Among Republican voters, a majority (67%) said that they would vote for former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical Republican primary with 7 other candidates. When Trump was listed as a potential candidate, Governor Ron DeSantis was the only other candidate who got double digit support at 10%....And look at how people assign responsibility for the war in Afghanistan:
I wish they'd asked, "Not counting President George W. Bush, which President holds the most responsibility for the war in Afghanistan?" I think if that were the question, Trump might have gotten as much as Obama or Biden or even as much as Obama and Biden added together, because the Democrats would go for Trump. What surprises me most is that Obama got so many votes. I'd been thinking that he bears so much responsibility for continuing the war after the death of Osama bin Laden, but that he'd been flying under the radar, by not making a big move to end the war, and because Americans — many but not all Americans — seem inclined to protect him from criticism and remember him in a golden glow of patronizing nostalgia.
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Didn't spend a lot of time at the link, but I didn't see the breakdown of Rs vs Ds anywhere...that should be mandatory for any legitimate polling organization.
Lately I have seen polls that are double-digit weighted in favor of Ds.
If the Taliban are smart, they'll focus on subjugating women & children, and leave the big terrorist activity to Iran.
If they're stupid, then we'll need to invade again. Hopefully we'd just keep Bagram. Sort of like the way Gitmo operates.
It's interesting that Biden is higher than either Obama or Trump. It may just be because he's the President now and precipitated the chaos of the Kabul evacuation, but given that he was a senior figure in the Senate back in 2001 and had a voice in the Obama administration's troop surge to Afghanistan, as vice President, he really does belong at number two, right after Bush II. There's no other political figure who has been as close to the decisionmaking process on Afghanistan for the entire duration of the war.
Obama only flies under the radar for the people that still take the media seriously.
More people watch Joe Rogan than all of them combined by the way.
A rather conspicuous omission is the Taliban-Al Qaeda alliance itself. GWB's numbers are wholly understandable. BHO got the votes I'll bet, because we all remember that he had eight years to make a move and chose not to. DJT had four years, but as we all remember, spent the whole time dealing with a bullshit impeachment, v1.0 and v2.0, with some COVID sandwiched in between. JRB gets the votes because, well, we all know why. The national embarrassment of the skedaddle clusterfuck.
I do not want the option to be Biden or Trump in 2024. If that happens however, I will quite likely laugh like a hyena.
I would have voted for Obama. He was the one who turned it from a revenge smash-up to a nation-building effort.
i have ONE WORD to respond to this:
Stephen Grover Cleveland !!!
If Joe Biden was working for China, what would he have done differently so far?
I suppose rationally it should be evenly divided between GWB, who allowed mission creep to change why we were there, which is the real reason we were bogged down for 20 years, and Biden, who obviously owns the disastrous ignominious way in which we left. Neither Trump nor Obama deserves any special credit, but on the question of who is most responsible, they should not get a single vote. Compared to the Bush/Biden bookends, what would they be "most responsible" for?
Another three years of Joe Biden and the population of the Inited States will be ready to vote for Beelzebub, much less Donald Trump.
Achilles: "If Joe Biden was working for China, what would he have done differently so far?"
Not a thing.
If an Althouse blog LLR was working for the far left marxists and democraticals, what would he be writing differently than our very own Chuck?
Not a thing.
I'd been thinking that he bears so much responsibility for continuing the war after the death of Osama bin Laden,
Obama deserves much more blame. he:
1. Turn A-Stan, which had been called the Special Ops Olympics. When Bush left, the troop strength was 25,000. Obama took that to more than 100,000
2. went into Nation building big time. Establish gender studies programs. Mandated that the A-stan legislature have more women than the Congress.
In response to Balfegor:
That thought about Joe Biden's responsibility as a Senator and Vice President occurred to me as well. However, the question is "which President?" Not "which person?" This says to me they're asking about the individuals' role as President of the United States... and Joe Biden, as President, mostly has abided by the Trump Administration's agreement to withdraw.
It might have been more interesting if they had asked "which person bears the most responsibility for the war in Afghanistan," and included people who have never been President of the United States amongst the choices. Perhaps with that question, they could have even left the answer open-ended, instead of prompting with multiple predetermined choices!
