From the transcript of President Joe Biden's speech today.
He walked out without responding to questions from the press. The transcript records one and only of of the questions shouted at him: "Mr. President, what do you make of the Afghans clinging to the aircraft?"
ADDED: Biden took responsibility. Though he "inherited" a deal President Trump made, he made a choice. There was "a cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict." He stated that cold choice and then said "I stand squarely behind my decision" — my decision. And though he wants us to believe they "planned for every contingency," he admits what he must: "this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated."
He didn't take full responsibility, because he did blame the Afghan forces: "American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war, and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves." But I don't think he blamed other Americans.
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How many more did he just SEND BACK to clean up his mess???
Biden's taking pride in and justifications for his abandoning innocent people -- people we had encouraged to rely on us -- to oppression, rape, destruction, dismemberment and death is disgusting.
He sent more troops there just this past weekend.
There needs to be a separation of two issues. First, was it right to leave Afghanistan? Answer: YES. Secondly, was Biden’s plan a viable one? The Taliban has already answered that in the negative, and emphatically so.
As I commented in another thread a couple days ago, we don’t know that the generals in the Pentagon would have given Trump a viable exit plan when he asked for one, or whether at the behest of Jim Mattis they would have refused to do so. But from where I sit Trump could not not possibly have done worse than Biden.
The issue is the incompetent evacuation.
The issue of ending our occupation of Afghanistan is a smoke screen.
He admits the incompetence: “Gee, this happened quicker than we thought.”
“We” is a fucking a moron.
I did not hear the full speech, but what I did hear was far more well spoken, reasoned, and principally stated then I expected. All good there.
What was painfully deficient was the reality of the failure to wind-down appropriately or support those who supported us in country as their lives are now at risk.
I would have liked to hear a "I'm going to kneecap the intelligence leaders who were responsible for gravely underestimating the speed and force by which the Taliban took over."
Nonetheless, a credit to Biden. In a tough spot, he made a decent speech. Of course, actions and realities tend to be more important than speeches.
I was in Afghanistan 11 years ago. I'm pissed. I don't question why we're leaving now. I question why we didn't do it 10 years ago after we got bin Laden. I'm spending the day thinking of the caskets I saw loaded onto C-130s to fly home and wondering what they died for.
False choice offered by Biden. It was time, or last time, to leave. Why didn't we leave in a competent fashion, particularly because we controlled the timing of our departure? It is because Team Biden, and including the military chiefs who advised him to stay, cannot do things right. He is incompetent. They are incompetent. Biden himself has never been able to do things right. He is a blowhard who cannot back up his bragging.
It is going to get worse from here.
He dodged the main issue. If the decision is to withdraw from Afghanistan, then do it in an orderly way that doesn't leave Afghan people clinging to the outside of a jet and then falling to their deaths.
He dodged the point. The critics aren't saying that we should stay in Afghanistan, they're criticizing the absolute mess that the withdrawal has been.
I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States. Of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of US forces....
The question is not whether we should stay indefinitely. He is arguing the strawman. No one has advocated that position. The question is how do we treat our LIVs and do we look like we are fleeing the battle field.
Not a terrible script. He must be exhausted regurgitating it.
He argued a straw dog. No one was telling him we should stay. Well...maybe his military people were- the ones who brought us there. But the reason there is such tumult is not because we are leaving. It is how we are leaving. That after all the time we had since announcing our intent, right down to a set of dates, we still managed to leave behind a country full of weapons, ammo, helicopters, and jets, US personnel (who just got out), and thousands of innocent Afghans, many of whom worked for us. All of whom followed our lessons on how to live like a Westerner. Those lessons will now prove their guilt and become the instrument of their death.
As always, we have a politician claiming to take responsibility, but making sure others and occurrences out of their control were the real guilty parties. Who knew the Afghan army leaders and troops would lay down their weapons for money or out of fear? Who knew village leaders would take money to welcome the Taliban? I mean- all around the world corrupt leaders take money to take a position. It's called 'crafty' in US politics. In some cases, it's even called 'Presidential', right Joey? Who knew it would happen there? Who knew? It's not like we have an intelligence organization working there.
Joe obfuscated the questions surrounding our leaving. He acted noble in his claiming the buck stops at his desk. He played at being magnanimous when talking about the war in Afghanistan going through 4 Presidents, and he was not going to let it go through a 5th. Trouble is, he has been there for all of it, both as a Senator, a Vice President and President. And before that, during the 1st Gulf War- Joe was part of that as well.
