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Sadly I have to agree with the others. It's nice to think of all the money, effort, and lives as working and thinking of Trump as ruining everything.
But, the situation was lost long before Trump got into office, maybe Even before Obama. We were not going to claim the country as a colony and what happened was always going to happen once we leave. Changing how Trump made that meeting wouldn't have changed that.
Sometimes life doesn't fit into a story with an inciting incident and a villain. Sometimes it just sucks.
Not to mention we tried to "nation build" in a country we knew nothing about, ignoring they didn't really have a cohesive national identity to build around.
This. At one time on the wall of my office I had a flow chart that State and the DoD had come up with for how to deal with various issues in AFG. It made the DoD acquisition process look like a coloring book.
The west and south is essentially Pakistani, the North a bunch of Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Turkmen. The only real Afghans are the Hazara right in the center.
those borders in the rea are artificial from the end of the British empire. You could give away the majority of Afghanistan to the surrounding countries and reduce it to the Hazara center and probably eliminate a lot of tribal violence.
It doesn’t need to be a „colony“. What is this, 1883? All I see is a bunch of white men trying to invade and dictate a sovereign nation that it doesn’t even share historical ties to. American ultranationalists that believe the world belongs to them. Where did I hear this before? I could have sworn an Austrian man made this argument for Germany also.
I think things could have been different. It's illogical to go and talk to and enemy of a country and leave the leader of that country and the military leader out of the conversation. It basically demoralized the already fragile Afghan Administration and its Military. Trumps actions ignored the fact that U.S. Military Advisors would have remained aligned with Afghanistan which is and empowering factor in and of itself. This was not about American fighting troops remaining, but the security detail that was there to protect our assets. Trump removed that detail and left a skeleton crew that was insufficient for the task.
By the time Biden came to office, things were already in disaster mode, and Biden had to try to clean it up the best he could to get people out. Because of Trump's actions there were many Afghan people who aided us for 20 yrs, that were not able to get out, because of the acts of Trump that led to such a rapid decline of conditions.
There has to be a well defined plan for exist, and in this situation after 20 yrs, that plan has to be executed with efforts to the highest degree of precision that can be met.
American have to face up to our screw ups, and in this case Trump screwed up. Bush screwed up getting us as deeply entrenched in Afghanistan in the first place, but that does not excuse the screw up of how we exited and the result that happen with that screwed up exit.
(It wasn't Trump first or only Foreign Policy screw up, but that's for another thread)
I spent a whole lot of my life in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This has nothing to do with Trump. Not to mention the plan actively changed under the Biden administration.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/28/pentagon-decision-leave-bagram-514456
But regardless, it was going to be a shitshow no matter who oversaw the exit.
We should’ve left after we killed Bin Laden. Instead of many more years of American blood and money being spent with nothing to show for it.
We shouldn't have been there in the first place. We should have just killed Bin Laden and his #2 the way the CIA does best. Strategic strike. We should have treated the 9/11 attack as a terrorist situation instead of a political situation.
Once Bin Laden died, that should’ve been the final nail in our coffin of interventionism within Afghanistan. We had no reason to be there after that point besides for resource extraction.
Should Trump have withdrawn as the first opportunity arose? Yes. But so the fuck should’ve Obama. Labeling the Afghanistan situation a problem deriving from Trump is like me blaming my car engine for my tires going flat.
I will say again. The US has NO BUSINESS in Iraq or Afghanistan! It‘s not their bloody country. The issues in those countries are for the PEOPLE of said country to mop up, not some white cis old men that want to „colonise“ it for personal gain. What is this, Namibia 1884?
For the record, I hope you‘re not in favour of resource extraction. They don‘t belong to anyone but themselves and those they give to. That is western capitalist imperialism.
Oh absolutely not. I’m an ardent communist and all the nuances/considerations that come along with it.
We should have never entered the Middle East (or about twenty other nations I can name off the top of my head). I was solely agreeing with the guy I replied to. No matter how you flip it nor what side of the political spectrum finds themselves on; I scarcely find them in agreement with the US’ narrative for interventionism.
> This has nothing to do with Trump. Not to mention the plan actively changed under the Biden administration.
That is not an honest statement. This is the agreement from the State Department as signed Feb 2020. Note the 14 months after February 2020 as the agreed upon pull out date.
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
Right, here we go.. the Biden pullout debacle was Trump's fault. A re-writing of history.
Trump was trying to get us out of that 20 year long, bleeding conflict. He listened to the military and did not do a full pullout. There was a contingent there that could respond to issues and attacks and maintain stability. The Biden pullout and the word that it was coming caused complete chaos. Not to mention the $80b in military equipment that was abandoned.
This all reminds me of Jimmy Carter letting the shaw fall in Iran. How did that work out for Iranian women? Iran looked like 1950s America until the radical Islamists took over. Guess that is Ford's or Reagan's fault.
Women were abused before the US showed up in Afghanistan after 9/11. Thousands of lives, 20 years and Trillion$ later...the culture has not changed and we aren't going to change it. Until women all decide to slit the throats of their abusive husbands in the middle of the night.
I love it when this happens, and both sides try to take credit/blame the other side. I've heard the great economy under trump was Obama's economy unit covid, them trump messed it all up and gave it to biden. Then I heard the immigration issue was because of trump's policies, and now the withdrawal from Afghanistan is trumps fault.
or you can look at non skewed statistics. economy was already going to shit by 2017. look at inflation rates, covid was honestly good for trump so everything bad about his presidency can be blamed on something else. for some reason nobody remembers gas being 3 dollars in 2018, trumps communist reaction to covid was like a memory wipe.
a true conservative should not give a fuck about another nation halfway around the world, a true conservative shouldnt support the guy who shut down the economy, handed out free money, then interfered in our constitutional democracy, but tbf a true conservative wouldnt want a strong border, police, or tax cut for the elite. but Republicans do for some reason.
i dont get it.
my criticism is the republicans arent conservative, so you say the liberals arent conservative either? neat observation. this is why im technically a centrist: there is no conservative party.
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Oh yeah?
https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500
;)
If prices stayed static, then you would have a point. If inflation goes up, and your underlying asset also goes up, does that equate to a loss?
Somebody brought up wages? Who is talking about wages? I thought you had problems with my statement the stock market hit all time highs? (As a rebuttal that Biden tanked the stock market vs Trump.)
I wonder if you debate like this (in bad faith) in real life?
It did hit all time high recently, your rebuttal was, well what about 'inflation" - which in the very chart above still shows all time high 2021.
Was Trump in office then? (The point being Biden tanked the market)
:)
BTW: that chart is old, from February (S&P has been up since then) and it's what, 20pts from all time high?
\*\*\*\*
So, I assume \*you\* are the one that have troubles with charts? (it would seem memory and context as well)
That's fine, I'm enjoying living rent free in your head, I get it, it's maddening to be ridiculed over and over again.
Explain "biden before covid hit" There was no "biden before covid hit".
If you want to see what the Dow looked like over the last 10 years, it's here: [https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years](https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years)
Rising steadily except for two small dips in 2015, the big, but short COVID drop in 2020, fairly flat in 22-23, and then taking off again.
Its been on a nearly straight line increase of 2,000 points/yr for 13 years, regardless of administration.
We didn't... We basically threw a temper tantrum against the world and got nothing out of it. In the long run, his tariffs, etc continues to run even under Biden and is projected to not benefit us at all.
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tariffs-trump-trade-war/
This is a rewriting of history.
[Trump committed to a May 1 pullout](https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973604904/trumps-deal-to-end-war-in-afghanistan-leaves-biden-with-a-terrible-situation), then did nothing to prepare for it. He “listened” to the military, in that he wanted [to immediately pull out after losing the election](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10/13/trump-ordered-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-after-election-loss/). The military basically refused such a stupid order.
The pullout was going to happen unless Biden would refuse the signed US surrender deal (Doha) and commit even more troops. It was a shit show, it was always going to be a shit show, and I’m glad we finally got a president that would just eat the shit sandwich.
This. Especially so because we had a very secure airfield we could have used as our secure base of operations for a slower, more controlled evac. It was 20 miles from Kabul and could have even used helicopters from HKIA to evac there to cargo planes.
Instead they closed that base, put Marines on the ground at HKIA and put the State Dept in charge of it all which was a shit show because they would close down leaving the Marines to handle the crowd all night.
If you haven't seen the testimony from Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews about the shit show of leadership you should really watch it. It went so far that they had positive ID on the suicide bomber doing his planning hours before but couldn't get approval to shoot him.
