"Biden always bristles at this because he feels confident that ending the war in Afghanistan was the right decision.... No part of these military interviews ring true because ‘that’s not what I was told’? ... Don’t you have an obligation, sir, to be told?... Isn’t that how you demonstrate how much you care? Otherwise isn’t it just words?"
Via "Jake Tapper Levels Biden Over Outright ‘Rejection’ Of Army Report: ‘It’s Difficult To Overstate How Insulting It Is’" (Daily Wire).CNN's @JakeTapper on Biden dismissing a US Army report on the failures of the Afghanistan pullout: "I don't doubt President Biden cares, but I do not understand why he would not manifest that care into taking this investigation more seriously." #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/52CUlqXUu0
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 13, 2022
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68 comments:
When did journalists start pushing this characterisation of Biden as someone particularly empathetic or compassionate, as someone who "cares?" I don't think that was ever part of his public persona when he was in the Senate, was it? It has always seemed a poor fit for him, since his public persona (that I remember at least) used to be basically proto-Trumpian -- glib, vain, and easy with the insults.
but I do not understand why he would not manifest that care into taking this investigation more seriously.
I have no doubt that Tapper cares, but I do not understand why he would not manifest that care into taking this investigation more seriously.
No part of these Biden interviews or WH explanations ring true. What was Biden told and who told him? Why does he still, in the face of this report, give more credence to that person or persons by rejecting this report?
Don’t you have an obligation, Mr. Tapper sir, to be told?... Isn’t that how you demonstrate how much you care? Otherwise isn’t it just words?"
Biden never really "cared" for the troops. They were just dog faced pony soldiers. Willie and Joe from WW II would hold the White House weasel in contempt--if they could be bothered to think about him at all.
"I don't doubt...".
I do.
Joe doesn't even know where he is, never mind what is actually happening in the world. He isn't in charge of anything.
I suspect this explains why the pull-out went so badly. What information did the army give him during the pull-out planning that he and his staff simply rejected?
my father died last November (at age 92)...
Every time i see Jo Biden; i think of my dear departed father...
Except to his last day, my dad was sharper and brighter than slow joe is
My GOD, Our President isn't just Demented, he has full blown dementia
"That's not what i was told"
I'm Rejecting them!"
Maybe what Joe Biden really "cares" about isn't what Jake Tapper thinks Joe Biden cares about?
How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean? Our entire 20 years in Afghanistan was a trillion-plus dollar disaster and loss, lacking any real purpose or goal, a "win" only for the parasitic arms manufacturers and related corporate entities who reaped great profits from it, and every innocent killed by our actions was a seed to create more anti-US hostility among our victims or their survivors. The war was just one more sign of our declining empire's desperate flailing to assert our global dominance.
C’mon, man!
Biden = Benefit of the doubt
Trump = Never any benefit of the doubt. Guilty until proven innocent.
The first rule of journalism is to doubt. Tapper is clearly not a journalist.
Biden cares? This Valentine's Day I hope you have someone who loves you like Biden loves Biden!
Robert Cook said...
"How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean?"
The military has a plan for everything. Because the military is brilliant when it comes to logistics.
well giving up bagram airbase, was a thing, now on top of surrendering millions of dollars of weapons, we will be paying ransom to the taliban, from the 9/11 victims fund,
I wish I could say I was surprised by Biden's callousness and mendacity, but it is what he has always been. Is Jake surprised? Should he be?
The president wakes up with a fire hose of stuff to deal with. Not surprising he does not want to look back at the Kabul debate. And it was a debacle.
"How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean?..."
Biden was asked about a US Army report on the failures of the Afghanistan pullout. I'm sure the report considers what was possible within the actual reality and would only call something a failure if it could have been done more successfully. Are you just blowing off the report (like Biden)? What if Trump had been President when these purported failures occurred: Would have been interested in the details?
"This Valentine's Day I hope you have someone who loves you like Biden loves Biden!"
Who needs another creepy stalker?
When did journalists start pushing this characterisation of Biden as someone particularly empathetic or compassionate, as someone who "cares?"
There are two phases to every Democrat Administration:
Phase 1: Look at everything we're going to do for you!
Phase 2: OK we didn't do that stuff, but unlike the other Party our candidate "cares" about you.
Sorry, one or two pointed questions to Joe Biden does not redeem Tapper and/or CNN...
When did journalists start pushing this characterization of Biden as someone particularly empathetic or compassionate, as someone who cares?
From a propaganda perspective all residents need a hook. Republicans are easy: Evil. Democrats are a tougher matter. Usually some percentage combination of 'The intellectual', 'The guy you want to blow' or 'The guy you want to have a beer with' fit the bill.