Then he just left. Without answering any questions. After all, he doesn't have to answer to these Kulaks. Why, he's been on the payroll of some of the largest countries in the world. He doesn't need to listen to their questions. Ingrates.
Trump would have handled much of this differently. And he would have stayed and answered all the questions they had, like he did all the time. Unlike our career politicians, who seem to never quite actually admit when they've seriously messed up or been corrupt. Joe's one of the all-timers.
"He walked out without responding to questions from the press."
Biggest Surprize, of the Century!!!
If he really wanted to blame Trump, he should have stuck to the letter of Trump's plan. But he threw out all of Trump's conditions placed on the Taliban. So it wasn't Trump's plan, it was his total lack of a plan. He starts out by saying that he "promised to be. straight with the American people" and then lied right off the bat.
He could have said "It was my judgement that Trump's demands for conditions were just going to extend the conflict" maybe. But he didn't, he blamed Trump for a decision he alone made, well with Harris's input, to withdraw without conditions and without a serious plan.
No one, absolutely no one, is suggesting we not leave. Everyone, everyone, is suggesting his withdrawal was incredibly botched and backwards. Get the people out first then the troops and bring in more if needed until the people are safe. This was a disaster.
Biden took responsibility.
Biden took the illusion of responsibility.
By focusing on the decision to leave, he obscures the lack of responsibility for how it was done.
Had the buck actually stopped with Biden, he would have stayed and taken all questions.
But he chose to state his case and walk off defiantly.
What was understood as obvious before is still applicable --
Either we fight them there or we fight them here. Sorry you folks don't want to fight a war for 20 years. But the fact is that the enemy has been at war with us for 1400 years. And they are going to continue to war against us whether we want to fight or not.
It was clear 20 years ago, when our eyes were opened to the nature of the enemy, that just as they have warred against us for 1400 years, that this fight would go on for the rest of our lives. There will be no peace.
Rue is the word of the day.
He took responsibility for all the good parts of what happened, and none of the bad parts.
Did I miss it, or did Biden completely fail to condemn the brutality and despotism of the Taliban?
I understand that the percentage of Althouse readers who watch MSNBC is just slightly > 0.0%. But MSNBC’s shows, smart as they are, are filled with Biden/Afghan criticism. They’re horrified. Only the Trumpists on Fox are sitting out the debate.
"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." -- Osama bin Laden
The Strong Horse by Lee Smith explains the speed of the mostly peaceful insurrection in Afghanistan.
A mini live blog:
He touted ‘getting Bin Laden’ as an accomplishment…funny coming from the man who told Obama not to pull the trigger...
Then he says there were no other choices. If the only choices were bad, why didn’t he renegotiate a better deal?
Throwing the Afghans under the bus...at least he learned something from Obama.
Now the semi-whisper...did he just spot a nine-year-old in the audience?
Too many flags in the background…his makeup makes him appear to be (yes, I will go there) orange.
Slurring a bit...did he get off his usual cocktail cycle?
We can’t clean up corruption in DC, how the hell can we do it in Kabul?
He claims the Afghan army wouldn’t fight. And he just found this out this week? We had no way to test their resolve all these years?
At least Kamala dodges the big bullet, but she can’t avoid the shrapnel.
Human rights! These folks are barely out of caves...they don’t give two fucks about women’s rights.
I know, let’s set up camps outside of Afghanistan and keep our military there as social workers.
Send our Afghani allies to Iraq instead...we don’t need an uptick in honor killings in Des Moines.
He is struggling to read the teleprompter...and this is the best we have, apparently.
Back to Bin Laden.
Why are we acting as a buffer in Korea’s civil war?
Not counting the flight over, he worked about twenty minutes today.
Good boy...here’s some pudding.
There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d take a question, even from the boot-licking press.
so, it was a Twenty Minute Speach? Without Questions?
Twenty Minutes
In the speach, he said that BECAUSE OF TRUMP; Either
All our troops would have to be out by May 1
OR, we would have to Drastically escalate our position in Afghanistan
THEN, he follows up, saying "THAT'S WHY WE'RE STILL THERE"
If President Trump's pact with the Taliban was for ALL of our troops to be out by May 1st
AND there were still troops there 2 days ago....
HOW was this President Trump's Fault? [this IS August, isn't it?]
