ADDED: "I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit."
AND: This was a strong speech. Well delivered. And it would have been cogent if he'd come out and declared that Trump did the right thing in his agreement with the Taliban.
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89 comments:
Well the neo-conservatives who supported constant war (I'm looking at you Max Boot and David French) are most likely regretting their support of Biden right about now. Also, its not the ending of the war, its the bungled manner in which it was done.
Apparently, rear echelon lawyers whose primary job is prosecuting actual soldiers and enforcing unworkable rules of engagement, particularly ones named "Beau", are the bravest and most courageous non-soldier "soldiers" of all time.
So many lies about the Trump agreement. There were conditions that the Taliban had to meet, and they didn't. Therefore, that agreement was null and void.
Shorter Biden: "My first wife, my daughter, and my son Beau were all killed because Donald Trump drove drunk in Afghanistan. Never again. Trunalimunumaprzure!"
But at least you could have conducted a competent exit and not leave behind Americans and SIV holders.
He keeps up with his false choice rhetoric.
25th Amendment Now!
How can the Biden Regime stop the Taliban from having access to the Chinese Marketplace?
Fairly or not, when he states that 90% of Americans who wanted to get out got out, I think of President Jack-Nicholson-at-his-hammiest, in Mars Attacks, after Congress has been vaporized:
“I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of government working for them, and that ain’t bad!”
Joey B. from Wilmington sounds like one tough dude…just ask Corn POP! I have zero respect for the Resident in the White House. He, again, started to allude to his son, Beau, serving in Iraq. But, he never talks about Hunter’s service in the Naval Reserve or how Hunter was thrown out of the Navy for drug use. Is this called selective memory? How dare he try to defend his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? He left Americans behind to fend for themselves so he could meet the self-imposed Aug 31 deadline. Joe Biden is a sad excuse for a man but much worse, he is supposed to be the Commander in Chief. Just the thought of that scares the hell out of me. I do not believe that Joe is capable of working a microwave.
" This was a strong speech. Well delivered."
it IS Amazing, how effective Adderal is. Forget Legalizing Marijuana; we should legalize Amphetamines
"Strong speech"? "Well-delivered"?
We must've heard different speeches. I heard a speech that prolonged the agony of a straw man so badly that he screamed for mercy. Instead of addressing the clusterfuck, he passed the buck to everyone else, blamed Americans for being stuck there, and of course let us know again about Beau, who didn't die in combat or even carry arms there.
Worst, most angering speech I've ever heard a president give. You'd need the Hubble telescope to see the furthest reaches of my contempt for him.
Issuing threats before everyone is out?
That's not strength, it's stupidity.
I realize some, such as Romney, wanted a forever war. I don't think most Americans did, and I don't think most Americans expected a forever exit.
What Americans did expect is for a President to utilize military resources to first secure US citizens in country and repatriate them, then offer immigration and transport to those Afghanis that provided special support to the US and deserved to be offered our support and protection for their assistance, and for those things to occur prior to the military drawdown and withdrawal from country. Instead, we got you, Biden, as a President that cared more about being on-time for a date rather than the well being of human beings that counted on you to be there for them as they were there for our country.
These are all just terrible people. Jen Psaki is a dishonest and horrible person.
Joe Biden is a moral abomination. He fits into the profile of a rapist very well.
History is not going to be kind to this regime.
About as good a speech as Biden could make. A low bar, I'll admit. But what he says is true. There are no good evacuations, although he seems to have thrown away Trump's evacuation plan. But hopefully, we're out of 20 year no-win war. No mas, No mas. Please.
This was a strong speech. Well delivered.
...aaaaand Ann goes back to the dark side, folks. Drive home safely.
"Biden Live"
Or at least a reasonable facsimile of live.
90%
Fucking bastard.
Shorter Biden: “Look, the truth is, Mission Accomplished. I have not yet begun to surrender. Have I told you about my son Beau?”
“It would have been cogent if …”
If pigs had wings they could fly. Biden and company are never going to argue or agree that Trump ever did the right thing ever at any time in his life at all. That is not how they roll. Opponents—particularly Trump—are never right, they are wrong because they are malicious and evil.
