5,000 worst of the worst Taliban and Al Quaeda buckos will exact their revenge on non-Taliban Afghans? It doesn't bear thinking about!

Its a waste of time bringing facts to the table when you have no interest in considering them!

For the record, the bi-partisan committee 'conditions' you're extolling didn't make a blind bit of difference to the Trump withdrawal. The US and Taliban agreed on a US total withdrawal by May 1st 2021. So the fact that Trump didnt take them all out by January was in line with his un-fettered implementation of Doha and paid NO mind to the Armed Services Committee. Indeed, it was all over bar the shouting when Trump reduced the force to a mere 2,500, who could NEVER do anything other than protect the Embassy, vital interests and the evacuation of 'friendlies'.

When Biden came in, he found that the withdrawal planning was so piss-poor in respect of catering to 'friendlies' that he delayed the total withdrawal until 9/11, and later moved that to Aug 31.

So, in summary, Trump ignored the wishes of the Armed Services Committe, and Biden extended the deadline to make the withdrawal more workable. IF he had blindly followed the Trump non-plan, the carnage would now be in full flight and ppl like you would be excoriating him for not changing the plan!

There's absolutely no honesty in your position, and it fails every kind of smell test.

US Embassy now reported to be fully evacuated except for a small number of contractors..

One assumes these are the explosives/demolition experts who will take the whole building down...

So, a couple of general staff became furious last Thursday that Biden wasn't willing to reverse the withdrawal? LAST THURSDAY?? Like, where was their fury ANY time since February 2020 when the withdrawal was agreed?? It doesnt sound like they were great at the ould 'over the horizon' planning that military folks are supposed to be good at.. Would it have been too much to ask that these boyos would actually have foreseen that there would be utter carnage whenever the Taliban took over again?

Agree totally!

That said, Biden's answer at that presser was a hostage to fortune. He could have said "My intelligence folks tell me that nothing currently points to a Saigon-like withdrawal. I can't say more, for.operational security.reasons". Question answered without creating a big stick to beat himself with.

I think they all knew that the Army had been deserting in their droves since 2020, as they knew the T had won the big prize, since Pompeo had excluded the Afghan Govt from the Doha agreement, freeing 5,000 of the hardest T men. At that presser, Biden was trying too hard to gee up the Afghan army, and the Govt.

Imagine what would have happened /been said if he had answered the questions with full disclosure?

" Yeah, you're right! The folks in the Pentagon and in the CIA told me to put a new roof on the Embassy by next week, to be ready for the hundreds of folks who are gonna do a Saigon-style helicopter dash in a fortnight's time! " That would have been honest and fully truthful! Aaand, the current rout would have started an hour later!!

Hopefully, his apparent denial of Afghan forces' weakness bought enough time to get some extra ppl out of danger. It was never within his power to prevent a Taliban return to power!

FWIW, there are short term things to be thankful for. Kabul and other cities were not pummeled into submission with thousands of civilian casualties. There wasn't a Tehran Embassy style rout! Sadly not much else to be thankful for, as the inevitable comes to pass.

God (of whatever stripe) help the women and girls to survive the coming nightmare!

I'm sure its already cracking them up on Parler and Gab amongst the winQnut fraternity! However that 'joke' is gonna bomb anywhere that tries to be reasonable & objective (like mostly in here in fairness). Still, enjoy the schadenfreude while the heads and hands are being lopped off in Kabul!

Its hard to argue with a lot of what you say. There's absolutely no doubt that Biden was left with a bag of booby-trapped turds when he came in. There's also no doubt he could have done a better job to flush them rather than smearing himself in so much excrement that any remnants of the pre- inaugeration gloss has been well and truly wiped away!

All the booby-traps imaginable went off, and 20 years of one-winged chickens are coming home to roost!