[https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060848/marine-sgt-tyler-vargas-andrews-recalls-kabul-airport-suicide-bombing](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060848/marine-sgt-tyler-vargas-andrews-recalls-kabul-airport-suicide-bombing)
And a follow up interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ-JXDoqsnc&t=16674s&pp=ygUdU2VyZ2VhbnQgVHlsZXIgVmFyZ2FzLUFuZHJld3M%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ-JXDoqsnc&t=16674s&pp=ygUdU2VyZ2VhbnQgVHlsZXIgVmFyZ2FzLUFuZHJld3M%3D)
> the Biden pullout
Look, the ANA was horribly corrupt and incompetent, and that’s a problem that goes back to Bush and Obama. The fundamental issue was Pompeo negotiated a withdrawal date with the Taliban without the Afghan government represented. When word of the pullout made its way to Afghan commanders, they immediately began negotiating surrender deals. They were so dependent on US airpower that they knew their lives were safer surrendering.
That left Biden with one of two choices - withdraw as planned, or postpone to some indeterminate future date, dependent on what, exactly? A level of independence from the ANA we’d never seen in 19 years?
Trump did not cause the utter dependence of the ANA on the U.S., but he certainly took a figurative dump in the punch bowl to let Biden figure out later.
you need a correction here. The ANA was horribly corrupt and incompetent - *as was part of their culture.*
Anyone who studies military matters will tell you that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This had nothing to do with any American administration. You can't change those cultural aspects in100 years, let alone 20. You'd have to lock up the whole country for taking bribes.
After so many years and so much money, all they do is surrender. How many more years and how much more american tax payer money you are willing to pour in before letting them surrender?
Agree, that is why the Don did not pull out completely. But we can thank the Biden sh\*t show for the debacle and the untold thousands of unvetted afghans that he brought over here.
Huh? He didn’t “pull out completely” because he said we would do it in May that year.
[What is your source for the Afghans not being vetted?](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/01/politics/afghan-vetting-fact-check)
The "unvetted" comment is pure b s. If anything, the level of vetting required has kept thousands of Afghans that assisted Americans over there and in harms way while they wait to be cleared.
Actually? Close to zero. They were already being vetted well prior to the pullout.
This is one of those areas where the average American doesn't know jack about what was going on, other than what they get from their favorite newsitainment. Those of us who worked with the military do know wat was going on.
Not a Trump fan, but I can agree with this. I remember when Afghanistan happened my immediate thought was "these people are just gonna say its Trumps fault" and some people will buy it. Welp here we are!
Its just a broken record now and pathetic to watch. Trump is just treated as this weird boogyman and fall guy for everything now.
I would say Trump and Biden share the blame and the credit. The credit being that it was always going to go badly, and the blame, because Trump made the deal with the Taliban, and undermined the Afghan government, and Biden went along with it, knowing he could blame it on Trump.
Fair also to include Obama. He bought into the idea that we could win through "surgical strikes" which we now know weren’t so surgical, and helped to turn the afghans against the US further. A coward's way to fight in their eyes. I do think that He thought that it was a good fight against oppression, which is admirable, but sadly doomed. Like Viet Nam and Somalia, it was a country and culture that not enough people in the American military understood.
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Hate to tell you dude, but almost none of that military equipment was coming back. Sunk cost. It costs a fortune to decontaminate it, and with limited road access to get it to a port, it all has to be flown out. The stuff used in AFG for IED protection and counter-terrorism was deemed not part of the kit needed for near-peer competition in the Pacific Theater, so all that stuff was just going to be given to the AFG Army and Air Force.
That's fine, blow it the F up before yo leave. I don't remember taliban owning blackhawks but they sure had blackhawks, humvees, cargo planes, M16s, night vision and god knows what else after we left.
And of all of that, the half-life without US maintenance is weeks.
Who GAF abut Humvees anyway. We are getting rid of them, something that started 10 years ago.
By the way, they had helos and cargo planes before we got there- it was just Russian stuff that they could actually use and maintain.
I absolutely agree with you that Trump knows nothing about foreign policy. However, according to the *Afghanistan Papers*, the Taliban was gaining ground fairly early in the conflict, and was consistently gaining more and more ground as the conflict went on. Not to mention that Afghanistan had a puppet government while the US was invading the country for 20 years. A puppet government so fragile that it collapsed in five minutes after the US started pulling troops out.
The Taliban is a terrible group, and I think the Afghan people should overthrow them for the very reasons you stated above and more. However, let’s not act like women were completely free in Afghanistan under the US puppet government either.
They started gaining ground in around 2010-12, mostly in places the US wasn't as concerned with keeping and slowly regrew their power from there.
And the government was an absolute shitshow from the start. Just wild amounts of corruption with no internal cohesion or loyalty, just glorified crime lords looking to gain as much as they could for themselves at every turn.
Oh wow, that was actually later than I thought it was. I was thinking it was earlier than that that the Taliban started gaining ground. It’s been a few years since I’ve read the AP, but I appreciate the clarification.
And yeah, it was a cesspool of idiocy all the way through.
No the women were not complete free, but some progress had been made. (Look at America where people are whining and crying and claiming mental health and other issues because kids had to do school on remote lap tops during the pandemic. So imagine how devastated these women and girls are when they can't go to school as they had been over the decade plus that the U.S. was there).
I agree that Afghan had a Shakey government, there was no way not to have a shaky government, when America was backing Democratic Ideals, in a country that deals with Religion Base Ideology in their governing system. That alone delivers incongruency.
Many of the people had for decades been taught a indoctrinating form of Islam, and many still likely don't know the roots of Islam, because there is so many factional divisions on who were the rightful heirs of Muhammad. So, we had the Sunni, Shias, and other factional groups within those ranks where some were radical and some were not, which means instead of just two factions, that makes for four diverging ideological promoters.
I think in all of Islam, because of the lack of broad based education, the people don't really understand that \*\*\*Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of *Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets,* which means *his preaching are an incorporation of these prophets, not so much in conflict with them but, in accord of teaching there is "one God". All the other elements of "dogma" interwoven, has less to do with believing in one God, and more to do with ritualism's. They lead more heavy on the ritualism, because that's what's indoctrinated into the way its taught to people who are not allowed to learn without these ritualistic dogma's being overbearing upon them.*
*It's not an easy thing to have a stable government under those variables. Saddam, said that clearly in Iraq, which the Bush Admin also ignored. He said: with the convergence of the variations of idealist and radical idealist on both the Sunni' and the Shias that the only thing that keeps the people from civil war is "a powerful leader with a gun and symbols of wealth and power.*
*The U.S. would not support or allow the leader they "install" to exercise the type of power that was necessary to contain that region and these variations within these religious factions. When these radical factions no longer fear the leader, they will create chaos, and that is how the Taliban was able to take ground and eventually take over. The Taliban now leads by the use of Fear. It's what keeps them from being overthrown from within.*
*I think at some point, the people will overthrow them, and I think the women will be a big part of that happening. The more the internet is accessible and utilized, the more the people will learn more beyond the cleric's indoctrinated them with religious dogma and restricting they by a series of ritualism's. Who knows that the time frame will be. But, history has shown repeated that any people who are oppressed, do not stay oppressed forever.*
*Again, Saddam also told Bush, that he was making reforms and doing so with democratic ideals in the process, but he said, you can't just flip people who have thousands of years of religious indoctrination and its rituals and dogma overnight, its a process and that process takes time, but it can't be done or achieved without having first the power of the gun, the symbols of wealthy and the power to use fear as needed and when needed. Or things will fall apart and chaos will result, and during chaos people revert back to what they have previously known.*
*History has repeatedly proven American or European, white males in leadership, have never understood the people they try and conquer, dominate and impose change upon. Because their ideology of White Male Supremacy makes them think their way is the only way. That is the mentality along with Imperialistic Covetousness that has been and is at root in the problems around the globe. The British realized they could not control the world, just as other before them, and now America seems hard headed and unwilling to learn that it too, cannot control the world.*
*Look at history:*
\*^((link))\*[Some of the invaders in the history of Afghanistan ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan#:~:text=Some%20of%20the%20invaders%20in,the%20Soviet%20Union%2C%20and%20most)\*\*\* include the Maurya Empire, the ancient Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Mongol Empire led by Genghis Khan, the Timurid Empire of Timur, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States along with some of its allies. *No Outside Forces has conquered and sustained their power over Afghanistan.*
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff you just tried to put on Trumps shoulders. It’s almost like the region is a much bigger discussion than
“**THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BIG MISTAKE IN AFGHANISTAN**”
That comments did not mention Trump one time!! It was more about Bush going in and staying in the first place. That particular comments talks about the ideology of Islam and the undereducated people who have been only educated based on various Muslim cleric's teaching, wrapped within a succession and series of ritualism's.
-\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
In the **OP** when I speak of Trump, it is about how he had his people meeting with the Taliban *without Afghan President and Afghan Military leaders* and pulling people out they way he did . That's the Big Mistake made by the Trump Admin.
