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

As for all this why isn't he in charge bla crap.

Why did he say he'd get in trouble for answering questions?

If any of those 4 star generals, suggested. Let's get the army out before the civilians and aids. Then yes, they are useless

What military training have you? Have you nuance of deployments in Afghanistan?

Jfc its like a 17 stone man, sitting on the couch, with their 8 bellies, on their 9th beer, screaming at the telly that the most highly trained athletes in the world can't kick a football correctly

This is a bit silly to be honest. There are plenty of people with military training and experience of Afghanistan out there who are also criticial of the manner of the withdrawal. Here's one:

"Dan Berschinski remembers the parade of dignitaries who stopped by his hospital room after his legs were blown off by a mine in Afghanistan in 2009: President Barack Obama, “basically everybody in my chain of command,” even the comedian Jon Stewart. But his dinner with Joe Biden in the kitchen of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center stands out.

Biden, Berschinski said, was one of the only people who went beyond respectful platitudes and listened to the injured soldier’s thoughts on what should happen in Afghanistan.

“I still had wounds open on my body from Afghanistan and he wanted to know what did you see? What did you think?”

A dozen years later, Berschinski still has fondness for the man who would become president and agrees with his impulse to get out of Afghanistan.

But as he watched Kabul fall to the Taliban amid a chaotic U.S. exit this week, he felt conflicted about how Biden handled the withdrawal from a war that has shaped most of his adult life.

“I am frustrated that our government did not have a plan in place,” said Berschinski, who was featured in a 2011 Washington Post story and later penned a CNN op-ed critical of former president Donald Trump. “And I think Biden deserves a fair amount of criticism, and they should have been better prepared to avoid these bad optics. And they should have been ready to help the [Afghan] people who helped us.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-veterans-war-afghanistan-taliban/2021/08/20/40211454-00f7-11ec-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html

This idea that you can simply dismiss an argument by asking for the poster's personal experience/qualifications is a bit silly and can be turned around very quickly too. For example, I've just quoted a guy with military experience in Afghanistan saying there was no plan in place and Biden deserves criticism. Do you, duploelabs, have the military experience to allow you to question that? Does that not make you the 17-stone guy shouting at the experts?

That doesn't address my point though, which is that a 'who are you to question the experts?' argument is just a weak argument, considering what some of the experts themseves have said, and also applies to the poster making that argument themselves and probably 99.9% of boards posters.

When the, so called, "argument" consists of a couple of lines of bullshit by a poster who's probably only interested in trying to do down a president of a particular political persuasion in order to big up "their guy", then yes it can be dismissed quite readily.

As to the "plan", there was one in place. It was Trump's plan. It was for Americans to get on planes and leave the country, while somehow (by magic maybe) there would be an orderly transition of power to whomever. Unfortunately, once the Taliban (the guys that Trump cut a deal with) began to run across the country in double time, chaos and panic set in. Once that happened, no plan in the world would combat that, except flooding the country with troops again. And if Biden had done that, the same people on here crying crocodile tears for Afghanistan would be saying that Biden and the Democrats were "warmongers" and trying to tell everyone that Trump would have done it better.

"No plan survives contact with the enemy" - Von Moltke

Most people arguing that a balls up happened here are doing so because they are right wing talking points.

It is why some are arguing that Joe is not in charge, whilst others are calling for his head. Clearly fox and their ilk need to get their message clear.

My view is that it did not go well, but by the time the mid terms or 2024 comes around, the stats of those lives lost in the withdrawal will pale into insignificance when compared to those lives lost when in occupation. Therefore, it will have a beneficial effect on his numbers in the medium to longterm IMHO.

Anyone who tries to focus on 13 US deaths, a few hundred Afghan civilians at the hands of IS and approximately 10 Afghan civilians at the hands of US military through failed intelligence should consider how they felt about all the senseless deaths that happened in the 20 years of the war, the several thousand US deaths, the 10's of thousand Afghan civilians deaths. Not to mention the lives interrupted, displaced and traumatised over that periods and just where they stood on all the acts that brought this about over that time.

We know where the GOP stand on accountability and responsibility, they held 11 investigations in to Benghazi, they failed to support a single one in to Jan 6th. It was a Republican Administration who started this mess, they have some gall to lambast a Democrat one because the pain and suffering continued as they ended it.

Unlike the other guy?

"Withdrawing from Afghanistan was managed badly, but was the right thing to do. How it could have been managed better is a tough one. So what big mistakes do you think he made?"

Withdrawing from Afghanistan THIS WAY was a big mistake. If it was done by Trump, media would made total global outrage about it. BTW - is it just me or we have two parallel threads about Biden Presidency (boards.ie/discussion/2058129276/biden-harris-presidency-discussion-thread)? I shared interesting link there and I am going to do it here too:

In fairness to Biden it is a hard one to solve.

Building a wall is not acceptable.

Stopping people crossing the border is not acceptable.

Letting too many cross the border is not acceptable.

Deporting people is not acceptable.

All potential border policies are unacceptable.

Good luck to Joe on that one.