I believe i read the claim was that the administration worried the longer we stayed there, the more likely there was to be greatly increased violence. This is at least in part because we agreed with the taliban to leave in may. we stayed only several months later.
I am more frustrated that so many of our allies were left there. Again, though, i read somewhere that this process was slower in part by a laborious process to bring them into the country set up by the trump administration. This sounds at least plausible to me.
I think some people are genuinely upset about this.
But for many, being upset with the reality of the outcome becomes ambiguously mixed with delight at winning some sort of political image contest.
I saw fox news running an image of biden bowing his head, and many self identified conservatives crowing over how it was an “optics fail”. Notice there how it isn’t clear whether they are really upset about afghanistan, or more pathologically interested in political advantage for its own end, ie “owning the libs.”
I appreciate the original poster bringing a different viewpoint in this thread. So this is meant as a response to it, and not a criticism of bringing it up this way here, in this rather meaningless forum, in the first place.
But this simplistic “gotcha” way of looking at it is part of the path that leads to this pathological “owning is the libs”, where critical discussion becomes first radically simplified into bumper sticker choices, and ultimately devolves into crowing over a picture as a way of “owning the libs”.
The photo is an unfortunate result of us living in social-media-meme land. What happened was that he attempted to start a dialogue with Peter Doocy after Doocy asked him a question, and rather than continue the dialogue, Doocy was being antagonistic in his questioning of the president; it visibly flustered Biden. I can’t remember Doocy’s original question, but it was legitimate, just as Biden’s response to it was legitimate.
The question really boils down to how much longer should we have stayed to make sure everyone [however that’s being defined] got out? which really relies on answering how much longer could we have stayed before the Taliban started getting sick of us and reneged on the agreement not to attack us as they rolled through the country re-taking territory? Because we didn’t get 4 extra months to get people out solely because we declared we were doing it. We got it because the Taliban said OK with the expectation that given an extra 4 months, we’d finally get the fuck out.
People - specifically American citizens in Afghanistan - had months of notice. If you want to go way back, they had notice starting March, 2020 right after the deal with the Taliban was made. If you were an American hanging around in late 2020, you knew [should have known] there was a 5/1 deadline and you should probably plan to get the fuck out sooner rather than later. [The Afghan allies were a different problem; the Trump administration intentionally held up SIVs, which dumped that on the Biden administration to deal with. Discussion of that group omitted for the time being.]
Given that they’d had possibly up to 18 months, and this administration’s State Department was sending notices out at least as early as late March, how much extra time do we need to spend there at the risk of damaging relations with the Taliban and incurring more military casualties before we say “OK, American citizens still there - you’ve had your chance, you figure out how to get out on your own?”
Nobody cares about Fox News showing a picture, but as for Peter Doocy being antagonistic, it’s called pushing back, and it’s what reporters are supposed to do. We already know what Biden’s favorite ice cream is, now it’s time for him to answer the tough questions, and not just the preapproved questions from reporters on the list when he’s been given permission ask for questions.
Is this the same State Department that was publically saying it would be a year or two before the Taliban took Kabul, while quietly sitting on intel saying it would be days or weeks?
From Biden’s press conference around 200, most of whom had dual American/Afghani citizenship and chose to stay because they had been there a long time and had family.
How many who wanted to get out but couldn’t? I’m not sure but they got 19 warnings to leave beginning in March.
I’m kind of certain you won’t get this, but I’ll give it a shot anyway because I’m waiting for neighbors to show up so we can go to dinner.
You sign up to go hunting with a group, led by a guide. You get brochures and flyers telling you make sure you wear safety orange for your protection to avoid being mistakenly for a wild animal and shot, get to the lodge where the hunt will take place and pass signs saying make sure you wear safety orange for your protection to avoid being mistakenly for a wild animal and shot, at the campfire that night you hear people swapping stories about how they know people who didn’t wear safety orange and got mistaken for a wild animal and got shot, and before you head out the following morning get told at least half a dozen times make sure you wear safety orange for your protection to avoid being mistakenly for a wild animal and shot.
You decide to ask the guide this wearing safety orange thing to avoid being mistaken for a wild animal, do I really need to do it? The guide responds yeah you really should, but I doubt it would happen on a day like today even though he knows 2 people didn’t wear safety orange yesterday and got shot and killed. So, you decide to skip the safety orange and walk around in your favorite camo gear, and 90 minutes in someone mistakes you for a deer and shoots you in the chest and kills you.
You = the American citizen in Afghanistan
All the warnings = all the notices sent out and that you saw
The prior night’s stories = all the evidence of what was going on in Afghanistan
The guide = the State Department
if you’re going to ignore all the information you’ve been given because someone says well yeah, it probably won’t happen don’t blame someone else for the shitty situation you end up in as a result.