*THEN* he says; "We spent over TRILLION DOLLARS!!"
Wow! it normally takes the biden admin literally DAYS to spend a Trillion Dollars!, and we took TWENTY YEARS to spend it in Afghanistan.
After Biden*'s speech and hasty exit, Fox News showed some wet-behind-the-ears spokeswonk from the State Department, saying that the U.S. expects the new Afghanistan government to be "inclusive" and to have a role for women and that the international community would be watching. I laughed out loud at his naivete. You just lost a war to the Taliban, Sparky. You're in no position to be expecting anything. And the new role for women will be as breeders of the next generation of jihadis, nothing else.
How many more lives?” From what I’ve read in news reports today our death toll over the last 17-18 months is exactly 0.
I thought the key part was where the President accepted the assurances of the Afghan President that the Afghan Army would fight, and planned on that taking place. And our intelligence services agreed! We are not getting the smartest folks in to government, that is a sure thing.
According to this table, most casualties took place between 2007 and 2013.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan
It's a bit disingenuous then to imply that we're adding "endless rows" to Arlington National Cemetery all the time.
In the future when we go into a place and need help from the locals, we should pray that they don't remember this.
Biden has no regrets about what he did. And he told you so!
Boy I can assure you of one thing, Taiwan and Japan are not sleeping well tonight.
"But from where I sit Trump could not not possibly have done worse than Biden."
He could not have done any better, either. It is willful self-delusion to think that a futile, pointless, baseless war that could provide no better outcome after 20 years could have had a better outcome with just a little more and and a good(sic) exit plan.
We should never have gone in. Period. Having done so, we should vacated completely and immediately upon bin Laden's escape from the country, capturing him being our alleged reason for invading the country.
"this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated."
So they anticipated failure?
Blaming the Afghan military's inability to fight to protect innocent women and children from a brutal regime is not exactly the talk of a leader. It's the talk of a coward.
From my reading today, there hasn't been one American combat casualty in Afghanistan for 17 months. So why was it so imperative for us to get out, now? Why not next year or the year after or...
We're still in South Korea, Germany, Japan, so why not Afghanistan? I would say being in Afghanistan is far more important than KGJ.
Blessed be the peacemakers
"I stand squarely behind my decision"
But there were two decisions: whether to get out, and how to get out.
"And though he wants us to believe they "planned for every contingency""
It is to laugh. So what would things have looked like if they hadn't "planned"? Did they think to include parachutes for people clinging to airplanes?
Anyway, we're triply f*&%ed: stuck with the indelible memory of the disaster, stuck with hapless, hopeless Biden, and stuck as a country exposed to the world in its ineptitude.
My son has a friend from Ranger School in 1BDE 82nd Airborne now at the airport. He sent my son a screenshot of a text from his former interpreter relating that the Taliban were now in his town, and proceeding with a list of names and biometric data to capture and kill all former interpreters and others associated with the US effort. Brave people who wanted something better for their country are being hunted and killed because Biden couldn’t give a damn to select people who can think and plan. Yeah, it’s all Trump’s and the Afghans’ fault—now back to my vacation.
He knocked down straw men. He made it sound like we had to leave fast or send in thousands more troops. - Hog wash - Holding the air base was foot print enough.
No one is saying we should not have left. People are upset at the botched withdraw. He gave up the air base right at the start WTF? We trained the Afghanistan troops to fight with air support.
"He dodged the point. The critics aren't saying that we should stay in Afghanistan, they're criticizing the absolute mess that the withdrawal has been."
What about the absolute mess the whole invasion and occupation has been? George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were the war criminals and original authors of this 20-year catastrophe, and Obama and Trump carried the bloody baton. There's no reason to think Trump's plan would have had any even slightly different outcome.
Remember what Obama noted: "Never underestimate the ability of Joe to fuck things up!"
Joe is certainly living up to his president's observations.
Good for Biden.
As I stated before, leaving was the correct choice. We should have left sooner. I'm not upset he blamed Trump, that's what Pols like Biden do. Do you think Biden was a man of honor?
BTW, does anyone think Biden got into the details to make sure the evacuation would be bloodless and easy? Of course not. He can barely function. He trusted his DoD Secretary and General Millay and they let him down. Hopefully Biden will fire them.
As for leaving without taking questions. He and the Regime media have to have to coordinate on the softball questions and get the correct answers on the telepromter before that happens.
