No, the U.S. went there to counter terrorism.
Why the US got involved in Afghanistan - and why it's been difficult to get out
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It get's personal for Biden
- Thread starter Pavel Mosko
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No, the U.S. went there to counter terrorism.
Why the US got involved in Afghanistan - and why it's been difficult to get out
Biden has 40 years as a diplomat. He ran for president. It was his job.Here's the problem:
'Racist hysteria': Former Trump insider reveals the ex-president and Stephen Miller sabotaged Afghan refugees
https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/afghan-refugees-2654738536/
Doing things totally wrong, as his advisors and military elites have admitted... cannot be blamed on those that have come before.
Whatever errors were made previously... they are not excuses to justify the total disaster that the Biden administration enacted.
You don't leave your military base and all the equipment, data and munitions... and pull out before all of those who depended on you for their lives are out first.
This whole "but Trump".... is worn out.
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The Barbarian
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And the guys like Miller are going berserk as Biden has continued to undo much of the damage they did to America. As you learned, it's not so easy to fix some of it. The revelation from a senior administration advisor.
'Racist hysteria': Former Trump insider reveals the ex-president and Stephen Miller sabotaged Afghan refugees
https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/afghan-refugees-2654738536/
The roadblocks they put up to keep the people who helped and protected our troops are coming down, but they greatly delayed the evacuations.
It's wasn't just Miller. There is evidence that Trump was also trying to sabotage the process. And yes, his general staff were disgusted and dismayed with his incompetence.
H.R. McMaster — Trump’s former national security adviser — laid blame squarely at the feet of Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for signing what he deems an ill-fated deal with the Taliban in February 2020.
“Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” McMaster said. “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”
Senior Trump Officials Rip Former Boss for Afghanistan Pact: ‘The Taliban Didn’t Defeat Us. We Defeated Ourselves.’
Trump's Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper:
Similarly, former Trump defense secretary Mark Esper — in a CNN International interview Tuesday — maintained that Trump’s vocal impatience with wanting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan had a significant impact on the situation.
“My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement,” Esper said. “Which is why in the fall, when he was calling for a return of U.S Forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him. A memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further, that we not reduce below 4,500 troops — unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban. Otherwise, we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways.”
...seriously impeded the disengagement from Afghanistan, as Trump's advisors and military leaders have admitted.
Trump has never taken responsibility for anything he's botched. He never will. It's how narcissists are. But his advisors and generals know better, and are making it clear just how badly he messed up.
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The Barbarian
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And we should give Trump the credit for realizing we should leave Afghanistan. That's not what his advisors and military people are blaming him for doing. It's he botched the process by letting racists like Stephen Miller to handle it, which pretty much guaranteed the withdrawal would be fiasco.
I have to give a lot of credit to the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, who, under the impossible conditions Donald Trump imposed on them, managed to extract almost all American civilians, and whose intelligence services greatly reduced the damage done by ISIS terrorists.
I wish the far right would stop dancing on the graves of those brave men and women who successfully protected civilians from ISIS attacks and gave their lives in the process.
I have to give a lot of credit to the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, who, under the impossible conditions Donald Trump imposed on them, managed to extract almost all American civilians, and whose intelligence services greatly reduced the damage done by ISIS terrorists.
I wish the far right would stop dancing on the graves of those brave men and women who successfully protected civilians from ISIS attacks and gave their lives in the process.
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SoldierOfTheKing
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These are men who wanted to keep the troops in Afghanistan. Had their counsel been heeded, we would seen a continuation of the endless wasting of American blood and American resources, which would have been even worse than the debacle that actually occurred. At least with Biden we’re seeing an end. So these men are not even entitled to opinions as to how the matter should have been handled. They have only proposed solutions which are no solutions at all. There promises that “victory was just around the corner” if we just stay in a little longer began to ring just a little hollow after nearly twenty years. If Trump is to be faulted for anything, it is for giving them the time of day at all, the same mistake Obama made his eight years in office.
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JimR-OCDS
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And lets not forget, Biden supported NAFTA and the G-8 which Clinton signed. This sent
jobs to Mexico and overseas, never to return and we saw the result in the pandemic last
year.
Biden also voted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He supported the Hyde Amendment, but opposed it when he decided to run
for president. Now he's pro-abortion, pro-same sex marriage and pro-LGQTQ
issues.
He's a typical politician who lacks moral principles and makes his decisions
according to the way the political wind is blowing.
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You think that troops will not be back in Afghanistan? They are just going to let the Americans, expats, ally civilians and other people die, be enslaved, tortured?
There was a young lady, pregnant and stuck there. She is married to an Afghan man. She didn't want to leave without him. She was at the airport, waiting for hours, at a checkpoint, to be taken to safety.
Now, she is stuck fearing for her life.
Make no mistake, this is not done. Just worse.
Should they have pulled out? Sure. However, in a proper manner where the military was the last boot off the ground. Now, it's a mess and someone will have to go back, risk their lives and save these innocent people who were abandoned.
One group of retired veterans has gone in and saved people.. This should be the number one priority of those that walked away and left them.
