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

Yes, I heard him say the buck stops with him but then proceeds to point the finger at everyone else for the failure.

Seriously, it is really mad reading all this hand ringing and calls for leadership and credibility. This after 4 years of fecking Trump! Anybody who stood by Trump, stood by as he lied, blustered, clearly was out of his depth. Who stood by as Pence did nothing.

Suddenly they care about the credibility of the POTUS and the international impact? Come on.

Biden was pretty clear in his speech last night. The plan was to get US troops out. They had spent 21 years, the last 10 or so at least providing support, training and resources tot he Afghan government. They, the Afghan government, should have been more than capable of protecting the main parts of the country.

Biden saw that Trump had effectively given the Taliban free reign in the country, there was no long term fix. Trump had screwed that up and then by refusing to work with the incoming administration and allowed the situation to deteriorate to such an extent that to avoid what is happening would have involved massive redeployment of US troops, something which no one is calling for.

Biden of course will take the immediate blame, correctly, but Trump has a lot to answer for and the main culprit on all of this is of course W Bush.

A guy in the withdrawal threads puts forward this explanation

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."

Secondly, 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.

Thirdly 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 , 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.

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.

Biden should not have withdrawn the final troops when it was obvious that the Taliban had repeatedly 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 now have control of all the advanced weaponry the US provided.

Its been a catastrophic sequence of events and Biden has made a complete mess of it.

It was hardly planned was it, that the president, vice president, and press secretary would all be on holidays when such a big event is happening?

I mean I have to ok time off work so it doesn't coincidence with the start of a major project, don't most people?

I've not suggested it was planned to be honest, re the VP, I just thought the silence generally very odd albeit I get a sense of, You landed me the Border Gig Joe, your on your own with this mess 😉

Based on what? The US clearly wants to get out of its international entanglements. Trump supporters must be loving that someone finally got the soldiers out of the never ending war. Of course they wanted Trump to do it, but now it's done. Do you think they care about the effects on the Afghan people?

You are looking at it from a non American P{OV, and certainly not a political POV. Americans are not going to change their vote because some Afghans are being killed.

That's what I keep telling people, families and friends of soldiers will be delighted they are out of there, and the last couple weeks will prove all their efforts were in vain. Joe soap american couldn't care less about Afghanistan and their people. What you have now is the right and left media predictably going at each other over this.

Why would the Republicans make a major issue of this? Seems like the military hawks are in a minority there now, and if Cheney et al tried to kick up a fuss they'd be obliged to spend a lot of time attacking Trump and other 'isolationists' in their own ranks.

Of course Trump and his acolytes will say he would have 'managed' the withdrawal better, but that's hardly the red meat of poltitical campaigning, and how credible is it anyway?

Trump should rightly be blamed for initiating this withdrawal along with another million things. Actually when I saw the Taliban in the Presidential Palace, I was reminded of the scenes in Capitol Hill that Trump encouraged

But Biden has to take for blame for the administration of the withdrawal process.

You've been told by me and others that Donny Jnr is an absolute clown who doesn't know his arse from his elbow. He is fast becoming a coke addled utter train wreck.

No doubt others have told you the same.

Until you realise that and make that association, when you quote him absolutely no one is going to take you seriously here.

I hope your right, I lived and worked in the state's in better times but I could sense unease, increasingly right wing attitudes, my concern is Trump retains (bizzarely) an enormous amount of support in the Republican party and I see no other senior Republican that can take this vile individual on, they seem terrified of him.

yeah exactly and he basically alluded to this in his speech last night. its not the us administrations problem. i need to sit with that reality for awhile that they just dont care.

And the only official duty the Vice President has to they are president of the us senate. They have become more visible in the recent past but unless there’s been some change I’ve missed presiding over the senate is their only official role.