Joe's a tough case. Apparently 'The compassionate leader' and hope nobody remembers him from the Senate was the least rejected by the focus groups...
How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean?
@Cookie, I have never respected your intelligence very much, however the fact that you ask such questions tells me that nevertheless I gave it too much respect even so. Still, inadvertently, you have put your finger on the fundamental shortcoming of the Biden administration: if don’t know what success looks like, how can you possibly achieve it except by the most improbable accident?
What would success look like? How about this? (1) All American citizens and spouses thereof that are in Afghanistan are successfully brought out. Of course, to achieve that goal you need to know how many American citizens are in Afghanistan, and it’s a failure of Blinken’s State Department that they didn’t know the answer. Even today, the question of how many American citizens got left behind is apparently unknown. I have seen the figure 17,000 in print, which seems way too high, and I have seen many other estimates down to the very amorphous “hundreds.”
(2) Also a component of the definition of success is identifying and bringing out the people who supported us — translators, mostly, but also guides. These are the people we promised not to abandon, but we lied. Did we make any effort to identify who these people were? Actually, apparently we did but we seem to have ignored that work in favor of flying out anyone who could elbow their way onto a plane.
Is it clear that Biden was aware of the 2000 page report at the time of the Holt interview?
Watching his response in the video, I don't think he had any idea of what Holt was talking about and defaulted to a knee jerk refusal to consider any criticism of his actions in Afghanistan as he always does.
Which means that Tapper completely missed the critical point - the stubborn and confused but supremely self-confident old man made a bad decision to pull out in short order and refused to back down when told how bad this decision was by his military.
A lot of people died because of this more deaths will follow as our surrender plays out.
Forget it Jake, It's Biden town
That's not what they told me.
OK, Joe, who are "they"? What did they tell you?
I reject the report?
All of it? Have you read it? How did the military get the report so wrong (ALL of it)? Are they lying and are you going to punish the (lying?) authors?
Tapper came close to journalism. But the lack of follow up is telling.
How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean? Our entire 20 years in Afghanistan was a trillion-plus dollar disaster and loss ...
The combatant commander would have provided a detailed op plan, with options based on various contingencies, and assumptions about the enemies capabilities and actions.
One of those options would have been keeping Bagram and most of our forces for as long as it took to get those out who needed to go, and retrograding our equipment.
Biden knew this. And he had to have known that an imminent collapse of the Afghan government was far more likely than not. Or is he too far gone to remember ISIS?
But than I only have three years at the Pentagon on a planning staff to go on, so there's that.
Regardless of the value of our time in Afghanistan, there is a successful way to withdraw, and there is the way Biden chose.
It's not a coincidence that all this is coming out now. I believe that word has gone out to the media to start reporting all of this, because Dems want Biden gone sooner rather than later. Harris may be a worse disaster in the long run, but in the near term a new administration gives the Dems a chance to take advantage of good will, as well as make changes at mid-level by clearing out a whole lot of appointees.
This is Joe Biden as he has always been: a dishonest midwit who can't accept any criticism, and cares about no one and nothing but himself.
Hey Jake, either you're an incompetent "journalist" ("Don’t you have an obligation, sir, to have figured this out sometime in the last 50 years?"), or your outrage is feigned.
Which is it?
You backed Biden in 2020, Jake. Nothing you say now is going to wash away that stain
"How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?""
A successful withdrawal would not have included leaving thousands of Afghans who we promised sanctuary and hundreds of American citizens behind. A successful withdrawal would not have handed a list of those same people to the folks most likely to want to kill them. A successful withdrawal would not have required a drone strike on an innocent family to avenge American deaths in a terrorist attack that could have been foreseen and prevented. In short, a successful withdrawal would not have looked like what we got.
As to your larger point about the war being a vast waste of money and lives, I am forced by reality to agree.
Robert Cook said...
How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean?
Hmm, I don't know, how about "not getting any US troops killed by suicide bombers because we were having the Taliban provide 'security'"?
How about "didn't leave behind any Americans who wanted out"? or "didn't leave behind the Afghan allies we'd promised to take with us"?
Seriously Cookie? Are you an idiot, or just morally wretched?
If the Biden* Admin did not have their heads all up their backsides, the evacuation would have happened out of Bagram Airbase, you know, a place the US controlled, rather than in a civilian airport that the US had no control over, and no ability to control.
People would have been brought there, vetted to confirm we wanted to give them a trip to the US, and then flown out.