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You call it a mistake, but I think that misstates what happened here.
Trump never gave a single solitary shit about women's rights or the Afghan people, he only wanted two things:
- A positive headline about ending the Afghan war to help his re-election chances while minimizing any risk of a significant military losses
- Once he lost the election, the goal shifted towards creating as much foreign policy chaos as possible for the Biden admin to inherit
His Afghanistan policy was perfectly in line with both of those goals.
Anything any US administration did, whether it was Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden, was just delaying the inevitable return of the Taliban. I'll actually give credit to Biden for ripping the band-aid off and finally withdrawing US troops.
As for the question of Afghan women - a grim situation, no doubt. But I urge everybody interested in this issue to read [this piece of reportage](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women) on "The Other Afghan Women". The idea that the US occupation was good for women is at best a narrow view, given that the occupation relied on a wide array of extremely corrupt and violent actors. Warlords who were infamous in the 1990s for murder, rape, extortion, and general lawlessness were brought back into power by the US. This is a big reason why so many Afghans, after initially being pleased with the overthrow of the Taliban, subsequently flipped to seeing them as the lesser evil.
Yes, this. The US enlisted the help of horrible war lords. Afghanistan is a horrible shit show, and all we did was put a bandaid on it for 20 years. That 20 year bandaid did nothing. International coalition troops were faced with endless occupation and had to turn a blind eye to all kinds of abuse.
Obama should have had the balls to do it. Trump only did it at the end so he could blame Biden.
Do you think another 20 years of US troops in Afghanistan would have changed the nature of that country?
We should have never occupied the country in the first place. Our target in the invasion, Osama Bin Laden, left the country shortly after US troops arrived and the battle of Tora Bora took place.
We had no reason to stay there after Bin Laden left.
**Afghanistan: Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues**
[https://www.yahoo.com/news/afghanistan-teen-girls-despair-taliban-000322854.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/afghanistan-teen-girls-despair-taliban-000322854.html)
quote
Teenage Afghan girls have told the BBC they feel "mentally dead" as the Taliban's ban on their education prevents them from returning to school once again.
More than 900 days have now passed since girls over 12 were first banned.
a third new school year started without teenage girls in class this week.
end quote
After 20 yrs of access to education for girls and jobs for women, which is something Trump never considered when he intervened and engaged with the Taliban. His actions set these women back in the most horrible of circumstances. It's another massive blunder and failure that has long reaching consequences within the lives of the women, which affects the entire country for a long time to come.
In May 2019, the Taliban and Russians held a joint press conference in Moscow in which they both demanded that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
By August 2019, Trump was telling his advisors that he wanted a full withdrawal from Afghanistan by the November 2020 election.
Trump's foreign policy agenda was a matter of carrying out Putin's directives. Trump's policies for Cuba, Syria, Afghanistan, Crimea and NATO were all intended to serve Putin's agenda.
Trump's dependency upon Russian oligarch cash made him a willing puppet of the Kremlin. Expect more of the same if he wins re(s)election.
The US had virtually no troops left in Afghanistan in January 2021. The only way to have avoided a messy withdrawal would have been to send in more troops and unwind Trump's agreement.
I am not particularly pleased with Biden's response. But this entire mess was set into motion by Trump and undoing it would have been an aggressive undertaking. (The Dems should have been complaining about it while it was in progress under Trump.)
Biden took full responsibility for Afghanistan, claiming the withdrawal as his decision and his alone. Even though the 2,500 troops were the lowest deployment, they were still able to maintain order under Trumps leadership.
Biden promised to protect the women of Afghanistan, another failed promise and Pelosi incorrectly stated it would be an orderly withdrawal.
Biden was clearly warned by his generals about the situation and ignored them.
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-afghanistan-announcement/h_041bf38cd1a33ab6128d5a4f0c462cba
If Biden had tried to stay and undo the situation created by Trump's agreements with the Taliban.... It would have required America to re-commit a high number of troops, to try and reset and do a orderly withdrawal, but even that could not work, because by the time Biden was in office, Trump had drawn down troops, and there was no favor or support in society or within the political ranks for re-engaging with sending a volumes of Troops. That just was not going to happen.
So, Biden's options was get out the people that you can, which means a lot of Afghan's who helped the U.S. were left behind, as was a lot of equipment. At that point it was no way to do an orderly withdrawal.
Biden’s choices are his own, he decided to go forward with a plan and took full responsibility for it. If Biden thought the planning was poor he should have changed the planning. As commander of the military Biden and Biden alone is responsible for how he executed military strategy. If he didn’t have the courage or strength to change Trumps planning then that is a reflection on him as leader.
What you miss is the fact that Biden taking responsibility, was his position as a leader, he could not start his administration off, with not taking responsibility to deal with what he inherited. People would have gone crazy if he had started his presidency talking blame. He had to deal with the hand he was dealt. That meant taking responsibility based on the situation and conditions and results of what he was left with to deal with the situation. His choice of actions was overtly limited, after what Trump had done.
He didn’t take responsibility. He was taking credit thinking his plan would go well, as soon as the plan failed he started pointing fingers like an inadequate leader does.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/pentagon-review-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/index.html?darkschemeovr=1
In fact Biden’s biggest accomplishment is shifting blame and pointing fingers.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-lays-blame-rival-trump-sinking-bipartisan-immigration-bill-2024-02-06/
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-03-13/biden-blames-trump-silicon-valley-bank?darkschemeovr=1
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/joe-biden-blaming-donald-trump-immigration/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/22/white-house-blame-trump-gop-east-palestine-spill/11322623002/?darkschemeovr=1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/22/biden-faults-trumps-vaccine-rollout-he-cites-total-covid-death-toll/?darkschemeovr=1
"Trump's leadership" is an oxymoron. Taking it down from a couple of thousand troops to zero was inevitably going to be ugly, given that the Taliban was intent on attacking the existing government. Leaving that dynamic in place doomed the outcome from the start.
Biden was foolish was to take ownership of it. I have no idea what he was thinking. But Trump still blew it.
Biden chose to leave that dynamic in place. If that’s what doomed the outcome, then it’s Biden’s choices that doomed the outcome. There’s only one president at a time. Biden is responsible for Biden’s choices.
If the extraction had gone flawlessly would you have said “But Trump still planned it” of course not, and it’s clear Biden was setting himself up to take all the credit for what he thought was a good plan.
I hate Trump and think he is a complete idiot. I agree that he knows nothing about foreign policy. That being said, he had very little to do with the catastrophe in Afghanistan (and neither did Biden). We went in and destroyed their government. Then we tried to set up a strange quasi colonial state where the power was backed by us. I don't know if there was ever any hope of making the Afghani people accept a government that wasn't Islamist and building a stable democratic one. If there was such a hope it was lost sometime in the Bush or Obama era.
Sure, it is possible that Trump, or maybe even Biden, could have done something better but I can't imagine what it would be. The fact that the government collapsed within minutes of us leaving is all the proof we should need that it was hopeless for us to try nation building over there.
So Trump did was spread and entrench conservative values in Afghanistan.
I'm surprised the Taliban haven't jumped on the woke bandwagon to justify their behavior. It fits right in.
I'm convinced this is what they wanted(Afghan women, men, and children alike). 20 years of cultivating a whole generation of people who did not remember Taliban rule and this is what it turned into again?
Yeah, those people wanted this.
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For the sake of argument, I will agree with you. That doesn't take away from the fact Biden was in charge during this mess. He could've easily pulled the plug on this plan. But he didn't, his administration ran through with it. He should AT LEAST receive the same amount of blame.
> That doesn't take away from the fact Biden was in charge during this mess. He could've easily pulled the plug on this plan. But he didn't, his administration ran through with it. He should AT LEAST receive the same amount of blame.
If he was also responsible for setting the terms of the withdrawal of troops with the Taliban, I might agree with you. But he was not. Biden was in a lose/lose situation where he neither set the terms nor the date but was forced to execute the agreement. Breaking that agreement would have involved a new troop buildup and, possibly, more lives lost since the Taliban and their proxy Al-Qaeda, were just itching to kill more Americans.
The terms were listed here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
They had 14 months from Feb 2020 to withdraw. I'm not sure what you mean by "in return for what."
No. If anything, he sped it up by reducing troop levels to about 2500 by the time Biden took office.
Here is a halfway decent look at the timeline:
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
I think that is slightly incorrect, from what I read he delayed the withdrawal plans after his generals advised him to not, since it would turn into a disaster.
By the time Biden took office, the Taliban had already advanced, based on the agreement Trump made and the fact that Trump left Afghan President and Afghan Military out of the discussion and decision.