Opponents are to be smeared and slandered. Biden is the man who said to a black audience about the gentlemanly Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, “They want to put y’all back in chains!” Think about how evil and slanderous that is. Biden is the lowest of the low.
The man drips with insincerity.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Joe Biden to declare that Trump "did the right thing" about anything.
Missed it. Whatever he managed to say he should still go...
this is just an appetizer in the Biden era.
Why is he yelling? Did he raid Hunter's coke stash?
I agree he spoke with force...he didn't do the whispery thing until a time or two towards the end but I thought he sounded loud, defiant and kind of angry.
They must have upped his dose of methamphetamine.
Althouse writes, "This was a strong speech."
I assume Althouse refers to the style, because the content was weak, as weak and mendacious as anything that has proceeded from the mouth of a President of the United States since"it depends on what the meaning of is is."
"I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit," this is Biden pushing a fallacy. No one asked for a forever exit, assuming that moronic phrase means anything. What Americans want is American citizens safely out of Afghanistan, that would not take forever, or even a year, just a matter of days, perhaps weeks. Biden has often hailed himself as a "foreign policy expert", a diplomat extraordinaire. A diplomat able to tie his own shoelaces ought to be able to settle those days or weeks past August 31 with the Taliban, particular with American power at his back, military or monetary.
Following the safe return of our people, Americans demand a reckoning -- not the usual consequence-free, Janet Reno style I take full responsibility -- we want heads to roll -- mass firings of general officers, Pentagon assholes, State Department flunkeys, specifically Mark Milley and all his staff, Anthony Blinken and all his staff, Lloyd Austin and all his staff. We want them fired, dismissed, disgraced for gross incompetence bordering on treason. No severance pay, no pension, no golden parachute. Personally, I'd like to see a degradation ceremony done on Milley, something like what was done to Alfred Dreyfus, except with more gusto since Dreyfus was innocent and Milley is as guilty as any guilty man in history. I'd love to watch his phony-baloney decorations ripped from his tunic, his stars torn from his epaulets, and his sword broken over the knee of a Marine gunnery sergeant.
"Biden also insisted that there was no way to conduct the withdrawal more smoothly." (National Review).
So the plan went smoothly, including leaving 250,000 US rifles in the hands of the enemy. Is this a joke by Biden?
It was a string of the excuses, deflections and lies of the past month.
Had to end this war..... Does anyone think THAT is the main source of complaints?
No one thought the Afghans would collapse..... We provided air support, maintenance, coordination and intelligence for the Afghans. The Taliban was held at bay under that arrangement. We pulled out of the airbase in the dark of night without telling our Afghan "allies". [If I am allowed a sports analogy] your football team practices all spring. When the first game begins both the offensive and defensive lines are no shows. Even the best runners, receivers and QB are not going to score. Even the best linebackers and defensive backs won't stop the other team. Biden is saying who knew the game would be a blowout. And that's not to mention we were "prepared for any contingency".
Trump made an agreement... Oh yeah, I've read the agreement. It doesn't seem to mention pulling out the military first. Doesn't seem to say keep the Afghans in the dark. Doesn't seem to say give up the airfield.
Hooray we moved a LOT of people out... Yep, our on-the-ground guys can do amazing things. But the need for this was due to your screw up. I can't applaud an arsonist who revels in and takes credit for the good works of the Fire Department.
Gawd,,, there is much more. But this was only a "good" speech if it depends on a strange and strained definition of good.