So does 45. And 44. And 43. They all made choices that created the situation.
45 bragged about not needing an exit strategy. He wanted us out in May.
Biden gets credit for drone strike that prevented another attack. He gets credit for warning people to stay away from the airport when the attack happened. The loss of servicemen was tragic. Leaving was always going to be messy. We got a lot of people out after the taliban took over.
Saying it was embarrassing without saying how it could have not been embarrassing, I’m not finding that productive. What is embarrassing is the years of leadership that would not pull us out. I’ll give Trump some credit for at least putting it on the table. Probability best he let someone else execute it for him.
But they aren’t the ones watching a network that had to suddenly cancel one of its prime time stories for lying to undermine US elections. (Ironically the show was cancelled because its lies opened up fox to liability for damage to a private company, not because it damaged our democracy.)
Again, this goes back to the problem with the way you phrased it question. It only pretends to be critical. Instead the answer is practically assumed in the question, so that it is affirming. It is just does not affirm biden.
I did not see the question that fox news asked biden. But i know that as a rule, with definite exceptions, fox has become fundamentally disconnected from critical thinking. Just being better than the trumpist fantasy that it sometimes facilitates doesn’t make it good.
Don’t forget some additional things for which Biden should receive credit:
Biden gets credit for severely underestimating how quickly the Taliban would take over Afghanistan so quickly.
Biden gets credit for leaving our military hardware and technology, weapons, uniforms to fall into the hands of the Taliban (and the Russians and Chinese). I can’t imagine any scenario (short term and long term) where this plays out well for the US.
Biden gets credit for the 10-12 civilian deaths, including children, from the drone strike you mentioned.
Biden gets credit for stranding US citizens and allies (in a war he claims is over) behind enemy lines, even though as recently as July 8, he promised to safely evacuate them.
Biden gets credit for being a confused old man declaring simultaneously that it was a successful withdrawal and also blaming the failure on Trump’s deal with the Taliban.
Would it have been better to say the Taliban was taking over imminently and start a general panic? Maybe I don’t know. Maybe not. But any chance the Afghan government had of holding on rested on not starting a general panic.
I’m sure the defense contractors don’t care, it’s why a basket of defense stocks has out performed the S&P 500. Gotta love the Masters of War. Now they get to design and sell a whole new generation of toys.
3 are you really going to go there after all the collateral damage under Bush, Obama and Trump?
4 all but a handful of Americans got out and some that didn’t was by choice. We’re we ever taking in 400k Afghanistan? I mean I’m cool with it North Dakota has to be at least as hospital as the Afghan mountains. Not sure the Republicons would allow out brown allies here though. They are already all overFaux News bemoaning the number of terrorists we evacuated.
5 so you think Trump negotiating the release of 5000 Taliban prisoners including the cofounder who in now the de facto ruler in exchange for the US to remove all troops by May 1 was the Art of the Deal?
I’m with you on a lot, but not all, of this. Some things were done well. But The_President is giving Biden WAY too much credit here. It’s not like making the decision to withdraw was some heroic, noble thing. We were cornered. The Taliban took Kabul. Sending more troops in to start a battle versus withdrawing is an absolute no-brainer; the public wouldn’t have tolerated the former.
There was also the slow processing of visas, the botched press conferences, the inconsistent responses from the Taliban how they would handle Afghans… on top of that, I watched the presser from today, and he played the political game of blaming his predecessor way too much. That part came out as “W-w-w-welll y-y-y-you see, w-w-what happened was…”
The civilian/children deaths feel a little under-reported to me. I’m still not convinced the terrorists weren’t using the family as a shield, but we shall see what an investigation brings to light on that.
I’m still struggling to understand what “the perfect” solution here is for getting everyone out in a timely and safe fashion with no casualties, given the need to balance at least the following:
Us agreeing with the Taliban [without including the Afghan government] in February, 2020 that we’d be completely out by 5/1/21
Us getting out everyone in the military safely in accordance with that agreement
The Taliban’s desire for us to get out pursuant to that agreement
Us trying to get out every last American citizen [NALB, people]
Us trying to get out all Afghans (and their families) who aided us
Us having somewhere for all of these people to go
The SIV program being shut down until at least Biden took office on January 20 of this year
The interests of ISIS-* in trying to kill us and the Taliban
The Afghan government fleeing like rats off a sinking ship because it was unwilling/unable to stand up to the Taliban as we were departing
When someone comes up with that plan, please post it so the rest of us can review it. Until then, everyone should understand the departure was going to be flawed and we’re all debating how to make it less flawed and yet still accept that people were going to be left behind.