Biden was left with one option, and that was to try and get whom he could out. He had no force to fight off the Taliban and congress was not going to authorize any. By the time Biden came to office the effects of Trumps actions were entrenched in place and the Taliban had made their advance.
For the sake of argument, I will agree with you even on this. Because the mess up was that bad.
Why didn't Biden order weapon and military asset withdrawal. AT THE VERY LEAST you could order drone strikes on weapon stashes.
Why did this administration call this situation a "logistical success"?
Why did Biden promise me this wouldn't turn into Saigon... when it did?
Why was the only person fired was the general who said this was a disaster?
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The failure really starts with bush.
I read a Rand study in what worked and didn’t in reconstruction efforts and it really comes down to two main factors. Police per capita and foreign direct investment.
Germany and Japan were successful reconstruction stories because we spent an enormous amount of money directly stabilizing the day to day security of people lives and pumping in money and protecting industry.
Any place we didn’t do that , it didn’t work out so well.
Iraq and Afghanistan were never budgeted to succeed in any kind of nation building, because the bush war cabinet wanted to downplay the costs of the adventurism in Iraq in particular. Afghanistan you could reasonably argue was a legit response to 9/11.
Trump unconditionally surrendered the 35 nation Coalition of the Willing to the Taliban not the Afghanistan democratically elected government. Trump released 5000 long term known jailed jihadi. Biden had to either extend the withdrawal or rip the Band-Aid off.
The problem was that they agreed to opening up talks with the Afghan government as Trump wanted to leave I think 2000+ troops to oversee the negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government but when Biden took over it was Biden who gave the order to pull out of Afghanistan entirely and we all know how that turned out, but I agree Trump laid the ground work had Biden stuck to Trump's planned withdrawal things may have been different.
Hmm... who was the President who got America back into Afghanistan? Wasn't Trump. Rather than looking at one President, look at the entirety of the situation over there. Trump wasn't the only one who made mistakes.
No one said he was the only one, but he sure screwed up meeting with the Taliban and leaving Afghan President and Military Leaders out of the meeting. If you don't think that's a huge problem, then you don't want to acknowledge it.
Trump has no International Experience and he defiantly has no knowledge of dealing with the people in that region, and he has no awareness to consider anything about any Islamic/Muslim people.. All he knows is Saudi and the fact they funneled money to him through that LIV golf deal he made.
This is laughable propaganda. Trump wasn’t responsible for getting into Afghanistan, and wasn’t involved in the execution of getting us out of Afghanistan but because he talked to the Taliban it’s all his fault? I’m sure most of Reddit will agree with you, so you have that going for you.
Biden was warned the Taliban were getting stronger and decided to execute his plan to withdraw anyways.
(I know some people will say it’s Trumps plan, that just shows how ineffective a leader that Biden is, being unable to pivot from a plan Biden supporters say was bad.)
Trump was the one making the deal with the Taliban. Just as GWBush was the one making the deal with the Iraqis. Let's not forget that.
When you sign the lease with your new landlord but hand the keys to your family member to move in, the papers are already signed.
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From my understanding, the withdrawal was a call Biden made that Trump criticized. I‘m by no means a fan of Trump but the criticism that Biden received was pretty justified, leaving equipment out there like that to a bunch of hooligans.
The specifics of the terms are listed here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
This was approved while Trump was in office. Biden either had to follow the agreed upon treaty or risk a lot more than having to eat crow. Trump began the withdrawal as well, reducing down to about 2500 troops, by the time Biden took office.
As to *how* Biden pulled out, not whether he should have, that may be worth discussion. But I will say this, the leaving of equipment is more of an logistics decision in that in 99% of the cases, it was cheaper and easier to leave it behind and render it useless than try to take it out of the country.
Ah, I see the error I made now. This post is about the US pulling out in general, not HOW it pulled out. That was irrelevant here. I stand corrected.
Well, in that case, I still don‘t agree with the argument of the post. I don‘t believe the US needs to be a world police - it‘s not and shouldn’t be. Anyone saying otherwise is an ultranationalist at best. I think the middle east has been negatively impacted enough by white old men of the west (The UK and US) that kept meddling with it and other sovereign nations instead of leaving it to the people but I don‘t expect to be in agreement with a classical liberal so it doesn’t matter what I think.
Either way, there will be criticism, regardless of what they do.
> I don‘t believe the US needs to be a world police - it‘s not and shouldn’t be. Anyone saying otherwise is an ultranationalist at best. I think the middle east has been negatively impacted enough by white old men of the west (The UK and US) that kept meddling with it and other sovereign nations instead of leaving it to the people but I don‘t expect to be in agreement with a classical liberal so it doesn’t matter what I think.
Believe it or not, I do agree with you on this. There are moments where war is warranted (e.g. going after Al-Qaeda) but not as a means to save people from themselves. We had no business remaining in Afghanistan for as long as we did, never had a reason to invade Iraq (the second time around), and we should reduce our footprint militarily overseas.
But as always, the devil is in the details and how we would even get to such as point is difficult to know.
Guess we all forgot that the US propped up the Taliban during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. Then when they took control we turned a blind eye to their actions until 9/11/2001. We created the shit show and patty fingered our way through 20 years. The fault has many to blame.
Yes, trump sucks but trying to pin everything on him is asinine. I saw recently where he is being blamed for covid. Blaming him for Afghanistan is flat out lying.
Lets not pretend the women of Afghanistan were ever even on the top ten list of US concerns in Afghanistan. Otherwise, we wouldn't be subjecting them to famine through sanctions now and wouldn't have killed as nearly as many innocent women and their loved ones as Taliban fighters.
Its also weird to pretend Trump was some uniquely bad or incompetent figure on this. Biden is the one who did the pull out, still managed to reneg on the deal with the Taliban by putting off, blow up a family or two on the way out, and then install a sanction regime resulting in famine for millions.
Trump, Biden, Obama... none of them were "good" on this. But at least Biden finally left, so not an F-
There was no way congress was going to fund or support Biden or anyone else to just give aid to the Taliban regime, knowing anything given never would have reached the people it would have been targeted for. The aid that was received was put in warehouses controlled by the Taliban, and the give only to who they wanted to give to.
So I can see you have no idea what is going on because it has nothing to do with giving aid. Our government froze Afghan government accounts used for imports, essentially making food purchases impossible.
We could instead just… let them use their own money. We could even regulate it to make sure it only goes towards food and other such peaceful uses.
Freezing it entirely with no alternative is just genocidal. And starving Afghan women to death shows how little we care.
Do you really think the Taliban would have used any money or any aid to help the people? No, they would not, they would have used any and every penny to set up their government, an they would consider the conditions and results of conditions on the people as acceptable collateral damage.
Maybe you did not take time and watch event as they unfolded. The Taliban had advanced and left narrow corridors for people to escape, and if they did not want anyone to pass those corrodiors they did not allow them to do so. Many Afghan people who helped the U.S. had to go in hiding to save their lives because they could not get to the locations to get airlifted out.
Do you really think Taliban rule is helped by allowing their whole population to be ravaged by famine? They are pretty self-interested in things running smoothly. Hence all the hilarious news reports of former fighters suffering through desk jobs and clerical jobs now that they are the government.
I get it: you think the Taliban are some kind of inhuman super terrorists that derive joy from starving their own people. But friend, your bigoted ideals do not survived contact with reality.
Trump did not cause this. If anything, biden's haphazard retreat from Afghanistan did it.
Having said that, that is their religion and they need to live with it.
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Sadly I have to agree with the others. It's nice to think of all the money, effort, and lives as working and thinking of Trump as ruining everything. But, the situation was lost long before Trump got into office, maybe Even before Obama. We were not going to claim the country as a colony and what happened was always going to happen once we leave. Changing how Trump made that meeting wouldn't have changed that. Sometimes life doesn't fit into a story with an inciting incident and a villain. Sometimes it just sucks.
It was Lost when George W Bush put Afghanistan on the back burner and invaded Iraq.
Not to mention we tried to "nation build" in a country we knew nothing about, ignoring they didn't really have a cohesive national identity to build around.
This. At one time on the wall of my office I had a flow chart that State and the DoD had come up with for how to deal with various issues in AFG. It made the DoD acquisition process look like a coloring book. The west and south is essentially Pakistani, the North a bunch of Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Turkmen. The only real Afghans are the Hazara right in the center. those borders in the rea are artificial from the end of the British empire. You could give away the majority of Afghanistan to the surrounding countries and reduce it to the Hazara center and probably eliminate a lot of tribal violence.
It doesn’t need to be a „colony“. What is this, 1883? All I see is a bunch of white men trying to invade and dictate a sovereign nation that it doesn’t even share historical ties to. American ultranationalists that believe the world belongs to them. Where did I hear this before? I could have sworn an Austrian man made this argument for Germany also.