A U.S. president to be honest with the American people about the failure of our foreign policy- what will they think of next.
Why didn't Biden advocate leaving when he was vice president?
Why didn't Obama pull out when he was president?
Why wasn't there a "national conversation" about what we were supposed to do in Afghanistan in the first place?
Why didn't the press mention the British and Russian experiences there and wonder, when Bush decided this, how this was going to be different?
Why was Trump excoriated when he asked his generals why we were in Afghanistan, like he was an idiot?
Why do I think none of these questions will be answered.
As others have pointed out, this wasn't a choice between staying there long enough for our great grandchildren to be sent over and the cluster frak bug out we got. There is this thing called competence. Obviously, Biden and his people are not familiar with the concept.
My lefty friends are too stunned to regurgitate the latest line that it was Trump's fault because the pell mell fleeing and meltdown of Kabul are too hideous to ignore. It's a complete debacle.
I'm sorry the comparison with Trump at this point is jarring. The last guy to attack our embassy wound up being shipped home to Iran in a UPS box. Here we just left billions of weapons behind to be sold or reused against us. How long before a Stinger missile takes out an airliner?
I will say this about the speech, Biden was smart to run away as he is no longer capable of answering questions that haven't been scripted and written down for him. A trained seal would be more useful for us at this point.
People, that is Western people like all of us, have trouble imagining a land that is not a country. Afghanistan is that. It is the place beyond the edge of the world of nations. It was outlined by Europeans whose main goal was that Russia should not touch India. That is the reason for the narrow finger touching China to the east. A treaty in 1860 decided that, if I remember my Sino-Russian history correctly.
As a place beyond countries, it makes no sense to say that Afghanistan did this or that, the way one might speak of France, or even Belgium acting. Talking of a civil war or of an Afghan army is pointless. The ground does not have an army, nor a government. We think that putting a line around disparate mountain peoples speaking different languages will turn them into Switzerland. It didn't even turn them into Yugoslavia.
So there is no point in blaming the government, the army, or the people of Afghanistan. None of these things ever existed.
"How many more lives, American lives, is it worth? How many endless rows of headstones in Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer. I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States. Of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of US forces."
But, Joe, all this interventionism started when your friends in the Council on Foreign Relations began setting foreign policy and carried their policies out with war. That started in earnest in the 1930s and has continued on and on.
The CFR has utterly rejected John Quincy Adams wise course in which he held that "[America does] not go in search of monsters to destroy."
Step 1 Harris resigns and Biden appoints Trump Vice President. Trump is sworn in and Biden resigns.
Step 2 President Trump leads a unified nation.
Step 3 America becomes great again, good again, strong again, competent again, true to her friends again. And the American people become proud again for many generations into the future.
Step 4 (optional) Trump wins re-election in 2024, serves until 2029, saves the world and is remembered in history as our best and most beloved President.
Biden "sent 5,000 more troops" to Afghanistan to "help with the withdrawal". My question is, where will they go? Biden had all of the troops boogie out of Bagram Airbase early last month. Bagram was the biggest air base for the Russkies in their attempt to subjugate Afghanistan in the late 70s and early 80s. It got even bigger when it was the US's largest base. It's gone now--been in the hand of the Taliban for a month or more. So they can't land there. How about the civilian airport in Kabul? Have you seen the videos? Even if they could land there, what equipment and mobility would they have? Foot patrols in Kabul? That's the ticket Joe!
Shufflin Senescent Joe goes from weakness to weakness.
It appeared Biden was reading his address for the first time. Not saying that’s necessarily the case, just his facial expressions indicated that.
In any case, I thought he was casting blame like fishing nets on the water. And forgetting some of his own history/culpability.
What is Biden's share of responsibility? I'm betting quantifying it won't involve any specifics.
Biden won't pass the buck, he has his surrogates for that kind of thing.
The incompetence, impotence, and insane lack of preparation should be key indicators of Biden unfitness for the office. They also call into question the abilities of military brass, the Pentagon, the State Dept., this ridiculously disinterested media, and others.
This all-around fuck-up will haunt the U.S. for decades.
No one is saying . . .
Enough with you people -- multiple people -- presuming to speak for everyone. You don't.
Mutaman: "A U.S. president to be honest with the American people about the failure of our foreign policy- what will they think of next."
LOL
Biden's statement was replete with lies. One lie after another after another.
