Here is a headline and subhead from the New York Times today:
I continue to be stupefied by this. Why are people so convinced that both of these things can't be true at once? A military evacuation of 120,000 people is not a NASA moon landing. It's inherently turbulent, crowded, and desperate. The kinds of things the Times describes are practically the baseline expectation in an evacuation of this size, even if it took two months instead of two weeks.
So yes: rogue flights, crowded tents, hope, and chaos.
And also yes: An enormous number of people rescued with minimal casualties and now on their way to asylum. It really was done about as efficiently as possible.
Kevin this was so obviously a failure of planning ahead that it's hard to understand why you stick with this argument. Yes they got out an amazing number of people quickly. Yes, they did heroically under the circumstances. Yes, major evacuations are messy. But there was clearly NO contingency plan for a collapse of Kabul and what a mess that would make of even the best-managed-under-the-circumstances process. You keep leaving out any mention of how it was we ended up depending on the Taliban (!) for airport security and access, and even getting American citizens to the airport, as if the circumstances we just some kind of natural disaster. Yes no one saw this collapse coming, but that's what contingency planning is about - things no one sees coming.
Perhaps discussions with AFghan President indicated he would stay
Discussions with Afghan Generals said they could fight to defend Kabul
Given that their leaders AND defenders abandoned them I'm surprised the media is giving them a pass on their coverage of this aspect of the ending of the war.
We, nor the Russians could have EVER won. The only thing we could have done is OCCUPY, or get out. Neither was a good option given the lack of support we had from their politicians and defense forces
We did win. We got loose from the "Tar Baby". Now the Taliban is stuck to the Kabul "Tar Baby". WhoRaw!!!
We were not occupying Afghanistan. We maintained a small number of troops there and thousands of American contractors. It was enough to assist the Afghan military to prevent a Taliban takeover.
The sudden pull out of contractors, for example technicians maintaining Afghan aircraft, really hurt. This may be something historians fault Biden for, but who knows.
Clearly no contingency planning? The contrary the fact this was managed despite the complete collapse of the Potemkin village government that was Ghani - a collapse that even surprised the Taleban - rather says there were contigency plans.
What it does say is that there is a fundamental messiness when a dependent colonial regime collapses, and that USA Cubicle Jockey armchair generaling has about zero understanding of developing countries and other cultures.
Depending on the Taleban was inevitable once the Ghani government collapses from within - again to the surprise even of the Taleban.
The fact as well that the US was able to come to working arrangements with the Taleban is also a sign of contigency planning.
Absolutely Lounsbury.
Even if the Afghan army had fought brilliantly, you don't think there would have been chaos of people wanting to get out by Aug 31? C'mon.
No sorry. This is the same mistake. "Despite the collapse....that even surprised..." Contingency planning is just that, planning for EVERY contingency. Not just the likely or expected ones. Someone was asleep at the wheel. And BTW if you think there was planning, read about the US evacuees stuck in huts in the middle of Quatar with no air conditioning, no sanitation, and no supplies surrounded by refuse and excrement in the summer heat. Just heartbreaking.
This is sheer Cubicle Jockey fantasy.
Planning for every contingency does not mean that should a scenario arrive that then everything will execute as if you're sitting in USA land with all its resourcs and in control of both territory and human resources.
Rather it means you will have some fall-back plans ready in case things go all pear-shaped - and have some paths for preparation.
So no I am not mking any mistake, I am simply a person who actually operates in frontier markets in logistics and know the difference between fantasy planning and having to execute logistical plans in unfriendly circumstances.
As contrary to the impressoins that Americans get from Hollywood films, the USA government does not have the magical ability to order around foreigners in other countries and make them do anything at all - even if one has plans for engagement.
As for this bit of Cubicle Jockey plaintive whinging
"if you think there was planning, read about the US evacuees stuck in huts in the middle of Quatar with no air conditioning, no sanitation, and no supplies surrounded by refuse and excrement in the summer heat."
Qatar, not Quatar.
.... but OMG without air conditioning, what horror.... [and yes mate, I have been to Qatar many times and know exactly how hot it gets.]