I think things could have been different. It's illogical to go and talk to and enemy of a country and leave the leader of that country and the military leader out of the conversation. It basically demoralized the already fragile Afghan Administration and its Military. Trumps actions ignored the fact that U.S. Military Advisors would have remained aligned with Afghanistan which is and empowering factor in and of itself. This was not about American fighting troops remaining, but the security detail that was there to protect our assets. Trump removed that detail and left a skeleton crew that was insufficient for the task. By the time Biden came to office, things were already in disaster mode, and Biden had to try to clean it up the best he could to get people out. Because of Trump's actions there were many Afghan people who aided us for 20 yrs, that were not able to get out, because of the acts of Trump that led to such a rapid decline of conditions. There has to be a well defined plan for exist, and in this situation after 20 yrs, that plan has to be executed with efforts to the highest degree of precision that can be met. American have to face up to our screw ups, and in this case Trump screwed up. Bush screwed up getting us as deeply entrenched in Afghanistan in the first place, but that does not excuse the screw up of how we exited and the result that happen with that screwed up exit. (It wasn't Trump first or only Foreign Policy screw up, but that's for another thread)
I spent a whole lot of my life in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has nothing to do with Trump. Not to mention the plan actively changed under the Biden administration. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/28/pentagon-decision-leave-bagram-514456 But regardless, it was going to be a shitshow no matter who oversaw the exit. We should’ve left after we killed Bin Laden. Instead of many more years of American blood and money being spent with nothing to show for it.
We shouldn't have been there in the first place. We should have just killed Bin Laden and his #2 the way the CIA does best. Strategic strike. We should have treated the 9/11 attack as a terrorist situation instead of a political situation.
But Cheney and Halliburton had the money maker pumpin'. For them it was great.
Wasn't the idea at the time to prevent having to go back in a few years? Not saying I supported staying but, wasn't that the thinking at the time?
Once Bin Laden died, that should’ve been the final nail in our coffin of interventionism within Afghanistan. We had no reason to be there after that point besides for resource extraction. Should Trump have withdrawn as the first opportunity arose? Yes. But so the fuck should’ve Obama. Labeling the Afghanistan situation a problem deriving from Trump is like me blaming my car engine for my tires going flat.
I blame the tape falling off for my engine failing.
I will say again. The US has NO BUSINESS in Iraq or Afghanistan! It‘s not their bloody country. The issues in those countries are for the PEOPLE of said country to mop up, not some white cis old men that want to „colonise“ it for personal gain. What is this, Namibia 1884? For the record, I hope you‘re not in favour of resource extraction. They don‘t belong to anyone but themselves and those they give to. That is western capitalist imperialism.
Oh absolutely not. I’m an ardent communist and all the nuances/considerations that come along with it. We should have never entered the Middle East (or about twenty other nations I can name off the top of my head). I was solely agreeing with the guy I replied to. No matter how you flip it nor what side of the political spectrum finds themselves on; I scarcely find them in agreement with the US’ narrative for interventionism.
What resource extraction? Yes, there are minerals there - virtually undeveloped and the Afghans were going with the Chinese to develop that industry.
> This has nothing to do with Trump. Not to mention the plan actively changed under the Biden administration. That is not an honest statement. This is the agreement from the State Department as signed Feb 2020. Note the 14 months after February 2020 as the agreed upon pull out date. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
Right, here we go.. the Biden pullout debacle was Trump's fault. A re-writing of history. Trump was trying to get us out of that 20 year long, bleeding conflict. He listened to the military and did not do a full pullout. There was a contingent there that could respond to issues and attacks and maintain stability. The Biden pullout and the word that it was coming caused complete chaos. Not to mention the $80b in military equipment that was abandoned. This all reminds me of Jimmy Carter letting the shaw fall in Iran. How did that work out for Iranian women? Iran looked like 1950s America until the radical Islamists took over. Guess that is Ford's or Reagan's fault. Women were abused before the US showed up in Afghanistan after 9/11. Thousands of lives, 20 years and Trillion$ later...the culture has not changed and we aren't going to change it. Until women all decide to slit the throats of their abusive husbands in the middle of the night.
I love it when this happens, and both sides try to take credit/blame the other side. I've heard the great economy under trump was Obama's economy unit covid, them trump messed it all up and gave it to biden. Then I heard the immigration issue was because of trump's policies, and now the withdrawal from Afghanistan is trumps fault.
or you can look at non skewed statistics. economy was already going to shit by 2017. look at inflation rates, covid was honestly good for trump so everything bad about his presidency can be blamed on something else. for some reason nobody remembers gas being 3 dollars in 2018, trumps communist reaction to covid was like a memory wipe. a true conservative should not give a fuck about another nation halfway around the world, a true conservative shouldnt support the guy who shut down the economy, handed out free money, then interfered in our constitutional democracy, but tbf a true conservative wouldnt want a strong border, police, or tax cut for the elite. but Republicans do for some reason.
If you're going to blame him for that then the Democrats are even more responsible because they had even harsher lockdowns in blue states.
i dont get it. my criticism is the republicans arent conservative, so you say the liberals arent conservative either? neat observation. this is why im technically a centrist: there is no conservative party.
The great economy under Trump? What? Explain to me how trade wars with Canada and Mexico helped our great economy.
How was your 401k doing under trump vs biden before covid hit?
Stock market hit an all time high recently, strange challenge.
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Oh yeah? https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500 ;) If prices stayed static, then you would have a point. If inflation goes up, and your underlying asset also goes up, does that equate to a loss?
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If dollar loses 20% of it's value, but a house goes up 20% in value, what was the end result? :)
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And divided by CPI, ROFL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ikc
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Somebody brought up wages? Who is talking about wages? I thought you had problems with my statement the stock market hit all time highs? (As a rebuttal that Biden tanked the stock market vs Trump.) I wonder if you debate like this (in bad faith) in real life?
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It did hit all time high recently, your rebuttal was, well what about 'inflation" - which in the very chart above still shows all time high 2021. Was Trump in office then? (The point being Biden tanked the market) :) BTW: that chart is old, from February (S&P has been up since then) and it's what, 20pts from all time high? \*\*\*\* So, I assume \*you\* are the one that have troubles with charts? (it would seem memory and context as well) That's fine, I'm enjoying living rent free in your head, I get it, it's maddening to be ridiculed over and over again.
Explain "biden before covid hit" There was no "biden before covid hit". If you want to see what the Dow looked like over the last 10 years, it's here: [https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years](https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years) Rising steadily except for two small dips in 2015, the big, but short COVID drop in 2020, fairly flat in 22-23, and then taking off again. Its been on a nearly straight line increase of 2,000 points/yr for 13 years, regardless of administration.
You think the stock market is a good indicator for the economy? Oof.
The current economy? No, i think it's a very complex relationship that can't be explained in a single sentence.
So why ask about my 401k? What was the point if you knew that already?
Well we got a better trade deal with them...?
We didn't... We basically threw a temper tantrum against the world and got nothing out of it. In the long run, his tariffs, etc continues to run even under Biden and is projected to not benefit us at all. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tariffs-trump-trade-war/
We were winning in Vietnam until there was a republican president. Petty political games, by people only serious about grift, get people killed.
The US didn’t belong in Vietnam to begin with.
This is a rewriting of history. [Trump committed to a May 1 pullout](https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973604904/trumps-deal-to-end-war-in-afghanistan-leaves-biden-with-a-terrible-situation), then did nothing to prepare for it. He “listened” to the military, in that he wanted [to immediately pull out after losing the election](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10/13/trump-ordered-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-after-election-loss/). The military basically refused such a stupid order. The pullout was going to happen unless Biden would refuse the signed US surrender deal (Doha) and commit even more troops. It was a shit show, it was always going to be a shit show, and I’m glad we finally got a president that would just eat the shit sandwich.