They did not plan "for every contingency". Planners are screaming their lungs out that every planning contingency they laid out was ignored and kicked to the dustbin. Planners are screaming that their warnings that an Iraqi govt-like collapse (from the obama/Biden 2014 rapid pullout which immediately led to the ISIS explosive expansion) was in the works if Biden pulled out this quickly.
Biden did it anyway.
Mass evacuation plans for tens of thousands of Afghani wartime allies were prepared and submitted: all ignored.
Every thing the teams on the ground in Afghanistan needed to execute a controlled mass evacuation of both combat forces and non-combatants was in place....until Joe pulled them out suddenly with no warning.
In fact, these teams and plans were in place months ago and the Biden team did...nothing.
And what moron put the number of wartime allies and families at 2,000? Biden lied about that. There are tens of thousands still waiting...and they'll all be getting a bullet in the back of the head...except for the young girls, who will become Taliban child brides and young boys, who will become permanent rape victims.
Again, plans were in place to get them all out...and Biden dumped it all, without warning.
And Biden is claiming people don't want to leave Afghanistan when State Department and other officials claim the number is in the tens of thousands. So Biden just lied about that. Because of course he did.
And even the date change from the original Trump negotiated May of this year, with conditions/triggers every step of the way, was discarded by Biden. Why? So Biden could happily claim he used his own plan and not the plan of Orange Man Bad.
Did Biden describe that today? No. He lied.
He lied about everything every step of the way.
No wonder you are so proud of him.
What is encouraging is that most of the world isn't falling for these transparent lies this time around, and Biden's team knew they wouldn't. Even the lackey Pravda-reporters that cover Biden. So Biden ran away as fast as his frail body would allow it when the lie-filled "speech" was complete.
"So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay, how many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not?"
We lost 2700+ troops in 20 years. The Afghans lost around 70,000. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilians lost. I'd say that's fighting.
Would you continue to fight if your benefactor pulled the plug and left? Would South Korea or Japan fight if we suddenly pulled all our forces out? Maybe, but the odds are suddenly a lot worse.
I can't blame the Afghan military forces for not fighting, they've seen enough. I also can't blame America for pulling out. But I'll bet we'll be back in 10 years.
"This all-around fuck-up will haunt the U.S. for decades."
As well it should. Maybe we will stop doing stupid things.
Iman: "It appeared Biden was reading his address for the first time."
Its always the "first time" he's read it.....no matter how many times he reads it.
His speech seemed to be more about why we SHOULD leave Afghanistan, rather than the fact that we DID leave Afghanistan, and the fact that we did it without any apparent planning.
I thought this was a planned withdrawal. You could have fooled me. There seemed to be no plan to evacuate American embassy personnel or citizens who has been of assistance. There was apparently no plan to destroy sensitive documents and computers, and no plan to do anything with high-tech communication systems and weaponry other than to leave them for the terrorists. Attempts were made as they evacuated to deal with those items, but it seemed to be hastily put together. There was months leading up to the withdrawal. Who planned this fiasco? They should be fired or at least demoted immediately.
There was "a cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan"
It's bull that Biden's hands were tied by the Trump agreement. He didn't abide by it.
The cease fire with the Taliban was broken after Biden pushed back the withdrawal date from May to Sept. 11th...9/11. He did that to distance the withdrawal from the Trump administration so he could take the credit for getting us out of there. Look at the date he picked and tell me it wasn't picked for political reasons.
Trump's deal had conditions and the Taliban knew Trump would be tough about meeting them.
In the minds of the Taliban, Biden's blatantly political ploy to take credit essentially scrapped the agreement and all it's conditions and the Taliban weren't afraid of what Biden might do, with good reason it turns out.
Meade, what would ever make Harris resign? And for that matter, why would Congress approve Trump as the new VP?
JSM
JSM, you’re right—I’m making an assumption that every American can see this for what it is—an enormous mugging by Reality. I sometimes forget that about half of the people are determined to live in a fantasy world of utopian Progressivism. Thanks for the reminder.
I suggest reading : Borders of Infinity by Lois Bujold - where a naked man stages mass prisoner of war camp breakout .
masterful and hopefully inspiring and cathartic
Meade, I could see some variation on your scenario maybe happening, after a 2022 R sweep of Congress.
Biden could be persuaded into a Nixonian resignation for the good of the country, and now-POTUS Harris could be immediately impeached and removed for RICO-like support of BLM.
The R Speaker would then become POTUS and appoint VP Trump, whom an R Congress would approve.
