Afghanistan

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Son of Butch said:
President Biden did a very good job of reading his speech. Better and more fluid than I anticipated from an old man. But he offered no insight or any pertinent information. I'm sure his handlers will be happy his address/photo op went as well as could be expected. But boy did he turn and move off stage as fast as he could as soon as he finished reading his speech. All smoothly scripted.
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Not too hard to read from a teleprompter.

 
sstterry said:
For years people wanted the US out of Afghanistan. It was bipartisan: Trump and Biden both were adamant about it, and both were right. It's easy to complain about how it was done, and maybe rightfully so, but there was no withdrawal plan that would have prevented Taliban takeover. The Afghans do not want to protect their own country and corruption is and was rampant.
It was a mistake going in 20 years ago and would have been a mistake to stay. Lest we not forget, Trump said he had reached a peace accord with the Taliban just last year.
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It's worth noting that nothing the Taliban has done in the past few days is a violation of that peace agreement. No protections were in place for the Afghan government.

I'm not even complaining about the agreement that Trump's administration made. It set the ball rolling to get out of there. But to act like the collapse of the Afghan government is Biden's fault is just lunacy. The evacuation has been a disaster, and the Biden administration has to own that, but Afghanistan would have fallen to the Taliban whenever the US quit propping it up.
 
Buck Randall said:
It's worth noting that nothing the Taliban has done in the past few days is a violation of that peace agreement. No protections were in place for the Afghan government.

I'm not even complaining about the agreement that Trump's administration made. It set the ball rolling to get out of there. But to act like the collapse of the Afghan government is Biden's fault is just lunacy. The evacuation has been a disaster, and the Biden administration has to own that, but Afghanistan would have fallen to the Taliban whenever the US quit propping it up.
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You really don't watch much news on television do you Buck?
 
TennesseeTuxedo said:
From what I'm learning, he overruled his generals and called the shots in this debacle.
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Listening to the generals is what got us mired into a 20 year war. We were always supposedly one more troop surge away from securing the country for good.

Maintaining the status quo was not really an option. The Taliban has been sitting back and waiting for us to leave according to the agreement. Either we were going to leave, or the Taliban was going to step up the fighting and force us to commit more troops and lives.
 
Buck Randall said:
Listening to the generals is what got us mired into a 20 year war. We were always supposedly one more troop surge away from securing the country for good.

Maintaining the status quo was not really an option. The Taliban has been sitting back and waiting for us to leave according to the agreement. Either we were going to leave, or the Taliban was going to step up the fighting and force us to commit more troops and lives.
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So you're happy with the retreat? You don't give a rip about the women and girls of Afghanistan I gather.
 
TennesseeTuxedo said:
So you're happy with the retreat? You don't give a rip about the women and girls of Afghanistan I gather.
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I called the evacuation a disaster just a few posts up.

Did you want to stay in Afghanistan forever as an occupying force while propping up a puppet government?

I do give a rip about the women and girls of Afghanistan. If every one of them that wants out gets on a plane tomorrow headed for the US, that's fine with me. We could house, feed, and educate them all for a fraction of the war budget, and no American soldiers die doing it.
 
Buck Randall said:
I called the evacuation a disaster just a few posts up.

Did you want to stay in Afghanistan forever as an occupying force while propping up a puppet government?

I do give a rip about the women and girls of Afghanistan. If every one of them that wants out gets on a plane tomorrow headed for the US, that's fine with me. We could house, feed, and educate them all for a fraction of the war budget, and no American soldiers die doing it.
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Yes, I would keep a force there and a large military base. I would also mine their rare earth minerals and ship them back here for industrial use. The women can stay in their own country.
 
TennesseeTuxedo said:
Yes, I would keep a force there and a large military base. I would also mine their rare earth minerals and ship them back here for industrial use. The women can stay in their own country.
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I'm sure families will be proud of their gold stars knowing their son died so you can have cheap lithium batteries.
 
Money/greed is one of the reasons the Taliban so easily took over the provincial capitals.
They have for months (even up to the last 2 years) offered the tribal leaders and tribal councils of places like Helmand and Kandahar big money not to fight them and to agree to let them pass, and to even give their allied supplied weapons to the Taliban and to join them.

Yes, it was definitely a botched 'withdrawal'. Most are. There is no doubt about that, but it began some time go and was increased in pace with the Doha peace agreement from Jan 2020. That agreement basically told the Taliban that Afghan troops would not be receiving coalition or US air support once the withdrawal began in earnest, and air power nowadays is a big part of a ground war.
There was at least one Sec Def that left the administration over the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan and he was very good at his job. He disagreed strongly with the commander in chief and decided it better to resign.
James Mattis.
 
March 2011
"The question we're facing today is, should we leave Afghanistan?
I think the answer is very clear and it's not complicated, of course we should.
As soon as we can. Perpetual occupation of a country is a fruitless venture.
Too much has been lost, the chance of winning, since we don't even know what
we're going to win, doesn't exist. We can't change Afghanistan. Even if you could, you're not suppose to, you don't have the moral authority, you don't have the constitutional authority. We can leave by the end of 2011. If we don't, we'll be there for another decade would be my prediction."
Former Texas congressman - Ron Paul
 
Son of Butch said:
March 2011
"The question we're facing today is, should we leave Afghanistan?
I think the answer is very clear and it's not complicated, of course we should.
As soon as we can. Perpetual occupation of a country is a fruitless venture.
Too much has been lost, the chance of winning, since we don't even know what
we're going to win, doesn't exist. We can't change Afghanistan. Even if you could, you're not suppose to, you don't have the moral authority, you don't have the constitutional authority. We can leave by the end of 2011. If we don't, we'll be there for another decade would be my prediction."
Former Texas congressman - Ron Paul
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Right after he said that, Ron Paul was asked how long he and his fellow Texans were going to stay in Texas...it's been 185 years now....
 

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