Listening to Biden now brag and embellish his wonderful "largest airlift in US history" and his wonderful success in spite of obstacles. I am a former military airlift pilot and airlift planner. I have written airlift components of major war plans and contingency operations. I have logged over 230 flying hours in combat conditions. Mr. Biden is a liar! While I take nothing from the bravery of those flying into the Kabul airport, the volume of this airlift did not exceed the passenger throughput of a mid-sized US city airport. It is literally a miracle that, due to the stupidity of Biden's planning, that we haven't seen the burning hulks of C17's at the Kabul airport. Selecting Kabul as the evacuation point, if there was the slightest possiblity of an opposed airlift operation, was monumentally stupid, as was the decision not to leave enough forces incountry to cover our withdrawal. The airfield is indefensible, surrounded by urban area, impossible to secure as the needless deaths of US military demonstrated. Now this fool is bragging about getting so many out while discounting the hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies needlessly left behind. The cognitive dissonance of this speech is staggering, one nonsense strawman argument after another. The scale of this historic planning and decisionmaking failure spans the entire Biden administration. We cannot trust these people with our future. Biden and his entire national security team are a present and future danger to the country---all of them have to go, the sooner the better.
Just for context when Iran collapsed there were 52 hostages. Now I suspect there are a LOT more Americans abandoned than the WH admits, But take their 90 percent figure as true. They got out roughly 5,500 if that is 90% we left 550 there. I hope they don't become hostages.
I suspect the cash flow will be enormous.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghan-interpreter-who-helped-rescue-biden-in-2008-left-behind-after-u-s-exit-11630429285
Afghan Interpreter Who Helped Rescue Biden in 2008 Left Behind After U.S. Exit: Mohammed, stranded in Afghanistan and hiding from the Taliban, makes a White House appeal: ‘Don’t forget me here.’
Thirteen years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then-Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm. Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him.
“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who asked not to use his full name while in hiding, told The Wall Street Journal as the last Americans flew out of Kabul on Monday. “Don’t forget me here.”
Mohammed, his wife, and their four children are hiding from the Taliban after his yearslong attempt to get out of Afghanistan got tangled in the bureaucracy. They are among countless Afghan allies who were left behind when the U.S. ended its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan on Monday.
I'm going to guess that "no valor" Joe didn't have anything to say about Mohammed, his wife, and their four children, or any of the thousands of other people he abandoned to the Taliban
A strong speech doesn't mean it was the right speech. A strong speech doesn't mean he did the right thing.
Throughout history you can find all sorts of people making very strong speeches that were very very wrong.
Well they certainly upped the dosage of whatever they pump into him when it’s time to make a speech. And they wrote an assertive speech for him to read. I’d love to see it fact-checked. And no matter how he polishes the turd, he still left Americans behind. The notion that we’ll just prance in later and get them out at our leisure belies our experience dealing with fundamentalist Islamic regimes like Iran.
Did anyone else think Joe looked different?
I am wondering if that was really Joe Biden or a body double. He looked 10-15 years younger than he has in other appearances in the past 6 months or so.
Donald Trump actually did have a plan to leave Afghanistan by May 2. An orderly plan that would have gotten most of our equipment out or destroyed it. The Taliban had agreed to that plan. Would they have stuck to their agreement? Who knows. But by breaking that agreement, for no reason I've ever seen explained, he released the Taliban from any obligations and we wound up with this mess.
Screw you, Joe. Time to go. Time to open the Vice-Presidency for Donald Trump. Better to have Kamala go first, of course, but if she wants to be prez for month or so, I could live with that.
John Henry
Not even a good politician or a smart one, could thread the needle taking credit for the magnificent airlift yet blaming the timetable set by himself on Trump. It was a hard sell without the lies omissions and half-truths he relied on to keep the fire in his speech. Old Joe’s never as loud and earnest as this unless he’s selling a pig in a poke. He sold it hard. The meds had him jacked up.
But it was thoroughly unconvincing.
Sorry Jenny it was That Trump and his goddamn war.
He started out blaming others.
Then he spent some time constructing the strawman (The war must end)
Then he played the mad dog foaming at the mouth and destroyed his new and shiny strawman
Yes the war needed to be done. Nobody is questioning that decision.
It is the massive FUBAR of the withdrawal that's the problem. And NOBODY in the administration will even admit it is a disaster.
The worst military decision since Little Big Horn is closing Bagram Air Base, and got worse from there.
Everybody that did not resign out of protest for the terrible plan, needs to resign now. They either made the plan and executed this turd, or they agreed to it.
Both are unacceptable.
This is like shitting in someone's bed, and wanting to get kudos about how you cleaned it up.
