Official LRC President Joseph R Biden Thread

Lunacy1 wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

It's easy when it's the US footing an eternal bill for stability. Did the BBC offer an alternate plan? Biden had the guts to finally rip the band aid off and softies all over can't stomach it.

Easy to say while you are sitting comfortably and safely in your living room. Obviously you have no concern for the people of that country. Nor do you have any concern for the safety of the world or respect for the lives and money we have expended there.

It's not about leaving or not. It's about doing it at the right time and in the right way, so the chaos we are seeing would be mitigated. To support what we are seeing is either to show incredible ignorance or insensitivity. Again, things that are easy for you to say because you aren't the one being shot or beheaded. You aren't the one trying to hang onto the outside of a plane because you are that scared for your life.

Trollminator wrote:

Racket, PhD wrote:

No. It's been evident for the past 10 years that this was always going to be the outcome. No amount of guns, logistics, or money was going to change that.

The Pentagon has been asking for "just a few more years and a couple 100 billion more dollars" for the past 15 years, but enough is finally enough. The only other option that could have worked was complete Victorian era style colonization, but that's sort of looked down upon these days.

Yeah, I think after 20 years and $1T it was reasonable to expect the much larger Afghan army and its leadership to be able to hold the fort for a couple of weeks at least. Beyond the US personnel we have to securely move out still it’s all in their hands now.

I’m likely wrong but I hope our failed Afghanistan campaign becomes a learned lesson. These things just don’t work. We have to keep our troops the fk away from enemy soil, especially when no one is welcoming us.

nonequals wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

Yeah, I think after 20 years and $1T it was reasonable to expect the much larger Afghan army and its leadership to be able to hold the fort for a couple of weeks at least. Beyond the US personnel we have to securely move out still it’s all in their hands now.

I’m likely wrong but I hope our failed Afghanistan campaign becomes a learned lesson. These things just don’t work. We have to keep our troops the fk away from enemy soil, especially when no one is welcoming us.

Random thoughts:

1) About the only silver lining is that the way it played out showed beyond ANY shadow of a doubt that we were NEVER going to make the Afghan military self-sustaining. The smarty pants will say that that was obvious. But I don't know that that's totally fair. I think that a reasonable person could assume that a few trillion and LOTS of help from truly well-meaning military allies would get one more than a week or two. Alas, amazingly, it wasn't. Unfortunately, of course, that means that everything that we did there and spent there and died for there OTHER than counter-terrorism for the last 20 years was an almost complete waste. So sad. And maddening. I'm still a little dumbfounded.

2) The above does NOT necessarily mean that we should have pulled out. To me, the question was, "Is it worth it to stay for counter-terrorism in and around AFG? And if yes, how many U.S./allied troops would it take help the Afghans keep the Taliban at bay, and could we do this with a very, very low level of U.S. casualties? We'd take "making AFG self-sustaining" utterly off the table. It would have SIMPLY been a base of operations (maybe just Bagram, or add a few others....Kandahar, Jalalabad?), presuming the AFG government was OK with it. Which I'm guessing that they would have been.

3) None of the above excuses HOW we got out. We obviously SHOULD have taken care of the Afghans who supported us who's lives are now in great danger. BEFORE the Taliban owned everything. Really stupid and irresponsible and un-ethical. And utterly avoidable.

4) In the end, however, this shouldn't (although I obviously know that it will be) viewed primarily as a defeat of the U.S. It's a defeat for Afghanistan. They knew what they'd be getting if they failed. And they were helped more than enough to be able to stop it. And they chose not to do what was necessary.

Trollminator wrote:

Lunacy1 wrote:

Easy to say while you are sitting comfortably and safely in your living room. Obviously you have no concern for the people of that country. Nor do you have any concern for the safety of the world or respect for the lives and money we have expended there.

It's not about leaving or not. It's about doing it at the right time and in the right way, so the chaos we are seeing would be mitigated. To support what we are seeing is either to show incredible ignorance or insensitivity. Again, things that are easy for you to say because you aren't the one being shot or beheaded. You aren't the one trying to hang onto the outside of a plane because you are that scared for your life.

From your post it is clear you have succumbed to your emotions. I did a tour in Afghanistan so spare me your lecture. About 170k lives were lost as a direct result of our baseless war. The broader death count and negative impact in the region can't even be calculated. We spent $1T and risked our lives for 20 years to train an unmotivated and corrupt army. Our former president signed an agreement with the Taliban, agreeing to leave by May of this year. That deadline passed. Besides a drop in infant mortality, increase in women's rights and an uptick in girls' literacy, our campaign was a colossal failure. That their army remained completely inept to hold the fort for a few days and the president fled are not surprising. While I feel for their people and all media is rushing to one-up each other with headlines, this has to be that country's baby now, not ours. People hanging out of planes desperate to get out in the final days is tragic, but in the grand scheme of this conflict it's nothing. You are welcome to try to take some refugees into your home or send money to NGOs if you really care.