Of course in the real world pre-positioning the logistical resources for such a contingency involves
(1) major capital expenditure
(2) is not disguisable to enemies (noting the Taleban have offices in Qatar)
(3) bureaucratically of course had it been done and not used, subject to Congressional and press negative PR for "waste" -
Having contigency plans does not mean one has magical control over other parties nor is it realistic nor practical to have pre-positioned the physical assets for every contigency, the cost being both prohibitive and extremely wasteful.
Having back-up plans allows you to know how to react, but does not magically remove physical constraints.
And obviously there was a contingency plan for what happened. Seven thousand troops couldn't have been airlifted to Kabul in a matter of days without one.
"dependent colonial regime"
Please check your ideology when using the word "colonialist". We went to Afghanistan to help prevent future terrorist attacks on the US. We stayed to try to help locals create a democracy, in part again to prevent future terrorists attacks on the US. But we also believe in democracy because it allows people to choose their leaders and human rights are respected. This is about as far from being "colonialist" as you can get.
Here is the definition of colonialism - "the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically"
My ideology? Ideology has f-all to do with it.
American's self-deluding pretensions of civilizing mission (rebranded as creating democracy) do not change the structural fact you created a dependent colonial regime with dependent client elites withut any real root in organic Afghan
The fact you lot self-decieve yourselves with fancy excuses does not change the reality and the excuse of brining democracy etc is not new. Already done in the 20th century. That you naively believe your own propoganda in self-deception merely contributes to pre-ordained failure.
As for your definition, dictionaries are impoverished ways of understanding history mate. Colonial control in the old European imperial phase could be over settlment but for much of South Asia and most of Africa it was about imperial power plays in relation to percevied security threats - no one extends a Colonial empire over the Sahel or the Sahara to make money (or Afghanistan either in the 19th century Great Game or now). One does so to address security concerns either from sources inside the territory (Mahdists in the 19th c, "terrorists" in the 21st, whatever) OR in competition with other imperial powers.
There is nothing new about this as any proper reading of history, not provincials naively citing dictionary shows.
Sorry, but you are trying to re-define the word colonialism. There is a clear definition for it. The word colonialism carries with it the baggage of it being said the colonialists are driven by greed, a desire for economic exploitation, and wanting to acquire land to inject settlers. None of this fits Afghanistan.
Many people on the left are attracted to the word "colonialist" because if gives an opportunity to imply some of the bad things I mentioned above about the US. (You still hear it said we invaded Iraq for oil.) So when you used the word "colonialist", I assumed there was some of that going on. Your comment that colonialism was also about addressing security concerns is a good point. However, this is not what typically comes to mind when the word "colonialist" is used. Also, we have troops in Japan, Korea, and Germany - and we are not colonialists in these places.
"But we also believe in democracy because it allows people to choose their leaders and human rights are respected. "
Sorry but this is just American fantasy up there with believing in Santa Claus. The US has never had a problem supporting dictators or abusive regimes regardless of their abuses or wishes of the local populace if that dictator helps the US interests. Similarly the US has never been shy of helping take down democratically elected leaders when those leaders wouls oppose US interests.
Considering that the US can’t even protect or evacuate its own citizens well in this country when a disaster strikes… it’s hardly shocking that we can’t do it well either in a foreign country. America doesn’t do collective action problems well, no matter what or where they are.
What the US military does well is LOGISTICS!!! 120,000 says LOGISTICS!!!
So who exactly were going to provide airport security and access if not the Taliban, who were now in control of the city and the country?
This outcome was about as good anyone could have hoped for considering that the Afghan military and government turned out to be the mother of all paper tigers. The Taliban essentially stuck to the agreement and let us get a huge number of people out. If they had fought us - now that would have been chaos!
Would an all-out street battle for control of the city and the airport have been a better outcome?
But there was clearly NO contingency plan for a collapse of Kabul and what a mess that would make of even the best-managed-under-the-circumstances process.
It was a highly technically demanding, huge in scale evacuation — as far as I know the largest of its kind (by air) ever conducted. And yet you claim there "clearly" was no contingency planning?
Sounds wrong.
In addition not only highly technical - also demanding enormous mobilisation of physical resources and assets - across multiple foreign countries.