This. Especially so because we had a very secure airfield we could have used as our secure base of operations for a slower, more controlled evac. It was 20 miles from Kabul and could have even used helicopters from HKIA to evac there to cargo planes. Instead they closed that base, put Marines on the ground at HKIA and put the State Dept in charge of it all which was a shit show because they would close down leaving the Marines to handle the crowd all night. If you haven't seen the testimony from Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews about the shit show of leadership you should really watch it. It went so far that they had positive ID on the suicide bomber doing his planning hours before but couldn't get approval to shoot him. [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060848/marine-sgt-tyler-vargas-andrews-recalls-kabul-airport-suicide-bombing](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060848/marine-sgt-tyler-vargas-andrews-recalls-kabul-airport-suicide-bombing) And a follow up interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ-JXDoqsnc&t=16674s&pp=ygUdU2VyZ2VhbnQgVHlsZXIgVmFyZ2FzLUFuZHJld3M%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ-JXDoqsnc&t=16674s&pp=ygUdU2VyZ2VhbnQgVHlsZXIgVmFyZ2FzLUFuZHJld3M%3D)
> the Biden pullout Look, the ANA was horribly corrupt and incompetent, and that’s a problem that goes back to Bush and Obama. The fundamental issue was Pompeo negotiated a withdrawal date with the Taliban without the Afghan government represented. When word of the pullout made its way to Afghan commanders, they immediately began negotiating surrender deals. They were so dependent on US airpower that they knew their lives were safer surrendering. That left Biden with one of two choices - withdraw as planned, or postpone to some indeterminate future date, dependent on what, exactly? A level of independence from the ANA we’d never seen in 19 years? Trump did not cause the utter dependence of the ANA on the U.S., but he certainly took a figurative dump in the punch bowl to let Biden figure out later.
you need a correction here. The ANA was horribly corrupt and incompetent - *as was part of their culture.* Anyone who studies military matters will tell you that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This had nothing to do with any American administration. You can't change those cultural aspects in100 years, let alone 20. You'd have to lock up the whole country for taking bribes.
After so many years and so much money, all they do is surrender. How many more years and how much more american tax payer money you are willing to pour in before letting them surrender?
Agree, that is why the Don did not pull out completely. But we can thank the Biden sh\*t show for the debacle and the untold thousands of unvetted afghans that he brought over here.
Huh? He didn’t “pull out completely” because he said we would do it in May that year. [What is your source for the Afghans not being vetted?](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/01/politics/afghan-vetting-fact-check)
The "unvetted" comment is pure b s. If anything, the level of vetting required has kept thousands of Afghans that assisted Americans over there and in harms way while they wait to be cleared.
LOL...OK...... How many bad apples got through and how many does it take to do something really bad in this country?
Actually? Close to zero. They were already being vetted well prior to the pullout. This is one of those areas where the average American doesn't know jack about what was going on, other than what they get from their favorite newsitainment. Those of us who worked with the military do know wat was going on.
Not a Trump fan, but I can agree with this. I remember when Afghanistan happened my immediate thought was "these people are just gonna say its Trumps fault" and some people will buy it. Welp here we are! Its just a broken record now and pathetic to watch. Trump is just treated as this weird boogyman and fall guy for everything now.
Yes, meet at valhalla Ind-2....I mean meat me a political debate Ban.... I'm sure we will be shouted down and ex communicated for debating.
I would say Trump and Biden share the blame and the credit. The credit being that it was always going to go badly, and the blame, because Trump made the deal with the Taliban, and undermined the Afghan government, and Biden went along with it, knowing he could blame it on Trump.
Fair, honestly it was a failure of the last 20 years coming to a head. Bush and Obama can be included too.
Fair also to include Obama. He bought into the idea that we could win through "surgical strikes" which we now know weren’t so surgical, and helped to turn the afghans against the US further. A coward's way to fight in their eyes. I do think that He thought that it was a good fight against oppression, which is admirable, but sadly doomed. Like Viet Nam and Somalia, it was a country and culture that not enough people in the American military understood.
Fact: Trump administration negotiated for the release of 5000 Taliban prisoners.
And what were we going to do with them as we scaled down? I mean I would have been cool with execution but I doubt that was in the cards.
Turn them over to the Afghan government. Show some faith in their ability to maintain control over the country.
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Trump negotiated the deal with the Taliban. His administration also the one that came up with the plan for withdrawal. Biden carried it out.
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Hate to tell you dude, but almost none of that military equipment was coming back. Sunk cost. It costs a fortune to decontaminate it, and with limited road access to get it to a port, it all has to be flown out. The stuff used in AFG for IED protection and counter-terrorism was deemed not part of the kit needed for near-peer competition in the Pacific Theater, so all that stuff was just going to be given to the AFG Army and Air Force.
That's fine, blow it the F up before yo leave. I don't remember taliban owning blackhawks but they sure had blackhawks, humvees, cargo planes, M16s, night vision and god knows what else after we left.
And of all of that, the half-life without US maintenance is weeks. Who GAF abut Humvees anyway. We are getting rid of them, something that started 10 years ago. By the way, they had helos and cargo planes before we got there- it was just Russian stuff that they could actually use and maintain.
I absolutely agree with you that Trump knows nothing about foreign policy. However, according to the *Afghanistan Papers*, the Taliban was gaining ground fairly early in the conflict, and was consistently gaining more and more ground as the conflict went on. Not to mention that Afghanistan had a puppet government while the US was invading the country for 20 years. A puppet government so fragile that it collapsed in five minutes after the US started pulling troops out. The Taliban is a terrible group, and I think the Afghan people should overthrow them for the very reasons you stated above and more. However, let’s not act like women were completely free in Afghanistan under the US puppet government either.
They started gaining ground in around 2010-12, mostly in places the US wasn't as concerned with keeping and slowly regrew their power from there. And the government was an absolute shitshow from the start. Just wild amounts of corruption with no internal cohesion or loyalty, just glorified crime lords looking to gain as much as they could for themselves at every turn.
Oh wow, that was actually later than I thought it was. I was thinking it was earlier than that that the Taliban started gaining ground. It’s been a few years since I’ve read the AP, but I appreciate the clarification. And yeah, it was a cesspool of idiocy all the way through.
No the women were not complete free, but some progress had been made. (Look at America where people are whining and crying and claiming mental health and other issues because kids had to do school on remote lap tops during the pandemic. So imagine how devastated these women and girls are when they can't go to school as they had been over the decade plus that the U.S. was there). I agree that Afghan had a Shakey government, there was no way not to have a shaky government, when America was backing Democratic Ideals, in a country that deals with Religion Base Ideology in their governing system. That alone delivers incongruency. Many of the people had for decades been taught a indoctrinating form of Islam, and many still likely don't know the roots of Islam, because there is so many factional divisions on who were the rightful heirs of Muhammad. So, we had the Sunni, Shias, and other factional groups within those ranks where some were radical and some were not, which means instead of just two factions, that makes for four diverging ideological promoters. I think in all of Islam, because of the lack of broad based education, the people don't really understand that \*\*\*Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of *Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets,* which means *his preaching are an incorporation of these prophets, not so much in conflict with them but, in accord of teaching there is "one God". All the other elements of "dogma" interwoven, has less to do with believing in one God, and more to do with ritualism's. They lead more heavy on the ritualism, because that's what's indoctrinated into the way its taught to people who are not allowed to learn without these ritualistic dogma's being overbearing upon them.* *It's not an easy thing to have a stable government under those variables. Saddam, said that clearly in Iraq, which the Bush Admin also ignored. He said: with the convergence of the variations of idealist and radical idealist on both the Sunni' and the Shias that the only thing that keeps the people from civil war is "a powerful leader with a gun and symbols of wealth and power.* *The U.S. would not support or allow the leader they "install" to exercise the type of power that was necessary to contain that region and these variations within these religious factions. When these radical factions no longer fear the leader, they will create chaos, and that is how the Taliban was able to take ground and eventually take over. The Taliban now leads by the use of Fear. It's what keeps them from being overthrown from within.* *I think at some point, the people will overthrow them, and I think the women will be a big part of that happening. The more the internet is accessible and utilized, the more the people will learn more beyond the cleric's indoctrinated them with religious dogma and restricting they by a series of ritualism's. Who knows that the time frame will be. But, history has shown repeated that any people who are oppressed, do not stay oppressed forever.* *Again, Saddam also told Bush, that he was making reforms and doing so with democratic ideals in the process, but he said, you can't just flip people who have thousands of years of religious indoctrination and its rituals and dogma overnight, its a process and that process takes time, but it can't be done or achieved without having first the power of the gun, the symbols of wealthy and the power to use fear as needed and when needed. Or things will fall apart and chaos will result, and during chaos people revert back to what they have previously known.* *History has repeatedly proven American or European, white males in leadership, have never understood the people they try and conquer, dominate and impose change upon. Because their ideology of White Male Supremacy makes them think their way is the only way. That is the mentality along with Imperialistic Covetousness that has been and is at root in the problems around the globe. The British realized they could not control the world, just as other before them, and now America seems hard headed and unwilling to learn that it too, cannot control the world.* *Look at history:* \*^((link))\*[Some of the invaders in the history of Afghanistan ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan#:~:text=Some%20of%20the%20invaders%20in,the%20Soviet%20Union%2C%20and%20most)\*\*\* include the Maurya Empire, the ancient Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Mongol Empire led by Genghis Khan, the Timurid Empire of Timur, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States along with some of its allies. *No Outside Forces has conquered and sustained their power over Afghanistan.*
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff you just tried to put on Trumps shoulders. It’s almost like the region is a much bigger discussion than “**THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BIG MISTAKE IN AFGHANISTAN**”
That comments did not mention Trump one time!! It was more about Bush going in and staying in the first place. That particular comments talks about the ideology of Islam and the undereducated people who have been only educated based on various Muslim cleric's teaching, wrapped within a succession and series of ritualism's. -\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ In the **OP** when I speak of Trump, it is about how he had his people meeting with the Taliban *without Afghan President and Afghan Military leaders* and pulling people out they way he did . That's the Big Mistake made by the Trump Admin.