Then the Speaker-cum-POTUS resigns and VP Trump moves up one.
(Unless Trump is the Speaker after the 2022 electtion! Then we save a couple of steps.)
Even this scenario would require a big R majority to overcome RINOs and very principled members.
JSM
We decided to leave Afghanistan, wonderful. At that point Beiden had one job, to clean up the mess, bring out the people and our weapons, and threaten the Taliban with air power. He blew it all off. What anyone else did in the past was at that point irrelevant. Beiden is a dick.
We had to let it go to shit rapidly. because... fawning press and ICE CREAM ... and naps... and all sorts of money for Hunter.
as seen on twitter:
"Biden had options in April. He overruled his generals' advice on the specifics of the withdrawal. The 'last person in the room' Kamala Harris co-signed.
The Biden administration owns this disaster. It's not up for debate."
Our mistress of cold neutrally left out the heart of the speech:
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interests in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American Homeland. I’ve argued for many years that our mission should be narrowly focused on counter terrorism, not counterinsurgency or nation building. That’s why I opposed the surge when it was proposed in 2009 when I was vice-president”
That’s something to ponder, in all its dimensions.
Has everyone forgotten Trump made this Taliban surrender deal last year?
Biden didn't abandon Afghanistan, Trump did when he negotiated an exit treaty in 2020 with the Taliban that did not include a single member of the American-supported Afghanistan government in negotiations or as a treaty signatory.
Biden was bound by that treaty.
The shock is the lies our military has repeatedly told of how capable the Afghans were of standing up to the Taliban without our support. Last year under Trump our generals were bragging about the Afghan army.
Trump also released 5,000 Taliban soldiers and with the signing of the deal, the Afghan military commanders began quietly signing deals with the Taliban knowing without American support the Taliban were the victors.
I will remind people NPR actually warned us earlier this year. The only surprise is the collapse didn't happen in June or July because Biden has been delaying the Americans' withdrawal.
NPR March 4, 2021 ---
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973604904/trumps-deal-to-end-war-in-afghanistan-leaves-biden-with-a-terrible-situation?fbclid=IwAR1jp6Xl1AoaogZqDGGykpfsVTmawz_QAruEflL2R0ik2ToGneAn5J5ewiI
Somehow Biden and his predecessors since 9/11 have all lied to America and to all troops stationed in the world's coldest poppy-growing region. We have spent bazillions on airplanes and bombs and we have done nothing to win the war as evidenced by our minimal casualties. We should have skedaddled from the country when bin Laden disappeared in December 2001.
Warlords who favored the Taliban conveniently jumped ship to rake in American payments while pretending to dress as Afghani military units. Suddenly they were Taliban all over again with the withdrawal date set.
As we did in Viet Nam we are leaving billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weaponry because we have no way to retrieve what took 20 years to haul into Taliban territory.
But we fixed those Russian forces in Afghanistan - we did, employing Osama's worthless mujahedeen. So OBL shot up an aspirin factory in Africa and he was suddenly the CIA's most dangerous criminal. But now they are trying to take us away, uh huh, they're trying to take us away without rescuing the local traitors who worked for the American military for all those long and lonely years. Sadly, bin Laden (he of many lives) did not plan, execute or finance the 9/11 attack on the towers.
Left Bank, gadfly, and Gary--you are either missing the point or are purposely deflecting.
Few people have any appetite for more "nation building" in Afghanistan. The issue is, how do we leave? Who do we leave? What do we leave? Apparently, you all are OK with leaving with desperate Afghanis hanging from the wheels of our planes, with leaving tens of thousands who helped us to the mercies of the Taliban (they don't do mercy well; they do submission), and with leaving millions in serviceable military equipment (including drones and other stuff to be sent off to China for analysis) in place and intact. That seems cold, but Biden always was a heartless bastard with a phony back-slapping persona. Now we all get to see it.
Here's Matt Zeller of No One Left Behind explaining it to the MSNBC audience, such as it is, and a dumbfounded Brian Sullivan: https://twitter.com/i/status/1427386966685913092
“ Even this scenario would require a big R majority to overcome RINOs and very principled members.”
Daunting, yes. . But as I like to say to anyone who cares to listen: Hey, that Overton Window isn’t going to just somehow get up and move itself!
The speech was better than I expected. The explicit disagreement with Saint Obama was perhaps the most interesting part. When nameless officials said he would make a statement sometime this week, they must have meant they would wait until he was in pretty good shape. Voila.