Ignoring this aspect is pure Cubicle Jockey comment.
What would such a contingency plan have looked like?
Yep, they could have just assigned a number to each of 120,000 people, then told them to wait at home until their number was called to come to the airport. I’m sure that everyone would have waited patiently for their turn, yes?
They did have contingency plans, just didn't expect to need these particular ones, and there was never a "clean" plan for Kabul falling so easily.
The idea is that the media, in general, is highly embarrassed; in the beginning it supported, cheered on, then later ignored, neglected, incorrectly assessed, and just generally did a horrible job covering Afghanistan. They are now doing so again - to cover their embarrassment.
It's a very human reaction.
We see through it. But others...they get sold a bill of goods.
The worst part of this ordeal is that we depend on their faulty reporting to keep any idea of the state of Afghanistan or the world. We take things with a grain of salt, but if it's all salt....
And when it's good reporting, we still add that salt because we've been trained that way. I liken it to police militarization, they've painted themselves into a corner and cry victim when they are seen as the enemy. The Press has gone down the path of Profit poisoning even virtuous journalists. Meanwhile the Public claims expertise when there is nothing but novice.
But enough about the Moscow Child Rapist Matt Taibbi & Luso-American Porn Kingpin Glemm Greemwald.
I long ago stopped caring about the barely literate religious fanatics of Afghanistan. And I’m happy to see the US military exposed as incompetent and generally useless.
So go ahead and pile on. I’m sure 2nd term of President trump will restore all that fabulous winning.
The only lessons here are that the occupation of Afghanistan should have ended a long time ago and the US military and every civilian leader over the last 15-20 years are war criminals.
Frothing at the mouth anti-Americanism is quite boring and useless.
The American military was not exposed as "incompetent" nor "generally incompetent"- they proved rather competent in their core functions. Not very competent in state building but that is less their failure than a failure of the Western states including the USA to adapt models to Afghanistan - both army and government, and the collossal error of trying to build a European style centralized nation-state government and army.
When a government bureaucracy wastes tax money and fails miserably, I feel compelled to offer criticism. That's my right and my duty as a citizen.
The military's job was to establish the security necessary to achieve the policy goals. And they failed. Miserably. Their job was to train and equip afghan security forces. And they failed. Miserably.
So whatever the diplomats and the aid groups were trying to do, they had no chance to succeed because the military failed. Miserably. It's also true that the state-building goal was misguided so the civilian contractors, NGO, diplomats, politicians and policy makers also failed. Miserably.
They wasted money. They killed a bunch of people. And so they are also corrupt and war criminals.
Since this policy failure has been exposed, how about we change our ways rather than pat these criminals on the head and say "Nice try!".
There is a nice 10 year $3.5 trillion infrastructure proposal which is now being set aside because Joe "Do nothing" Manchin thinks it's too expensive. Apparently he would rather spend trillions on infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq instead. Go figure.
This is why we can't have nice things. We waste our money on foolish misadventures half way around the world. Enough!
Feel compelled as you like, frothing at the mouth irrationalism is boring and useless.
The American military was perfectly competent within the parameters of the combat they engaged in.
The mission given was an impossible one - as the British and the Russians/Sovs learned (impossible one barring deciding to engage in genocide to wipe out the conservative Afghan populations like the majority of the Pashtun that hated the foreigners).
That does not make the US military incompetent. It makes US political thinking incompetent.
Your characterization of this criticism as "frothing at the mouth irrationalism" is truly silly. It's like you can't accept a different view of American foreign policy. Your reflexive defense of the indefensible is, once again, why we can't have nice things.
Good luck.
Defence? Dear Frothy, I am not defending American Foreign Policy, quite the contrary, I am dismissing irrational frothing.
“I long ago stopped caring about the barely literate religious fanatics of Afghanistan.”
Having read your other comments on other articles, I for one am totally shocked that you don’t care about anyone but yourself.
And what has your care gotten them? It's a cheap and meaningless sentiment and I won't bother to indulge in it. I care about people I know. I care for them. I take care of them.
People half way around the world are beyond my reach. They are beyond yours too. Grow up.