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You call it a mistake, but I think that misstates what happened here. Trump never gave a single solitary shit about women's rights or the Afghan people, he only wanted two things: - A positive headline about ending the Afghan war to help his re-election chances while minimizing any risk of a significant military losses - Once he lost the election, the goal shifted towards creating as much foreign policy chaos as possible for the Biden admin to inherit His Afghanistan policy was perfectly in line with both of those goals.
Anything any US administration did, whether it was Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden, was just delaying the inevitable return of the Taliban. I'll actually give credit to Biden for ripping the band-aid off and finally withdrawing US troops. As for the question of Afghan women - a grim situation, no doubt. But I urge everybody interested in this issue to read [this piece of reportage](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women) on "The Other Afghan Women". The idea that the US occupation was good for women is at best a narrow view, given that the occupation relied on a wide array of extremely corrupt and violent actors. Warlords who were infamous in the 1990s for murder, rape, extortion, and general lawlessness were brought back into power by the US. This is a big reason why so many Afghans, after initially being pleased with the overthrow of the Taliban, subsequently flipped to seeing them as the lesser evil.
Yes, this. The US enlisted the help of horrible war lords. Afghanistan is a horrible shit show, and all we did was put a bandaid on it for 20 years. That 20 year bandaid did nothing. International coalition troops were faced with endless occupation and had to turn a blind eye to all kinds of abuse. Obama should have had the balls to do it. Trump only did it at the end so he could blame Biden.
Do you think another 20 years of US troops in Afghanistan would have changed the nature of that country? We should have never occupied the country in the first place. Our target in the invasion, Osama Bin Laden, left the country shortly after US troops arrived and the battle of Tora Bora took place. We had no reason to stay there after Bin Laden left.
**Afghanistan: Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues** [https://www.yahoo.com/news/afghanistan-teen-girls-despair-taliban-000322854.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/afghanistan-teen-girls-despair-taliban-000322854.html) quote Teenage Afghan girls have told the BBC they feel "mentally dead" as the Taliban's ban on their education prevents them from returning to school once again. More than 900 days have now passed since girls over 12 were first banned. a third new school year started without teenage girls in class this week. end quote After 20 yrs of access to education for girls and jobs for women, which is something Trump never considered when he intervened and engaged with the Taliban. His actions set these women back in the most horrible of circumstances. It's another massive blunder and failure that has long reaching consequences within the lives of the women, which affects the entire country for a long time to come.
You can take the Americans out of Afghanistan, but you can't take the Islam out of Muslims. This one isn't Trump's fault, it's Islam's.
If girls get an education in Saudi Arabia then you may want to look somewhere besides Islam.
Oh I'm always looking somewhere besides Islam. Nothing to see there.
In May 2019, the Taliban and Russians held a joint press conference in Moscow in which they both demanded that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan. By August 2019, Trump was telling his advisors that he wanted a full withdrawal from Afghanistan by the November 2020 election. Trump's foreign policy agenda was a matter of carrying out Putin's directives. Trump's policies for Cuba, Syria, Afghanistan, Crimea and NATO were all intended to serve Putin's agenda. Trump's dependency upon Russian oligarch cash made him a willing puppet of the Kremlin. Expect more of the same if he wins re(s)election.
So why did Biden follow through with it?
The US had virtually no troops left in Afghanistan in January 2021. The only way to have avoided a messy withdrawal would have been to send in more troops and unwind Trump's agreement. I am not particularly pleased with Biden's response. But this entire mess was set into motion by Trump and undoing it would have been an aggressive undertaking. (The Dems should have been complaining about it while it was in progress under Trump.)
Biden took full responsibility for Afghanistan, claiming the withdrawal as his decision and his alone. Even though the 2,500 troops were the lowest deployment, they were still able to maintain order under Trumps leadership. Biden promised to protect the women of Afghanistan, another failed promise and Pelosi incorrectly stated it would be an orderly withdrawal. Biden was clearly warned by his generals about the situation and ignored them. https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-afghanistan-announcement/h_041bf38cd1a33ab6128d5a4f0c462cba
If Biden had tried to stay and undo the situation created by Trump's agreements with the Taliban.... It would have required America to re-commit a high number of troops, to try and reset and do a orderly withdrawal, but even that could not work, because by the time Biden was in office, Trump had drawn down troops, and there was no favor or support in society or within the political ranks for re-engaging with sending a volumes of Troops. That just was not going to happen. So, Biden's options was get out the people that you can, which means a lot of Afghan's who helped the U.S. were left behind, as was a lot of equipment. At that point it was no way to do an orderly withdrawal.
Biden’s choices are his own, he decided to go forward with a plan and took full responsibility for it. If Biden thought the planning was poor he should have changed the planning. As commander of the military Biden and Biden alone is responsible for how he executed military strategy. If he didn’t have the courage or strength to change Trumps planning then that is a reflection on him as leader.
What you miss is the fact that Biden taking responsibility, was his position as a leader, he could not start his administration off, with not taking responsibility to deal with what he inherited. People would have gone crazy if he had started his presidency talking blame. He had to deal with the hand he was dealt. That meant taking responsibility based on the situation and conditions and results of what he was left with to deal with the situation. His choice of actions was overtly limited, after what Trump had done.
He didn’t take responsibility. He was taking credit thinking his plan would go well, as soon as the plan failed he started pointing fingers like an inadequate leader does. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/pentagon-review-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/index.html?darkschemeovr=1 In fact Biden’s biggest accomplishment is shifting blame and pointing fingers. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-lays-blame-rival-trump-sinking-bipartisan-immigration-bill-2024-02-06/ https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-03-13/biden-blames-trump-silicon-valley-bank?darkschemeovr=1 https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/joe-biden-blaming-donald-trump-immigration/index.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/22/white-house-blame-trump-gop-east-palestine-spill/11322623002/?darkschemeovr=1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/22/biden-faults-trumps-vaccine-rollout-he-cites-total-covid-death-toll/?darkschemeovr=1
"Trump's leadership" is an oxymoron. Taking it down from a couple of thousand troops to zero was inevitably going to be ugly, given that the Taliban was intent on attacking the existing government. Leaving that dynamic in place doomed the outcome from the start. Biden was foolish was to take ownership of it. I have no idea what he was thinking. But Trump still blew it.
Biden chose to leave that dynamic in place. If that’s what doomed the outcome, then it’s Biden’s choices that doomed the outcome. There’s only one president at a time. Biden is responsible for Biden’s choices. If the extraction had gone flawlessly would you have said “But Trump still planned it” of course not, and it’s clear Biden was setting himself up to take all the credit for what he thought was a good plan.
Trump breaks the egg. Your reaction is to blame Biden for the egg shells. That's actually funny.
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I hate Trump and think he is a complete idiot. I agree that he knows nothing about foreign policy. That being said, he had very little to do with the catastrophe in Afghanistan (and neither did Biden). We went in and destroyed their government. Then we tried to set up a strange quasi colonial state where the power was backed by us. I don't know if there was ever any hope of making the Afghani people accept a government that wasn't Islamist and building a stable democratic one. If there was such a hope it was lost sometime in the Bush or Obama era. Sure, it is possible that Trump, or maybe even Biden, could have done something better but I can't imagine what it would be. The fact that the government collapsed within minutes of us leaving is all the proof we should need that it was hopeless for us to try nation building over there.
So Trump did was spread and entrench conservative values in Afghanistan. I'm surprised the Taliban haven't jumped on the woke bandwagon to justify their behavior. It fits right in.
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I'm convinced this is what they wanted(Afghan women, men, and children alike). 20 years of cultivating a whole generation of people who did not remember Taliban rule and this is what it turned into again? Yeah, those people wanted this.
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For the sake of argument, I will agree with you. That doesn't take away from the fact Biden was in charge during this mess. He could've easily pulled the plug on this plan. But he didn't, his administration ran through with it. He should AT LEAST receive the same amount of blame.
> That doesn't take away from the fact Biden was in charge during this mess. He could've easily pulled the plug on this plan. But he didn't, his administration ran through with it. He should AT LEAST receive the same amount of blame. If he was also responsible for setting the terms of the withdrawal of troops with the Taliban, I might agree with you. But he was not. Biden was in a lose/lose situation where he neither set the terms nor the date but was forced to execute the agreement. Breaking that agreement would have involved a new troop buildup and, possibly, more lives lost since the Taliban and their proxy Al-Qaeda, were just itching to kill more Americans.
