You are harder on Biden than I am, and now 24 hours later the news cycle is already calming down and official reports say the airport is secure and military transports are taking off every hour. Unlike Macron, Biden has pledged to resettle thousands of Afghans. Yes, I worry that our government seems to have had such poor intelligence, but I also suspect we never really understood the country nor its conflicts and paid too little attention or had little access to those who did. I know I have learned a lot in the last few days even though I’ve read about the country before. I don’t feel humiliated as an American, but maybe it’s because I never supported the occupation. It was going to end badly, and I’m glad we’re getting out. I hope most Afghans who want to leave can—that makes me sad, but that alone.
There would never have been a good time to withdraw. I see it as Biden taking one for the team. It was always going to be controversial and probably messy. I agree that we should have been better prepared to get out of there, but I suspect more light will be shed on circumstances within the next few weeks.
How could anyone be surprised by the speed of the Taliban advance. The "Afghan Army" was a mercenary force. When the money left, so did the army. The amount spent arming/training and paying the Afghan army equaled $1million for each 100,000 troops. Take that away and what are they fighting for? Do you really think that the Afghan army will die to allow women to go to university? The world is not populated by righteous Americans but by real people living in shitholes who have to do what it takes to survive.
Rarely have I disagreed so vehemently with a your take Isaac. Or at least how you think it will resonate with most Americans. I don't think his message OR his delivery were anything approaching well resonating. It was Trump level bad on all levels.
You've defined many of the problems with Biden's statement well enough. I just don't get why you think so few Americans will take any of that into account.
This was a HUGE, and totally avoidable "L" for the Biden Administration. And it'll hang around him extra heavy with the reputation he already has for being more wrong than right on foreign policy.
I don't understand why people are still confused over Afghanistan. Three different empires, the British, the Soviets, and now the Americans, have all tried to "conquer" the area over the past 300 years and have all failed. You can't make a people fight for their rights, they need to figure that out themselves, and so far it looks like not a lot of them actually care enough to fight back. There are some pretty corrupt places in the US, but if some foreign military force tried to invade any one of the US states/regions, absolutely guarantee people would be fight back tooth and nail. The "punditocracy" will talk all day about this US intelligence/military failure, but they won't say a damn thing that matters about China and its Muslim cleansing.
You are harder on Biden than I am, and now 24 hours later the news cycle is already calming down and official reports say the airport is secure and military transports are taking off every hour. Unlike Macron, Biden has pledged to resettle thousands of Afghans. Yes, I worry that our government seems to have had such poor intelligence, but I also suspect we never really understood the country nor its conflicts and paid too little attention or had little access to those who did. I know I have learned a lot in the last few days even though I’ve read about the country before. I don’t feel humiliated as an American, but maybe it’s because I never supported the occupation. It was going to end badly, and I’m glad we’re getting out. I hope most Afghans who want to leave can—that makes me sad, but that alone.
There would never have been a good time to withdraw. I see it as Biden taking one for the team. It was always going to be controversial and probably messy. I agree that we should have been better prepared to get out of there, but I suspect more light will be shed on circumstances within the next few weeks.
How could anyone be surprised by the speed of the Taliban advance. The "Afghan Army" was a mercenary force. When the money left, so did the army. The amount spent arming/training and paying the Afghan army equaled $1million for each 100,000 troops. Take that away and what are they fighting for? Do you really think that the Afghan army will die to allow women to go to university? The world is not populated by righteous Americans but by real people living in shitholes who have to do what it takes to survive.
Wow.
Rarely have I disagreed so vehemently with a your take Isaac. Or at least how you think it will resonate with most Americans. I don't think his message OR his delivery were anything approaching well resonating. It was Trump level bad on all levels.
You've defined many of the problems with Biden's statement well enough. I just don't get why you think so few Americans will take any of that into account.
This was a HUGE, and totally avoidable "L" for the Biden Administration. And it'll hang around him extra heavy with the reputation he already has for being more wrong than right on foreign policy.
Afghanistan today. Tomorrow, history will rhyme in Taiwan.
The difference is that Taiwan was not an invention of the US "defense industry".
God I hope not, but looking at China's "news" outlets it certainly feels that way.
I don't understand why people are still confused over Afghanistan. Three different empires, the British, the Soviets, and now the Americans, have all tried to "conquer" the area over the past 300 years and have all failed. You can't make a people fight for their rights, they need to figure that out themselves, and so far it looks like not a lot of them actually care enough to fight back. There are some pretty corrupt places in the US, but if some foreign military force tried to invade any one of the US states/regions, absolutely guarantee people would be fight back tooth and nail. The "punditocracy" will talk all day about this US intelligence/military failure, but they won't say a damn thing that matters about China and its Muslim cleansing.