I guess we've been reminded that DC is getting more like Paris. Everyone with a big corner office is en vacances in August.
Lots of second-guessing, armchair quarterbacking going on, but that is understandable, probably even a good thing, if TPTB pay attention. Which they won't, of course, because they already know better. However, if anyone is deluded enough to believe that Biden "had no choice" but to follow Trump's plan of disengagement (which, of course, he did not), ask yourself if he also "had no choice" to follow Trump's plans on immigration, border control, energy production and a myriad of other things. Please recall how many Executive Orders he issued immediately--and I mean IMMEDIATELY--after his inauguration, overturning many of Trump's initiatives. Of course, there is also the issue of his change of direction back to the failed "two state solution" in the Middle East. The people who wrote Biden's speech are lying to the American people, and hoping they are gullible enough or so disinterested as to accept it at face value. After all, it was read off the teleprompter by Working Class Joe, the energetic, youthful fellow who promised to reunite us, to quench the fires of race/class/sexual warfare that had so divided us under Bad Orange Man.
No-one seems to be saying we should have stayed. We should leave the place is not worth the treasure and blood we have spent on it. We are just running with our tails between our legs. In defeat even.
This is another attempt to deflect any criticism on anything this Administration does.
Sheesh. It was Brian Williams at MSNBC.
" . . . lurching into the third decade of conflict."
He said "lurking," not "lurching."
There is something wrong with him. Watch or listen to the speech, do not rely on the transcript. He sounded like an angry drunk.
Sometimes Biden’s eyes are blue. Other times they’re pure black. Dilated, I suppose. Which drug would cause that? Besides LSD, which I can’t imagine being a very good idea. He sounds more lucid or at least feisty when his eyes are dilated.
Surely the press corps should see this even more clearly.
If you visit the “Little White House” where FDR conducted the war, which I highly recommend no matter what you think of FDR, there are hundreds of amazing canes carved as gifts sent to him by ordinary Americans. Everyone knew he had polio: there were published pictures of him playing with child polio survivors in the Warm Springs therapeutic pools nearby. They just didn’t talk about it: doing so was impolite, and it didn’t affect his intelligence or ability. Different times. Now we have a visibly mentally altered President, but we are supposed to pretend it isn’t happening. The Overton Window has been screwed firmly into place. Stiles to studs, three inch screws. It’s gonna take a crowbar.
@Two-eyed Jack is precisely correct--Afghanistan is the most fictive country on the planet, and always will be.
As for all the heavy breathing about abandoned equipment, it isn't going to tell the Russ and Chin anything they don't already know. They (especially the Chinese) have long since penetrated every level of our corporate and government R&D files and personnel--an echo of the irony that Stalin knew more about the American A-Bomb program in mid-1945 than Harry Truman did.
Any withdrawal of US troops will be interpreted as a defeat, because it is a defeat. But the glib assertions about the inevitability of exactly THIS flustercuck are foolish.
Incompetence this gross and public is more even than a lot of the MSM can stomach, which kind of surprises me. I do get a sense that many of the usual suspects are angry that Biden's stupidity backfired and is making the brand look bad, after all they had done for him.
Oh yeah--great new term: GOPukes.
Did our blogger not notice that Biden completely dodged the real issue, which was not the decision to withdraw, it the incompetence of the withdrawal?
So I'm left again to ask: Why did the Biden Administration so completely screw up all their predictions of what was going to happen when they implemented their pull out plan?
Biden "took responsibility"? Really?
Did he list all the BS "predictions" he and his team made about what would happen, and then apologize for each of the screwups?
No?
Did he acknowledge all the screwups they made?
Or did he just say "the buck stops here", while pretending that the buck doesn't actually exist?
Robert Cook says, “ We should never have gone in. Period.” I dissent. The Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden. What were we supposed to do? Take our complaints about 3,000 murdered Americans to the Security Council? That’s indeed what a lot of internationalists and law professors were arguing. We’d still be arguing in the Security Council if we had done that.
I remember hearing earlier this year that the Joint Chiefs were smug about the fact they had ignored President Trump's orders to exit Syria. I'm wondering if they also ignored his intention to withdraw from Afghanistan, figuring Biden would win, and didn't make any effective plans. Now they undermine civilian rule of the military once again by saying he didn't take their advice (which was probably to not exit).
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