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

Trump is not becoming irrelevant. the current GOP is still in his thrall and we will see in 2023, just how relevant he is when he runs again. The fact they refuse to officially blame him for Jan 6 or hold him accountable in anyway for Jan 6th or the 'election fraud' shows he is still their plan for 2023. If they wanted him gone, they would have impeached.

A sky news reporter summed this up very well - he said there is the Policy - which is to withdraw troops from Afghanistan - nothing wrong with the Policy. Then there is the Implementation of that Policy - which as we can all see - has been an absolute shambles! Hard to believe that the withdrawal has transpired so badly. There are over 32 million people in afghanistan - that will now be subject to this regime. I cant imagine the horror that they have to endure. Those videos of the airport can certainly put to rest that the Afgan people support this regime - especially in kabul which has been increasingly westernised for the past 20 years. Can you imagine that teenagers there never had to experience the Taliban - and they now have to endure the atrocities of this regime. I'm heartbroken for them all. All the Afgan people who supported the Afghan government who effectively abandoned them to their faith. I wish there was something we could do from here. MILLIONS of people - dont forget. Ireland only has a population of 6 million. We are so privileged and spoiled - its unreal.

Very little political capital in this for Biden. He will be savaged for it for years, and rightfully so.

It is all over Twitter by reputable sources, from CNN to the Washington Post to this tweet from Shona Murray.

https://twitter.com/ShonaMurray_/status/1427188797159129094

Another analogy, if you get stabbed, you don't remove the knife straight away, you do it slowly and surely under controlled conditions.

I honestly think there are 0 political votes in this for Biden, its all negative and no one will want to support such a capitulation and exodus.

Agreed. I feel like the Bush and Obama administrations should be up there for not getting more done. As people said they couldn't stay forever so a long term plan needed to be implemented at some point and I am not sure it ever was. Edit: Also add in anyone who does not immediately grant citizenship to those who helped their forces or their allies forces over there the last 20 years.

This was bipartinisan failure on many levels.

wow!!! i think most sensible people would walk out of that meeting. so whats the agenda. its such an awful awful miscalculation that is effectively going to destroy the lives of millions of people.

If you review the history of our drawdown in the country - we have indeed been removing that knife gradually, in phases.

I don’t see anyone on the roof. Reports from the other day was the flag was already gone, and the embassy was already evacuated.

Haven't you heard? That's just "fake news".

“Practically overnight?” Can you draw me the timeline in your head for that?

the original deadline from the previous admin was May 1. Unless overnight means 3.5 months, I think we need to check your math.

The Afghan army certainly seems to have been a ramshackle outfit.

There were officially 300,000 Afghan troops, but the 300,000 included only 185,000 army troops or special operations forces under Defense Ministry control, with police and other security personnel making up the rest.

Barely 60 percent of the Afghan army troops were trained fighters.

A more accurate estimate of the army's fighting strength, once the 8,000 air force personnel are taken out of the equation, is 96,000.

However the Afghan army had to replace 25 percent of its force each year -- largely because of desertions -- and American soldiers working with the Afghans came to see this rate as "normal."

Worse, the salaries of the Afghan army had been paid for years by the Pentagon.

But from the moment the American army announced its planned withdrawal in April, responsibility for those payments fell on the Kabul government.

Numerous Afghan soldiers have complained on social media that they not only have not been paid in months, in many instances their units were no longer receiving food or supplies -- not even ammunition.

The Afghan army fighting alongside American troops was molded to match the way the Americans operate. The U.S. military, the world’s most advanced, relies heavily on combining ground operations with air power, using aircraft to resupply outposts, strike targets, ferry the wounded, and collect reconnaissance and intelligence.

In the wake of Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.

When U.S. forces were still operating here, the Afghan government sought to maximize its presence through the country’s far-flung countryside, maintaining more than 200 bases and outposts that could be resupplied only by air.

Once the air support went these bases were isolated.

Biden should not have withdrawn the final troops when it was obvious that the Taliban had reneged on the promises agreed under last years treaty.

Biden’s determination to adhere to the treaty without a well-planned military transition plan, emboldened the Taliban and hit the morale of the Afghan armed forces just as the country was beginning its fighting season.

The Taliban concentrated on overrunning the isolated outposts, massacring soldiers who were determined to resist but allowing safe conduct to those who surrendered, often via deals negotiated by local tribal elders. The Taliban gave pocket money to some of these troops, who had gone unpaid for months.

By the time the Taliban began their assault on major population areas this month, the Afghan military was so demoralized that it offered little resistance. Provincial leaders and senior commanders replicated surrender deals struck on the local level before. The elite commando units were one exception, but they were too few in number and lacked aircraft to move them around the country.

The Taliban now have control of all the advanced weaponry the US provided.

You can slap down a photo of the Saigon photo and it requires little to no explanation. A helicopter just shown low over some building like this, meh ok, lots of photos like this abound. It’s just not quite that comparable.

We already have. The situation is awful no matter who fingers are pointed at.