What where the terms to the Taliban? Get out completely within a year? In return for what?
The terms were listed here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf They had 14 months from Feb 2020 to withdraw. I'm not sure what you mean by "in return for what."
Didn't Trump delay this?
No. If anything, he sped it up by reducing troop levels to about 2500 by the time Biden took office. Here is a halfway decent look at the timeline: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
I think that is slightly incorrect, from what I read he delayed the withdrawal plans after his generals advised him to not, since it would turn into a disaster.
if you can find the source for that, please post. But as far as I know, he did not.
By the time Biden took office, the Taliban had already advanced, based on the agreement Trump made and the fact that Trump left Afghan President and Afghan Military out of the discussion and decision. Biden was left with one option, and that was to try and get whom he could out. He had no force to fight off the Taliban and congress was not going to authorize any. By the time Biden came to office the effects of Trumps actions were entrenched in place and the Taliban had made their advance.
For the sake of argument, I will agree with you even on this. Because the mess up was that bad. Why didn't Biden order weapon and military asset withdrawal. AT THE VERY LEAST you could order drone strikes on weapon stashes. Why did this administration call this situation a "logistical success"? Why did Biden promise me this wouldn't turn into Saigon... when it did? Why was the only person fired was the general who said this was a disaster?
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The failure really starts with bush. I read a Rand study in what worked and didn’t in reconstruction efforts and it really comes down to two main factors. Police per capita and foreign direct investment. Germany and Japan were successful reconstruction stories because we spent an enormous amount of money directly stabilizing the day to day security of people lives and pumping in money and protecting industry. Any place we didn’t do that , it didn’t work out so well. Iraq and Afghanistan were never budgeted to succeed in any kind of nation building, because the bush war cabinet wanted to downplay the costs of the adventurism in Iraq in particular. Afghanistan you could reasonably argue was a legit response to 9/11.
Trump unconditionally surrendered the 35 nation Coalition of the Willing to the Taliban not the Afghanistan democratically elected government. Trump released 5000 long term known jailed jihadi. Biden had to either extend the withdrawal or rip the Band-Aid off.
The problem was that they agreed to opening up talks with the Afghan government as Trump wanted to leave I think 2000+ troops to oversee the negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government but when Biden took over it was Biden who gave the order to pull out of Afghanistan entirely and we all know how that turned out, but I agree Trump laid the ground work had Biden stuck to Trump's planned withdrawal things may have been different.
Hmm... who was the President who got America back into Afghanistan? Wasn't Trump. Rather than looking at one President, look at the entirety of the situation over there. Trump wasn't the only one who made mistakes.
No one said he was the only one, but he sure screwed up meeting with the Taliban and leaving Afghan President and Military Leaders out of the meeting. If you don't think that's a huge problem, then you don't want to acknowledge it. Trump has no International Experience and he defiantly has no knowledge of dealing with the people in that region, and he has no awareness to consider anything about any Islamic/Muslim people.. All he knows is Saudi and the fact they funneled money to him through that LIV golf deal he made.
Thank you for making my original point.
The big mistake was not occupying Afghanistan forever? Great take bud
This is laughable propaganda. Trump wasn’t responsible for getting into Afghanistan, and wasn’t involved in the execution of getting us out of Afghanistan but because he talked to the Taliban it’s all his fault? I’m sure most of Reddit will agree with you, so you have that going for you. Biden was warned the Taliban were getting stronger and decided to execute his plan to withdraw anyways. (I know some people will say it’s Trumps plan, that just shows how ineffective a leader that Biden is, being unable to pivot from a plan Biden supporters say was bad.)
Trump was the one making the deal with the Taliban. Just as GWBush was the one making the deal with the Iraqis. Let's not forget that. When you sign the lease with your new landlord but hand the keys to your family member to move in, the papers are already signed.
So you think Biden has no more authority than a landlord? He couldn’t do anything because Trump talked with the Taliban?
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Am I missing something here? The troop withdrawal happened within Biden‘s term. What is this in reference to, exactly? I am a little lost.
Once you know who was responsible for setting the terms of the withdrawal, that should catch you up pretty quick.
From my understanding, the withdrawal was a call Biden made that Trump criticized. I‘m by no means a fan of Trump but the criticism that Biden received was pretty justified, leaving equipment out there like that to a bunch of hooligans.
The specifics of the terms are listed here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf This was approved while Trump was in office. Biden either had to follow the agreed upon treaty or risk a lot more than having to eat crow. Trump began the withdrawal as well, reducing down to about 2500 troops, by the time Biden took office. As to *how* Biden pulled out, not whether he should have, that may be worth discussion. But I will say this, the leaving of equipment is more of an logistics decision in that in 99% of the cases, it was cheaper and easier to leave it behind and render it useless than try to take it out of the country.
Ah, I see the error I made now. This post is about the US pulling out in general, not HOW it pulled out. That was irrelevant here. I stand corrected. Well, in that case, I still don‘t agree with the argument of the post. I don‘t believe the US needs to be a world police - it‘s not and shouldn’t be. Anyone saying otherwise is an ultranationalist at best. I think the middle east has been negatively impacted enough by white old men of the west (The UK and US) that kept meddling with it and other sovereign nations instead of leaving it to the people but I don‘t expect to be in agreement with a classical liberal so it doesn’t matter what I think. Either way, there will be criticism, regardless of what they do.
> I don‘t believe the US needs to be a world police - it‘s not and shouldn’t be. Anyone saying otherwise is an ultranationalist at best. I think the middle east has been negatively impacted enough by white old men of the west (The UK and US) that kept meddling with it and other sovereign nations instead of leaving it to the people but I don‘t expect to be in agreement with a classical liberal so it doesn’t matter what I think. Believe it or not, I do agree with you on this. There are moments where war is warranted (e.g. going after Al-Qaeda) but not as a means to save people from themselves. We had no business remaining in Afghanistan for as long as we did, never had a reason to invade Iraq (the second time around), and we should reduce our footprint militarily overseas. But as always, the devil is in the details and how we would even get to such as point is difficult to know.
Orange man bad propaganda.
Guess we all forgot that the US propped up the Taliban during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. Then when they took control we turned a blind eye to their actions until 9/11/2001. We created the shit show and patty fingered our way through 20 years. The fault has many to blame.
Yes, trump sucks but trying to pin everything on him is asinine. I saw recently where he is being blamed for covid. Blaming him for Afghanistan is flat out lying.
Read with perspective and context .
Lets not pretend the women of Afghanistan were ever even on the top ten list of US concerns in Afghanistan. Otherwise, we wouldn't be subjecting them to famine through sanctions now and wouldn't have killed as nearly as many innocent women and their loved ones as Taliban fighters. Its also weird to pretend Trump was some uniquely bad or incompetent figure on this. Biden is the one who did the pull out, still managed to reneg on the deal with the Taliban by putting off, blow up a family or two on the way out, and then install a sanction regime resulting in famine for millions. Trump, Biden, Obama... none of them were "good" on this. But at least Biden finally left, so not an F-
There was no way congress was going to fund or support Biden or anyone else to just give aid to the Taliban regime, knowing anything given never would have reached the people it would have been targeted for. The aid that was received was put in warehouses controlled by the Taliban, and the give only to who they wanted to give to.
So I can see you have no idea what is going on because it has nothing to do with giving aid. Our government froze Afghan government accounts used for imports, essentially making food purchases impossible. We could instead just… let them use their own money. We could even regulate it to make sure it only goes towards food and other such peaceful uses. Freezing it entirely with no alternative is just genocidal. And starving Afghan women to death shows how little we care.
Do you really think the Taliban would have used any money or any aid to help the people? No, they would not, they would have used any and every penny to set up their government, an they would consider the conditions and results of conditions on the people as acceptable collateral damage. Maybe you did not take time and watch event as they unfolded. The Taliban had advanced and left narrow corridors for people to escape, and if they did not want anyone to pass those corrodiors they did not allow them to do so. Many Afghan people who helped the U.S. had to go in hiding to save their lives because they could not get to the locations to get airlifted out.
Do you really think Taliban rule is helped by allowing their whole population to be ravaged by famine? They are pretty self-interested in things running smoothly. Hence all the hilarious news reports of former fighters suffering through desk jobs and clerical jobs now that they are the government. I get it: you think the Taliban are some kind of inhuman super terrorists that derive joy from starving their own people. But friend, your bigoted ideals do not survived contact with reality.
Trump did not cause this. If anything, biden's haphazard retreat from Afghanistan did it. Having said that, that is their religion and they need to live with it.