Ever notice that he never gives speeches in the evening? He was amped up for this one but is likely fast asleep now...
A ‘strong speech’? Is this what matters? It’s not like everyone hasn’t been watching this disaster unfold A ‘mission accomplished’ statement, defending the indefensible isn’t going to change anyone’s understanding of what’s happening.
Words are just words. We all know that.
This is Biden's 3rd or 4th speech on this f*ck up. I guess the thought is that Biden's captivating oratory skill will eventually convince us the pooch really wasn't screwed. We'll see if it works.
It would have been a good speech had we not seen how badly the withdrawal was handled and had Biden not plagiarized the West Wing.
If Biden felt free to put back the original date of withdrawal, why couldn't he also put new conditions on the withdrawal?
If Team Biden considered every contingency, why didn't they consider the possibility that the Afghan government would collapse and all those weapons end up in the hands of the Taliban?
Biden Live now. Ya sure?
This was a strong speech. Well delivered.
Who cares if it was a "strong" speech? I'm sure Monty had a strong speech after Market-Garden, Hitler after Stalingrad, Yamanoto after Midway. MacArthur had a strong speech after the Japanese invaded Philippines. None of this made their performance in those battle any better. All they did was cover their behinds.
Facta non verba. It was a massively botched evacuation. If you consider that they were intending to do this since he was inaugurated, they had months to prepare a reasonable wind down plan. They had months to advise everyone that by sometime in late summer, we would be out of Afghanistan. They had months to redeploy for a withdrawal. Somehow they waited to the last minute and caught everyone off guard when they bugged out. Did they tell our allies? No. Did they work with imbedded Americans to consolidate them for withdrawal? No.
Facta non verba. Strong speeches mean nothing after a bad plan.
By 'strong' I'm sure you mean he seemed defiant, spoke loudly, stood tall. He was the Joe Biden we saw in the Senate for years. And like that Joe Biden, the volume and in-your-face approach could not hide the mischaracterizations of facts, and the insulting, preening on about how magnificent a job they all did.
The world is reeling right now, they did such a magnificent job. People are stranded- Americans and our Afghan allies. Their lives are in danger or already over. Our global allies, such as the UK, are done working with this administration. Japan and Taiwan are working on military training together. Australia is buzzing. France is looking like a leader (France!). NATO is a shell. The EU is eerily quiet. A magnificent job. Biden spent his bluster on Trump. It was all about 'the previous administration'. I'm embarrassed at his lack of testicles, at his lack of maturity, at his seeming unwillingness to actually take responsibiliity for things that got 'out of hand'. It's as if they think they can just ignore the realities, claim victory and everyone will act as if they all get their information from Chuck Todd.
We don't.
To say things were misjudged is to put too light a touch on it. Biden tonight is playing to the media, and people who will be taken by his firmness instead of reality. I can assure you that his team used the same decision making on this speech as they did in their evacuation: How will this play? How will it affect us politically. And like the evacuation they've misjudged.
The trouble is, the administration is playing politics. The rest of the world is not. The rest of the world is scrambling right now. And Blustery Joe is probably in bed now getting an IV for all his trouble, his team high-fiving it for 'getting away with it'.
20 years is forever?
He screwed up the exit and now he hides behind words that were written for him.
FAIL. He should resign in shame.
It’s one thing to decide to call it quits , whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or the Chicago South Side, and how you accomplish your withdrawal. Seems obvious to me. Why can’t Biden and his supporters, including the NeverTrumpers, see that?
The latest word is that the 24 California high school kids are still in Afghanistan.
Did they not want to come home?
Are they dual citizens now?
When they make the Jukebox Musical about the 2020s, the music will be by the Dead Kennedys: California Über Alles, Holiday in Cambodia, Let's Lynch the Landlord, Nazi Punks F#ck Off, etc.
Is American participation in the war in Afghanistan really ended?
If only everyone who voted for Biden had listened to Obama and take it to heart.
"This was a strong speech. Well delivered."
Jesus - did you like the perfect crease in his pants as well?
"Bottom line - 90 percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave."