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SoldierOfTheKing
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That’s exactly what they’re blaming him for doing. Obama, during his eight years in office, never made good on his promise to pull the troops out of Afghanistan. I don’t believe this is because he wasn’t sincere in his promise. But these advisors were adamant that the troops should stay, and he foolishly listened to them. Trump did too, for a while, otherwise he might have gotten the last of them out while he was still in office.
I not sure how it’s a botching. Stephen Miller has made it quite clear he doesn’t want more Afghans pouring into the country. He has pointed out that that despite all of the rhetoric about “keeping our promise” there was never any promise that if Afghans failed to secure their own country, that they would be allowed access to ours.
These commanders have shown themselves to be too incompetent to even conduct an orderly retreat. The vast amounts of equipment they left behind is testimony to that. That’s a tactical matter, not something that politicians decide.
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The Barbarian
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No, Miller wanted to leave. He just wanted to abandon any Afghan personnel who protected or helped American troops.
Espy, Trump's Secretary of Defense, was criticizing Trump for his reckless plan to leave without expecting the Taliban to keep their part of the agreement, predicting accurately that it would make it nearly impossible to evacuate Americans. He was on board with the idea of withdrawal; he merely objected to the way Trump bungled the job.
Yes. Notice that Biden, unlike Trump, was willing to let his commanders figure out how to manage the evacuations. And they did remarkably well. Biden's main contribution was to unilaterally declare a later withdrawal date. The Taliban wasn't happy, but they complied.
That probably made the difference between almost all Americans getting out, and a large number of them being unable to leave.
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The Barbarian
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I doubt if Trump even considered the implications. Yes his Secretary of Defense and his generals kept telling him it was going to a disaster, but he paid no attention.
“My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement,” Esper said. “Which is why in the fall, when he was calling for a return of U.S Forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him. A memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further, that we not reduce below 4,500 troops — unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban. Otherwise, we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways.”
I notice that our military people just helped another group of Americans get out. It would have been better if Trump had required the Taliban keep their end of the agreement, but that's history now. We'll have to make the best of the mess he left.
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But Joe had the ability and authority to do that - make adjustments - even hold the withdrawal evacuating the citizens first -
why didn't he?
Joe knew the place was crashing back in July and did zero with billions in equipment that could have been used to rescue Americans.
Eight months after Joe took over - eight months after Joe's people were in full charge - he failed.
Joe did zero - nothing but attempt to have a photo opt before 911.
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The Barbarian
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Turns out, not. Miller deliberately gummed things up to delay the process...
How Trump broke the system that offers protection to Afghan allies
How Trump broke the system that offers protection to Afghan allies
In fact, as even republicans are now concededing, Biden got almost all Americans out, even with the roadblocks Trump put up. Mostly, it's because he let the commanders on the ground deal with it, telling them to "be creative." And they were. Smartest thing Biden could have done.
Even much of the Afghan army equipment was rendered inoperable by our troops as they withdrew, drawing the ire of the Taliban and far-right extremists in America. But it was too late. Now, our people are getting the few Americans left out of the country by other means...
The United States evacuated four U.S. citizens from Afghanistan to a third country using an overland route, according to a State Department official.
A State Department official told the Hill that "our embassy greeted the Americans as they crossed the border into the third country."
US evacuates four Americans overland to third country
As you know, this kind of thing was beyond Trump's ability to handle. It's beyond Biden's, too. Which is why he let our generals and their troops do it. They have the expertise to do these things.
Give Biden credit for being smart enough to realize it.
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The Barbarian
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It's personal for Biden. And thank God it was Biden and not Trump trying to manage this mess.
Trump claimed he knew ‘more than the generals.’ Now they want nothing to do with him.
Trump claimed he knew ‘more than the generals.’ Now they want nothing to do with him.
No American civilians killed. About 98% of the 5,000 or so already evacuated, and more coming out today.
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The Barbarian
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No. They're blaming him for surrendering to the Taliban, and not even insisting that the Taliban do what they agreed to do. This, if it wasn't for our intelligence and Biden's attention, could have have killed hundreds of American civilians.
HR McMaster, one of Donald Trump’s former national security advisers, has condemned the deal struck with the Taliban during the previous administration as a “surrender agreement”.
“Our secretary of state [Mike Pompeo] signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Mr McMaster said on Bari Weiss’ podcast Honestly.
“This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”
Former Trump’s adviser says Pompeo signed ‘surrender agreement’ with Taliban
“My concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement,” Esper said. “Which is why in the fall, when he was calling for a return of U.S Forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him. A memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further, that we not reduce below 4,500 troops — unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban. Otherwise, we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways.”
Senior Trump Officials Rip Former Boss for Afghanistan Pact: ‘The Taliban Didn’t Defeat Us. We Defeated Ourselves.’
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SoldierOfTheKing
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Never mind Afghan military equipment - US military leadership didn't have the competence to stop the use of their own. You can't spin the Taliban with US APC's on parade and flying a Blackhawk helicopter in the sky...
...and because Biden is President, all concerned will get to keep their jobs. No accountability for the swamp.
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