Trollminator wrote:

nonequals wrote:

Random thoughts:

1) About the only silver lining is that the way it played out showed beyond ANY shadow of a doubt that we were NEVER going to make the Afghan military self-sustaining. The smarty pants will say that that was obvious. But I don't know that that's totally fair. I think that a reasonable person could assume that a few trillion and LOTS of help from truly well-meaning military allies would get one more than a week or two. Alas, amazingly, it wasn't. Unfortunately, of course, that means that everything that we did there and spent there and died for there OTHER than counter-terrorism for the last 20 years was an almost complete waste. So sad. And maddening. I'm still a little dumbfounded.

2) The above does NOT necessarily mean that we should have pulled out. To me, the question was, "Is it worth it to stay for counter-terrorism in and around AFG? And if yes, how many U.S./allied troops would it take help the Afghans keep the Taliban at bay, and could we do this with a very, very low level of U.S. casualties? We'd take "making AFG self-sustaining" utterly off the table. It would have SIMPLY been a base of operations (maybe just Bagram, or add a few others....Kandahar, Jalalabad?), presuming the AFG government was OK with it. Which I'm guessing that they would have been.

3) None of the above excuses HOW we got out. We obviously SHOULD have taken care of the Afghans who supported us who's lives are now in great danger. BEFORE the Taliban owned everything. Really stupid and irresponsible and un-ethical. And utterly avoidable.

4) In the end, however, this shouldn't (although I obviously know that it will be) viewed primarily as a defeat of the U.S. It's a defeat for Afghanistan. They knew what they'd be getting if they failed. And they were helped more than enough to be able to stop it. And they chose not to do what was necessary.

We have been doing 2) for several years now. The Taliban's patience is eternal and doesn't cost them billions. Nothing was going to prevent the eventual full takeover by the Taliban, nothing. Regarding 3) we obviously had enough intel but lacked imagination and better planning. Biden will pay a price for that. The public will decide if this shortcoming overrides the general catastrophe that the US owns. Re 4) absolutely it's a defeat for the people of Afghanistan. For the politicians and generals, it was a very profitable exercise. It remains insane to think that we could mold a whole nation so profoundly different than us by invading them and feeding a corrupt political machine. I hope we learn our lesson.

nonequals wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

We have been doing 2) for several years now. The Taliban's patience is eternal and doesn't cost them billions. Nothing was going to prevent the eventual full takeover by the Taliban, nothing. Regarding 3) we obviously had enough intel but lacked imagination and better planning. Biden will pay a price for that. The public will decide if this shortcoming overrides the general catastrophe that the US owns. Re 4) absolutely it's a defeat for the people of Afghanistan. For the politicians and generals, it was a very profitable exercise. It remains insane to think that we could mold a whole nation so profoundly different than us by invading them and feeding a corrupt political machine. I hope we learn our lesson.

Not sure what your point is regarding #2? Taliban patience, if they could have been kept at bay, would be irrelevant (you assume that they couldn't have been held at bay indefinitely; I don't know for certain that that's true; they were for 20 years...surely longer than they would have liked). Anyway, we wouldn't care that they were there, per se, as long as they didn't get strong enough to overwhelm the govt. or sufficiently interfere with our CT ops. The big question, of course, is how many of our troops - and not mentioned previously, billions in equipment/supplies to the ANSF - would have been necessary to maintain the status quo indefinitely? Perhaps it was "too many" troops and/or too much money and/or too high of estimated U.S. casualties. I simply don't know what the estimates in these regards might have been. I hope that I find out one day.

Regarding #3, I think that you're giving the intel too much credit. It appears that it happened considerably faster than the U.S. thought it would. Regarding Biden's level of culpability, on the one hand, there's only so much he can do with bad intel (speed of Taliban takeover after announcing departure). On the OTHER hand, he surely could have said, "We WILL do this in a way that absolutely minimizes the risk to Americans and maximizes the number of Afghan translators and such who we get out of the country." The former was almost certainly stipulated (and probably didn't need to be), but it certainly appears that the latter was not.

Lunacy1 wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

It's easy when it's the US footing an eternal bill for stability. Did the BBC offer an alternate plan? Biden had the guts to finally rip the band aid off and softies all over can't stomach it.

Easy to say while you are sitting comfortably and safely in your living room. Obviously you have no concern for the people of that country. Nor do you have any concern for the safety of the world or respect for the lives and money we have expended there.

It's not about leaving or not. It's about doing it at the right time and in the right way, so the chaos we are seeing would be mitigated. To support what we are seeing is either to show incredible ignorance or insensitivity. Again, things that are easy for you to say because you aren't the one being shot or beheaded. You aren't the one trying to hang onto the outside of a plane because you are that scared for your life.

Fat hurts wrote:

Lunacy1 wrote:

Easy to say while you are sitting comfortably and safely in your living room. Obviously you have no concern for the people of that country. Nor do you have any concern for the safety of the world or respect for the lives and money we have expended there.

It's not about leaving or not. It's about doing it at the right time and in the right way, so the chaos we are seeing would be mitigated. To support what we are seeing is either to show incredible ignorance or insensitivity. Again, things that are easy for you to say because you aren't the one being shot or beheaded. You aren't the one trying to hang onto the outside of a plane because you are that scared for your life.

When is the right time and the right way? We've been asking that question for almost 20 years. Do you have an answer?