You have five family members, your neighbor has five family members - are you okay with a President who allows one random person from one of your two families to die or be enslaved?
"MacArthur had a strong speech after the Japanese invaded Philippines."
Actually he didn't. I don't remember him making any speech. Maybe you're thinking of his strong speech when he invaded Leyte in Oct 1944. "People of the Philippines, I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, I stand again on Philippine soil"
Maybe you're thinking of FDR's strong speech after Dec 7th. Good declaration of war speech. But didn't refloat the US Battleships sunk at Pearl harbor.
If 5,500 Americans were evacuated, and 100 to 200 Americans who want to leave remain, how exactly does he compute the success rate of getting out Americans who wanted to leave as 90%? (Maybe 3,500 or so of the Americans were evacuated against their will?!) Biden claimed there were 10k - 15k Americans there at the beginning of the evacs. Funny how afterward the pentagon and state claimed to have no idea how many there were. Dip shit regretted giving a number and now just acts like he never said it and makes up new stats. You literally cannot trust anything he says.
No one will be fired because you can forget about this flunky ever admitting error. He'd sooner challenge you to a push up contest, fat. Or brag about his IQ being higher than yours. And he might be right if you're one of the 9% of students from his class who graduated below him.
But don't forget he had an adult son who was a brave soldier and died (of a common disease, after seeing no combat and returning to the U.S.). Now, you can't blame Joe from taking advantage of that tragedy. It's more relevant at a time like this than his first wife and daughter being killed by a drunk driver, you see. And now we have "Dr." Jill. These people constantly are gas lighting and think we're idiots. And a bunch of us are.
The foreign press across the board is rightly and properly skewering this Installed Administration.
They wont be returning to pro-Biden "normal ops" as the Pravda/Praetorian press in the US has after just barely dipping their toes into ever so slight and gentle admonishment.
From pjmedia.com:
Prediction: The Media Will Lap Up Biden's Afghanistan 'Victory' Speech Like Dogs Returning to Their Vomit
By Paula Bolyard
But I’m sure it’s good, strong vomit.
If I think about what constitutes a strong speech, it would be how it was delivered, the content and if the audience was engaged or not. We have no way of knowing the last point. So, was it a strong speech, well delivered? An old man YELLING into a teleprompter is not my version of a strong speech. No cadence, no change in emphasis, a staccato droning in loud decibels. It came across as someone who knew they were perceived as weak, so they were gonna show us how tough they are. I'm surprised he didn't yell that he'd take the whole Taliban Army behind the high school gym and beat the crap out of them. This was faux strong speech at its theatrical best. To that extent, I guess one could say it was well delivered.
BDS runs deep Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Sad that so many accept the mindless "forever war" label. It is totally wrong, factually and morally both.
I think Ann is playing with us. She says strong speech (whatever that means), but also says it is not "cogent." I did not see it. No opinion other than general observation that Biden at age 78 essentially gifted with the presidency should abandon the political games, tell the truth, and try to unify the country - including by saying he agrees with Trump that it was time to bring the troops home.
I agree with our current President on one of his points:
Deciding to get out of a 20 year, seemingly endless war: Yes.
But execution of policy counts too.
Royally screwing up an evacuation where you had the luxury of months for safe planning? Walking away from a secure exit base in the middle of the night and choosing instead a civilian airport where the opposition can easily walk within 10 feet of your personnel and then detonate themselves?
Sheer stupidity.
When I was a young Naval Medical Officer assigned to the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa and the Indian Ocean, I learned an important precept: leave no man behind. And Mr. President, you left a lot of people behind when you didn't have to.
That is sheer evil.
You may be Commander In Chief, Mr. President, but you sure as hell ain't no Marine, or an honorable Naval Officer.
Stupid and evil is no way to go through life. Your troopers and citizens deserve far better from their leader.
What mystifies me is Biden and most of his team’s lack of humility concerning the disastrous pullout. Only Blinken seems property stressed when he speaks. Is it bravado? Is it a complete lack of comprehension? Is it resolve? Is it a deep understanding that the short term pain would eventually yield to long term good? Is it a sense of insulation all Dems get from true media scrutiny?
