Trump messing up Iraq and Afghanistan

I guess he couldn’t seal deals for Trump Hotels in those countries.

1 Like

He wanted to reduce troop counts, and can claim he did as an achievement

The fact that he doesn’t have to deal with the ramifications and will blame any poor outcome on Biden, is pure trumpism

1 Like

It actually sounds like he is claiming he has “brought the troops home”, so a bigger lie behind the action as well

Trump’s 1.0’s agreement left the taliban with 7 billion in American military hardware (Biden also let it happen)

Biden let it happen, without the also. But, we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. All that treasure and personnel that we poured into it, all for nothing.

So Biden was bad for not reinvading Afghanistan after Trump set the path for the US leaving Afghanistan?

I guess I’m lost as to what exactly you think the correct Biden strategy should have been for this.

is it Trump’s fault that Biden’s withdrawal was way too abrupt and involved leaving equipment behind that should’ve at least had charges planted all over it to make it useless?

Pretty much, yeah. Trump didn’t really have a coherent strategy for withdrawal. Like everything else he does is it was just a “concept of a plan”. If he actually cared about the issue he would have done the withdrawal during his first term. Instead he just babbled his typical word salad and left Biden to clean up his mess.

It’s not just a Trump thing. We’ve seen this story play out endlessly in several different ways over the last 50 years. Every time Republicans have been in power in my lifetime they have wrecked the government and economy, then complained about the damage they did when competent people are back in charge.

3 Likes

My understanding is Trump set the timeline.

No idea how much of the 7B old old equipment could have possibly been recovered, or what the actual plan was for it, given it was in a remote part of the world and the only way out was by cargo plane. Guessing it was close to zero.

Should it have been blown up? Maybe? Did we hope the transition government would use it against the Taliban? Also maybe?

We left and the Taliban took over everything pretty quickly. That’s a 20 year failure with more Bush, Obama, and Trump years than Biden years.

1 Like

Perhaps. It does seem like we never really had a master plan for the region. A few trees maybe, but never a forest.

I do appreciate Trump setting a timeline, and Biden adhering to it. We could still be there.

There is a lot of blame to be shared for it ending in a dumpster fire.

1 Like

One of the classic blunders, along with never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!