That's what would have been done if there was anyone in a place of authority in the Biden* Admin who cared about US Troops, US Prestige, US Civilians, and / or the Afghans who worked with the US and who we'd promised safe escape to.
However short your memory is, we do not suffer your mental deficiencies, so we do remember the Biden* Admin screwups.
And so do the swing voters
Everything in the report was acquired under oath under military code of conduct. The number of people interviewed was large. And by saying "I reject it", the commander in chief called everyone of those people liars and criminals who need to be tried in a military court. He does not deserve to command anything.
Readering said...
The president wakes up with a fire hose of stuff to deal with. Not surprising he does not want to look back at the Kabul debate. And it was a debacle.
A competent President who wanted to do a good job, would want to know how and why his Administration failed so utterly.
The reality that Biden doesn't want to see and learn from the AAR is solid proof that he has no business being President.
That you would excuse such behavior is solid proof that your judgment is worthless
Biden doesn't care about the soldiers in harm's way, and he got over a dozen of them killed, along with a lot of Afghans who supported us, because he wanted to make a speech on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. And now he wants us to trust him with our children to go fight for the regime that we installed in Ukraine, so that the Biden machine can keep its thumb in the pie.
In the past year, it appears that Biden’s White House advisors hold a high opinion of themselves on many subjects such as economics, foreign policy, and military matters. Time and again, they have been proven wrong (eg. - more government spending will eliminate inflation, which, btw, is transitory and very short term). This report by the Army shows that Biden’s top military advisors were ignored by the White House. The Afghanistan debacle occurred because Biden and his closest non-military advisors ignored reality and as a result, Biden first dithered about the Afghan military crumbling and then told the US military to just get out now. This went against the military’s better judgment of the situation on the ground but when the president gives an order, no matter how illogical and dumb, the US military members have sworn an oath to carry out that order from their commander-in-chief. And now, Biden is throwing his military “under the bus” for his ultimate screwup. President Truman had a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here” and took responsibility for his screw ups. President Kennedy took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster even though he inherited the operation from the Eisenhower administration. Joe Biden refuses to take any responsibility for anything that goes wrong and blames anyone he can. This administration looks like a train wreck in action and all the while we are watching more trains coming our way from down the line with the administration ignorant of the current train wreck.
The solution to Biden's troubles has already been planned. The Ukraine crisis !!!!!
Nancy Pelosi let the cat out of the bag yesterday.
The first topic is the “Russia-Ukraine crisis,” with Stephanopoulos asking Pelosi directly if she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to invade Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi’s response [Transcript Here] tells us all we need to hear:
PELOSI: “Well, I think we have to be prepared for it. And that is what the president is — yes, I do believe that he is prepared for an invasion. I also understand why the President of Ukraine wants to keep people calm and that he wants his economy not to suffer. But, on the other hand, if we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade. Let’s hope that diplomacy works.
It’s about diplomacy deterrence. Diplomacy deterrence. And the president’s made it very clear. There’s a big price to pay for Russia to go there. So, if Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.” … “I’m very proud of the work that the president has done.”
Wag the Dog all the way. Ukraine has a lot invested in Biden and the Democrats are desperate for some good news.
fluffy bunnies! Ice cream.. Nap time...
Even when the media pretends to toss out a tough question, the question is laced with a soft fluffy landing for the (D)
Is Tapper just pretending not to understand what a politician is?
@Robert Cook 'How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?" What does that mean? Our entire 20 years in Afghanistan was a trillion-plus dollar disaster and loss, lacking any real purpose or goal, a "win" only for the parasitic arms manufacturers and related corporate entities who reaped great profits from it...'
This seems to me to totally miss the point. The fact that you can say that now doesn't mean that it was obvious to Joe Biden and his advisors in Washington. They were fed fake stories about a Potemkin war, always designed to make them think that things would be better in a year. When Biden ordered a hard exit, the grifters on the other end still kept trying to change his mind until it was too late. Suddenly Biden's people were left high and dry and with no way to avoid complete and sudden collapse.
Now all they can do is pretend that it didn't matter what they did.
When a CEO is totally snowed by a subsection of his company, to such an extent that it suddenly goes completely bankrupt because he had no idea what was happening, we hold that against him.
The Bidens, like the Clintons, Care about their bank accounts.
Joe was telling the truth. His handlers never informed him of the report. Or they did, but his Alzheimer's caused him to forget.
Biden care only for cash bribes, silly. That makes them predictable, unlike the honest Trumps who scared the entire American Empire With the same treatment that he gave to the Veterans Administration.
""I don’t doubt President Biden cares, but I do not understand why he would not manifest that care into taking this investigation more seriously....""
