Joe Biden Presidency thread *Please read OP - Threadbanned Users Added 4/5/21*

The past 24 hours could very well sink Biden's reputation forever. There is no getting away from the fact of how bad he has handled the handover.

Carter became a one-term president because of his abject failure of foreign policy matters. Biden takes over the mantle now.

At the end of the day, people will have to ask Biden the hard questions, and not revert to type in blaming Trump for all the ills.

IDK about that. The GOP may very well hammer at it all week, of that, I have little doubt, even in spite of the support they gave for the withdrawal.

But sure, it's being reported far more sensationally than Trump's abandonment of the Kurds, plus most Americans have no relatability to the Kurds; they can easily grasp the situation unfolding in Afghanistan however, and the images are plastered all over the television, on every channel (yes, even "the mainstream media").

It is more than probable that it will be a major blow against him in the 2022 election season.

This seems like an absurdly dishonest attempt at 'turnabout; the Afghan war was initiated under GWB, and Trump began the withdrawal process by negotiating with the Taliban. He even did so by inviting them to Camp David, in September 2019, something which fell apart when the news broke of the scandal. The negotiations didn't stop though: in February 2020, Trump negotiated a 3 month cease fire in exchange for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners in February 2020, among whom was the Taliban leader responsible for sacking Afghanistan in a quasi bloodless coup, won decidedly on bribery. Most Afghan forces never fired a shot. That same cease fire agreement required the US to pull out in 14 months - by May 1, 2020.

Again, there seems to be a lot, and I mean a lot of effort to mention Trump by a factor of 4 or 5 times in the above post as opposed to Biden.

The day is the 16th of August 2021 and Biden is the POTUS. He is responsible now, not Trump*. So, let's move on from the 'But but but Trump' knee-jerk response.

Definite truth there. There will be questions to answer, such as were there contingencies for this and why not/why were they not executed. However, I'd point out it's not like the President of the United States can hide you know, 10,000 extra troops around the corner without notice, either. That's front page news stuff, any time there's any change in the number of troops we have anywhere, outside of covert ops (which are by necessity, small). And there's not a friendly nearby border to amass them, either. So from where and how fast can you move enough men, supplies, and war machines to respond to this sweep across the country that the Taliban has pulled off, in less than 2 weeks? The US Military is good, but it's not that agile... so the other question is why has there been no combat air support, what constrained that?

Biden clearly must take responsibility for this, and IMO it is a price he has decided is worth paying. Another poster mentioend that Americans won't care about the Afghans when voting in 2024, but Biden can now say he delivered on something Trump failed to do in his four years in office. The people, esppecially the women, of Afghanistan are collateral damage.

Trump can blame Biden all he likes, and the GOP and Trump supporters will call for Biden to do something, the problem is that Biden is actually doing exactly what they all wanted last year. HC was a war monger was a big rally cry, and yet Biden pulls troops home and the same people are demanding he do something because it looks bad!

So it is not a case that Biden=Good, its a case that both of them of the same. America has done done many times, going in somewhere, preaching democracy and sustainability etc, and then the folks at home het bored and they pull up sticks and leave a mess.

This. watch for died in the wool Trump fans in the future to try and convince us that Trump was never supportive of getting out of Afghanistan, never supported Biden doing so, etc etc.

the GOP was decently split about the quagmire for its part. Some for some against staying and or withdrawal.

But again, this is a deal that Pompeo and Trump agreed with the Taliban. Biden can certainly be held accountable for not doing enough to slow the advance, but apart from sending more troops then was very little they could do.

Pompeo agreed a deal with Taliban in Nov 2020, freeing prisoners, ending sanctions and Trump announced that the US would be withdrawing. With that the dye was cast. The taliban knew they had free reign, the US simply wanted to get out and they were not concerned with the Taliban taking over.

Once that was known, the people in Afghanistan, knowing they had lost the support of the US/UK military and thus were at the mercy of the taliban, many seem to have taken the not unusual decision that they would side with the Taliban (or least not fight against them) and so the Taliban simply rolled across the country with little or no resistance.

This is exactly the plan that Trump set in motion. So I find all this hand wringing from the right and Trump supporters to be more than a little disingenuous

I hated trump, would have supported Biden - but this cluster-f in Afghanistan is an absolute disgrace and will hang on Biden's head. It doesn't matter if it was a Trump promise - if this is the result it is happening on Biden's watch and it either should have been forseen (and delayed/cancelled) or propper succession planning put in place.

Right now, the history doesn't matter. what matters right now is what is happening right now, and it is the fault of Biden and the US administration right now.

If nothing is done to reverse this - Biden and the US can claim no authority in foreign policy. Nothing he does outside of America will count for anything, because the scale of this chaos and disaster is simply too great.

This is US domestic politics. The Biden administration has a different tone than the Trump’s but the policies are pretty much the same. America First and so forth.

Afghanistan is possibly the most lawless and corrupt country in the world, dealing with back handers via other governments and the opium trade. The Taliban are a shocking organisation - extreme form of Islamism (is that a word ha). Treat women as 1000th class citizens, marrying girls as young as 8 and 9 to their fighters, no school or education, completely cover the women, the mind boggles how anybody can think the is right, despicable.