Assumes two facts not in evidence
First that pedjt will not be president in 2024. (still want to bet that $50m,Chuck?) I remain more and more convinced he will regain the oval office this year.
Second that Biden will be. He's already toast. The only question is when and how he leaves.,
I think the first highly likely. The second seems a certainty regardless of 1.
John Henry
Bush gets 75% of the blame from me- he initiated the nation-building effort, and left the mess to his successors. Obama gets 10% from me, for Afghanistan because he ran his first campaign on fighting the good war in that country and in 8 years did nothing to get out. I give Trump 5% of the blame for doing the withdrawal in his first term, but I think he would have done it in the second one. Biden gets the last 10% for being the VP with Obama, but he gets credit for me for actually getting out. Biden gets 100% of the blame for how the withdrawal went to shit at the end- buck stops with him on that one, but the Taliban were always going to take over after we left, so he can't be blamed for that.
This morning I watched a clip of Senator Biden, 20 years ago, talking about not making the mistake we made last time in Afghanistan: getting our way, turning our back on the place, letting it fall into chaos, corruption and civil war from which The Taliban emerged victorious.
True as far as it goes, and bipartisan – I think that's what George W. Bush thought, as we asked ourselves "What next?" in December 2001 – and a big part of the ongoing mission creep that brought us here.
But my point is not to say that Biden turns out to have been wrong, whether in good faith or in a plausible-looking imitation of it. My point is that it was startling to see the 58-year-old Senator Biden speaking so forcefully and convincingly. The change if you just skip from then to now is shocking.
In Afghanistan, Bush was content to drive the Taliban out of Kabul and the North and prevent them from maintaining a state apparatus that could export terrorism. He pretty much left the Pashtuns alone in the South. It was Obama who converted that to a real nation-building effort, probably to offset his bug-out from Iraq.
I put most of the blame on Biden. Bush and Obama both encouraged vain dreams of nation building, but Bush has so much blame for getting us in that it seems like piling on to blame him for how we got out, and Obama did reduce troop strength after we got bin Laden.
Trump shouldn't have legitimized the Taliban with negotiations, but he's not to blame for Biden's mess-ups. It's true that there's no guarantee that Trump would have handled the pullout better than Biden, but there's no certainty that he would have done worse.
We did have a guarantee that Biden would do it right. Remember, he was supposed to be experienced and knowledgeable. He was supposed to be the adult in charge. He was supposed to be empathetic, caring, honest, decent. Biden was supposed to be the professional who understood how to do things when the amateur Trump supposedly had no clue and could only get things wrong. When you get elected because you are supposed to be the competent one, incompetence is inexcusable.
Don't look at the men behind the curtain. Blame the figureheads instead
They're all to blame, of course, but Bush bears the greatest responsibility by far for invading Afghanistan to begin with, (which he shouldn't have), and not vacating post haste once bin Laden escaped from the country. All else, the entire 20 years of death, damage, and ruin, stem from that original sin.
I wish they'd asked, "Not counting President George W. Bush, which President holds the most responsibility for the war in Afghanistan?"
That would be Barack "we must surge to the 'important war, Afghanistan" Obama.
Bush invaded because of 9/11, then screwed up by trying "nation building" (read: corrupt payoffs to the politically connected NGOs and the people running them, with occasional crumbs going to the people we're pretending to help).
Obama "surged" there, in an attempt to pretend that he actually valued American power (while screwing us over in Iraq, and pushing ISIS to prominence).
Trump tried to get out of Afghanistan, was blocked by the crappy Generals that Obama promoted, and Trump failed to fire (his biggest mistake was in personnel: He didn't fire nearly enough people)
Biden* got us "out of Afghanistan" in the most pathetically screwed up, incompetent way possible, elating them billions of dallars worth of weapons that they'll be using to kill more Americans.
Obama got far and away the most US troops killed in Afghanistan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan
Biden will eventually have gotten the most US, and Afghan, civilians killed in Afghanistan.
Both are covered in failure
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