Biden doesn't care about the troops.
These people are transparent.
You are one of them Jake.
We know you don't care either.
Robert Cook: "How would or could we have withdrawn 'successfully?' What does that mean?"
Given the realities at the time, we probably wouldn't and couldn't have, but it didn't have to be nearly as bad as it was, and there are lessons to be learned from a fair analysis.
None of what you write is actually wrong (though I'd argue with your last sentence), but it's blinkered. There's so much more to the picture than you're seeing here.
Biden has been there long enough to know repeating failures is what they do best.
Tapper wrote "The Outpost", a book about soldiers at a remote firebase, while embedded with the US Army in Afghanistan. It is a decent book and shows how to report on military operations with some credibility.
Jake has first hand knowledge of the troops and the local culture that few others in the media -- or in the Biden white House -- appear to have in 2022. I give him credit for this reality-based reporting on the bungled withdrawal, even though it barely scratches the surface of the incompetence and hubris of the Biden National Insecurity Team.
Maybe CNN, under new ownership, will start to hold Biden & Psaki accountable for some of the other stupid moves they are making across the board. We shall see...but not holding my breath...
La Familia Bidens' only interest is the gelt.
If only Comrade Stalin knew
"If only Stalin knew what was going on, he would stop it...."
Why do they always think this way?
Why are you asking Biden such stupid questions. You stupid bastard!
One thing that would have mattered, a lot, in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, was to withdraw from Bahgram airbase last, not first. It was built to defend, and they could have easily kept the Taliban at bay, until they turned the lights out on their way out.
Joe is up past his naptime.
He only listens to DOCTOR Jill.
And he doesn't push too hard because if he did, his pudding ration would be cut.
"Wag the Dog all the way"
She's not the only one saying that if Putin doesn't invade, which he probably had no plans to do so, that it would be a credit to Biden's extreme competence as a diplomat. The only war noises seem to be coming out of the Biden White House. Still, Biden is playing with fire.
Every officer who worked on this report should resign their commissions en masse in protest.
One way this could have been resolved was letting us kill the taliban scum.
It would have been easily within our capabilities.
But the regime protected them.
>>glib, vain, and easy with the insults
You left out the anger issues, which are readily on display but ignored.
--gpm
I doubt Biden even understood the question.
Adding to my comment at 11:57, (3) you take your arms and munitions with you, or blow up what you can’t take back with you.
My GOD, Our President isn't just Demented, he has full blown dementia
"That's not what i was told"
I'm Rejecting them!"
---------
In plain English [confused American] does that not mean he is calling the Report writers/presenters LIARS and they still have jobs?
I conclude that Jake Tapper is more demented than Joe Biden since he did not follow through
What would success look like? How about this?
(1) Defeat the enemy.
(2) Don't run away.
(3) Foster relations with our ally.
How would or could we have withdrawn "successfully?"
Well, since withdrawing in the face of the enemy successfully is an oxymoron, I understand why you are perplexed.
in the Vorkosigan Saga - Escobaran invasion was allowed to go forward and Aral Vorkosigan was put in place to make sure the Prince led the invasion troops so that Prince Serg would be killed. Aral Vorkosigan was also in charge of retreat/withdrawal with full fore-knowledge of Escobar advantage.
--------
in this USA version looks like Bush invaded Afghanistan because Americans did not want to provide evidence to Taliban about 9/11 and kept pouring $$$$$$$$$$$ to their own cronies till Biden was able to botch the withdrawal and blame Trump for it.
I have a strange new respect for Poppa Bush recognizing that "Message: I Care" was bullshit and saying the quiet part out loud for all to hear. You prove you care through your actions, not by feigning empathy and compassion.
I guess we're in for a round of pictures of Biden with his dog and his cat or touching little girls' hair to prove that he is empathetic and compassionate. It worked for Hitler and Saddam.
What was the point of compiling a 2000 page report for a president who doesn't want to hear it?
Biden also warned the world about Russia that can invade Ukraine anytime and now Indian embassyalso working on it.
"I don’t doubt President Biden cares, but I do not understand why he would not manifest that care into taking this investigation more seriously...."
Wait, if Tapper thinks Biden isn't taking the investigation seriously, then why doesn't Tapper doubt whether Biden "cares"? Can you imagine Tapper saying that about Trump? Do we need to offer ritual reassurances that Democrats are caring and well-meaning, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary? I'm not a Republican, but I don't think it's fair that only Democrats seem to get the benefit of this unwavering assumption that at the end of the day, they care. A Republican needs to prove s/he cares, while apparently there's no such thing as proof that a Democrat doesn't care.
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