It’s your opinion, so you pick the word. My only suggestion would be that you define your words going forward.
Well, I guess we wasted a lot of typing here. I should have just simply responded to the first post with:
No.
It would have been easier that trying to be cute with going down the “acting” road.
Yes
This thread should have included a poll with a simple “Yes” being the only and truthful choice. (anything else would have been a lie)
Excluding the grad school theory, we have only two options: he was lying, or he was wrong.
Bidenites: Which one makes you feel better, to say that President Biden has been lying to you about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or say that President Biden has been wrong about how he withdrew from Afghanistan?
Fallibility in my leaders doesn’t bother me. I think it is a real pathology right now in some circles that people expect their leaders to never be wrong. This means when the leaders are wrong, they and their followers are unable to face that reality.
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What is the lie again, “everyone”? All politicians lie because they all use absolutes.
Good thread.
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Then you’re probably very happy with Biden.
First off, it’s nice to see dissenting opinions being allowed on the board again. The last few years, anyone who didn’t agree with the majority of the forum was banned, and it led to a bunch of circlejerking and the forum became a terrible place, with lots of really stupid and esoteric topics being discussed.
That said… what specifically are you thinking he lied on? I think I might have pointed out earlier, there was clearly a disconnect at some point between the ground, his staff, and himself, but… what appeared to be a true lie?
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Over the past 2 weeks, he’s said that he’d be getting all Americans and the Afghans who worked with us out of Afghanistan, that ISIS and Al-Qaeda were gone from Afghanistan, that he had “seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world”, and that no one predicted the Taliban takeover would happen as quickly as it did. He was saying all of that at the same time as reporting from within his administration and from Afghanistan were saying the opposite. And all of his statements have been shown to be false.
They were either all lies or he was simply wrong about everything. Which one do the Bidenites want to defend?
IFYP
Haha, very nice response.
But more seriously, what do you think biden should have done differently? Should we have stayed in afghanistan, for example? Should Biden have warned everybody that the taliban could take over in a matter of weeks, presumably giving public weight to his most pessimistic advisors (assuming that advice made it to him)?
When someone is on the other side, it is easier to pick on the messaging when the policy is something you actually agreed with. Like when Obama lied while trying to provide Americans with healthcare.
Let’s focus on what I asked first. Has he been lying all this time or has he simply been wrong? Which would you like to defend?
In order:
No
Neither
Yes, ALL of the Americans was hyperbole. It was never going to be physically possible to get all of them out, but as I’ve said in the other thread, that “all” word is kind of a trap in this case. When dealing with large numbers such as this, some will inevitably fall through the cracks… you’re an actuary, that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Furthermore, we don’t know EXACTLY how many Americans are there because they didn’t have to register with the embassy, so inevitably there will be some left. But the Taliban (for now) seem to be holding to their agreement of being willing to let Americans out, so I don’t really mind the “all Americans” statement.
I think where he botched it a little more is the Afghans. It is clear we did not feel the same obligation to them, both before the withdrawal when not processing visas, and once the withdrawal began.
I don’t think he was lying, but he was flat-out wrong about al-Qaeda being gone.
What he said about the speed with which the Taliban took over was accurate. No one was predicting that. They knew it would happen, just not that fast.
Beignets or GTFO
It’s much easier to make an intellectually impoverished choice between two simplistic options than to try to give an opinion on what he actually should have done.
For example, just because somebody is wrong doesn’t mean they made the wrong choice. Sometimes there is not information to make the right choice. And sometimes there is no good option.
It’s not clear to me how you think biden might have been wrong.
So again, what do you think Biden should have done?
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He should have divined how James T. Kirk defeated the Kobayashi Maru and altered the present accordingly so he could win the challenge.