I think it’s likely all of the above. But I think it’s a grave misreading of what just happened.
Late speech due to difficulty finding a good vein.
"But why can't I talk about Beau?"
"Look Mr President. Just read the prompter"
AND: This was a strong speech. Well delivered. And it would have been cogent if he'd come out and declared that Trump did the right thing in his agreement with the Taliban.
Biden lied. Strongly. He really is just a piece of shit.
People are being murdered in mass right now. People who are American Citizens and Afghans who helped us. I met some really cool people over there who tried really hard to make their country better for their children.
There was a generation of girls that made it to the age of 15 that were able to read and didn't get raped.
That is over now. They are being taken and raped in mass. It is what the taliban does and why men join the taliban. They don't have money. They are just doing what conquering armies have done for millennia.
It is important to remember that this dishonest bullshit works with some people. Some people have no moral compass.
OldManRick,
"I'm sure Monty had a strong speech after Market-Garden"
That's an interesting historical echo. Montgomery considered Market-Garden 90% successful.
Trump illegally ordered troop strength reduced to 2500 in advance of Inauguration Day. With those numbers, we were totally at mercy of the Taliban, which never stopped its offensive operations after Trump and Pompeo signed terms of surrender a year earlier. Could Biden have followed the will of Congress and the joint chiefs and reversed course? That's what I would have liked to see. But the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats agreed with Trump and Biden.
Both Trumpists and neocons want Biden to resign over an Issis suicide bomber, and to resign over not starting a major military operation against the Taliban to extract scattered dozens of Americans, not to mention tens of thousands of Afghans whom Trump did not give a toss about.
On August 14 who predicted the scale of the actual extractions over the following 2 weeks?
An angry Biden blames Trump for Afghan pullout — then takes credit for it
Typical leftist stalinist writing staff. Blame Trump, but take credit.
Kathy had the same impression I did- Biden was trying to seem tough in the only way he now has the ability to seem tough these days- by yelling a speech at us. A speech full of lies, to boot. I think a non-demented person would have had some humility after shitting the bed they way Biden has these first 7 months, but I have to keep reminding myself that Biden is probably not the person making the day to day choices- his staff and cabinet bear most of the blame here for either making the decisions, or implementing the decisions Biden makes in his shit-for-brains thought process.
Joe biden - America hates you.
Seems to me there's quite a lot of room between "forever exit" and "cut and run abandoning citizens, allies and military equipment"
"forever war" is over? A fourteen hundred year war ended just this week? What a joy it is to be alive in this time.
May as well reread "The Three Conjectures", although I don't think Fernandez figured in China and Russia feeling particularly sporty as well.
I'm pretty sure he didn't foresee the Brits swearing to not have anything to do with a joint military venture as long as this administration is in office. And many others swearing privately. And would "this administration" include the next if it were democrat?
If you're a military recruiter, better get hold of Amway. I hear they can always use some help.
"BDS runs deep Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid"
Sorry, but juvenile snark won't make up for this cluster f*ck. It really is ok to criticize Biden. The bad orange man won't suddenly appear.
... a strong speech. Well delivered. And it would have been cogent ETC.
....
i BELIEVE you know the one word you are looking for but YOU THINK better to put IT this way
AND the one word = BLOWHARD
The fact he began this operation without knowing how many Americans were in Afghanistan tells me he had no intention of getting them all out.
Let’s never forget the State Department was trying to come up with a number in the middle of the evacuation.
That was only after the American people demanded one.
Biden’s speech was “strong” in the way someone foaming at the mouth and yelling “the science is settled” makes a good argument.
I am sorry, but I can't listen to delusional lies. Blaming Trump for something YOU decided because YOU are President is low. Bringing up your dead son when he died of Cancer and not from fighting Taliban is a slap in the face to the dead soldiers families. Now we are hearing that he tried to pressure the Afghan President that the Taliban wasn't winning in July. He lied to us, he is still lying to us, and will continue to lie to us. Why anybody believes anything that comes from the mouth of this plagiarist, is beyond me.
You don't end a war by leaving.
You end a war with unconditional surrender,
something that hasn't happened since 1945
If one is going to condemn Biden for the bungled exit, it's only fair to condemn Bush/Cheney/Obama/Biden/Trump/Pence for their 20 years of a bungled execution of an unjustified, pointless* war.
*(Whatever point the government may have had in mind--and I don't know if there actually was, other than, perhaps, a wish to exact revenge for 9/11...on people who had nothing to do with 9/11--is certainly not what they have disclosed to the public. As is usual, our wars are justified as "good wars" to fight evil, and they are always evil wars fought for hidden profit- or advantage-seeking motives.)
Didn't see the speech, couldn't bear the thought. And it won't work. There's Americans forever left behind. We'll hear from them or about them. There's going to be forever terrorism. All those small arms and American uniforms loose and circulating. There's going to be forever aid. We're sending money to Afghanistan as "humanitarian" aid, increasing the amounts we have been sending. I expect that's how we got the troops out and how we expect to get the remaining Americans acknowledged by the State department out. The forever war is over? It's as if a serial killer was loose and the police were denying the connection between the different bodies found in different places.
Maybe Obama, and to some extent Trump, recognized that getting out could actually be more trouble than staying in. "More trouble" meaning either involving too high a cost or else demanding a lot more concentration, preparation, and coordination than Biden brought to the problem.
All the politicians mentioned in Robert Cook’s comment are gone from govt. in Washington D.C. except for one…Joe Biden. And, if it was up to Joe we would still be hunting Osama Bin Laden. Joe is an old fart who needs to resign and stop fucking up everything he is involved in. (According to Barack Obama.)
Biden is a coward. He is deathly afraid to stand up like a man and take responsibility for the decisions he alone made. So he blames it all on Trump. A coward and a fool is how he will be remembered.
"If one is going to condemn Biden for the bungled exit, it's only fair to condemn Bush/Cheney/Obama/Biden/Trump/Pence for their 20 years of a bungled execution of an unjustified, pointless* war."
Blaming past administrations for the current administration's mistakes is a time honored (and in most cases bogus) tradition in Washington. The fact is that the exit was done on Biden's watch, in Biden's way. The failure belongs to Biden. Not Trump, not Obama, not Bush. None of those people made the choices that created cluster f*ck, and Biden was in favor of the mistakes they did make.
"BDS runs deep Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid"
Sorry, but juvenile snark won't make up for this cluster f*ck. It really is ok to criticize Biden. The bad orange man won't suddenly appear.
There is such a thing as "Biden Derangement Syndrome", but in this case it's Biden that's deranged.
"The failure belongs to Biden. Not Trump, not Obama, not Bush. None of those people made the choices that created cluster f*ck, and Biden was in favor of the mistakes they did make."
They most certainly did...particularly Bush/Cheney, by initiatin a war with no rationale, no objective, no basis in self-defense, no legitimacy.The 20 years of chaos, destruction and murder is a greater catastrophe than the current (inevitable) chaos and violence as the failed occupiers leave.
In this particular instance Biden is called a bungler doing what should be done, (ending what should never have been begun in the first place), while his predecessors are war criminals for initiating and continuing the war.
"All the politicians mentioned in Robert Cook’s comment are gone from govt. in Washington D.C. except for one…Joe Biden."
The problem is none are in prison.
rcocean said...
"MacArthur had a strong speech after the Japanese invaded Philippines."
Actually he didn't.
Actually MacArthur’s statement, “I Shall Return” was not given on the shores of the Philippines, but at an Australian train station, 10 days later. But it may have saved him from being canned like Admiral King was. Read Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy for more details.
MacArthur was an interesting case during WW2. He is credited with "conquering" more territory than an other general. He certainly gave press releases to that effect but much of it was effectively undefended and much of the heaviest fighting came after his victory speech. He was always pushing for overall command in the Pacific. If he had been in command, I sincerely doubt that there would have been a Guadalcanal campaign, a battle of Midway, and the central pacific campaign that under Nimitz brought Japan to it's knees with bombing and submarine warfare. I will give him this, he was an effective administrator of post war Japan.
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