You are welcome to vent your frustration at me, but you really need to focus on your real enemy right next door. It's the Republican political class and people like this:
https://nypost.com/2021/09/03/biden-voter-rejecting-florida-diner-closed-due-to-popularity/
"...informing those who “voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan” to take their “business elsewhere.”
And I’m happy to see the US military exposed as incompetent and generally useless.
You and I read very different histories. Although the military isn't blameless for the failures of the last 20 years, this is vastly more about civilian, political incompetence than any mistakes by our armed services. Nation-building doesn't work. Sending the army in to do a job it's not suited for (and no one is suited for) is the fault of George W. Bush. The two presidents who failed to face the reality of this situation but neglected to act also share some of the blame. (Trump didn't ink his agreement until his last year in office; as far as I'm concerned he doesn't get a free pass for his free three years of inactivity).
The military answers to civil authority in America. The former is the servant of the latter.
The military's job was to establish security and train the afghans. They failed. Instead they enriched their patrons and suppliers. Then moved out of the Pentagon to help steal billions as contractors and consultants.
The civilian folks are war criminals too which I indicated above.
The military's job was to establish security and train the afghans. They failed.
That's like saying the mailman "failed" at his job of winning the Indy 500.
It was doomed from the start. Nation-building simply doesn't work. And in event, we're probably talking past each other: your citation of the military's "failure" to do such and such reinforces my point that we shouldn't have sent them in in the first place (because it's a job they're not qualified for, and the proof of that is that they, erm failed!).
No, nation building can work - however one has to target an achievable end state relative to the native political ecosystem as it is.
The US, being blindly enamoured of its Greatest Geneation moment and the World War II model keeps trying to rerun that experience. However rebuilding industrial (Post war Europe, Japan) or early industrial countries (S. Korea) with establish nation-state traditions and domestic - organically domestic - centralised government traditions is an entirely different subject than a nation building in a geography which has no real proper centralised govenrnment tradition nor economic base to support the same nor any industrial base or even base infrastructure - and does not have a real organic nation-identity.
The problem is US and NATO aimed at a national model that required a list of prerequisite conditions to be viable, and which Afghanistan had none of (the goal on the state apparatus and cultural transformation being a witches brew of Left and Right American prejudices and blind-spots blended together).
Had a more modest aim of enabling an organic Afghan restoration in 01 been followed (signs being that perhaps the Monarchy might have been reestablished - in any case a restoration run by the Afghan tradition of Loya Jirga without overbearing American intervention) there is perhaps some chance that some scrably shrub of an Afghan government would have put down roots. But the USA fully enabled by NATO actors with similar blind-spots insisted on transplanting something that required well-developed soil and ecosystem - like transplanting a high-productivity hybrid crop but to soil in no way prepared for it, and requiring constant foreign watering and tending to keep alive.
"Nation-building simply doesn't work."
Worked in Japan. Worked in South Korea. Worked in West Germany, and this eventually spread to East Germany. If Vietnam had been partitioned into north and south at the war's end, I bet it would have worked there too.
The 1980's military actions in Panama and Grenada might pass for nation building since both became democratic.
Iraq has been a partial success. They have a crude democratic system there, but it is far better than Saddam's system. If they continue to evolve democratically, it may one day be considered a success at US nation building.
Progress may reflect profitably on the fundamental difference between rebuilding national appartus in countries with estbablished traditions of centralised government, industrialisation, national identity around a nation-state, and reasonabl levels of infrastructure.
Versus Afghanistan for which none of those factors even remotely obtained.
No, nation building can work
I strenuously disagree. People cite the examples of Japan, Germany. But they don't apply. We helped them to rebuild themselves. We didn't engage in nation-building.
And no, this isn't mere semantics.
The defeated Axis powers were both technically sophisticated countries. They both had large, competent, technocratic bureaucracies. They enjoyed universal literacy. They were both highly productive industrial powers with important and lucrative pre-war trade networks. They both had comprehensive education sectors. And both had long legacies of parliamentary governance.
Does this sound anything like Afghanistan?
Truly we didn't have to "build" Germany and Japan into nations. They just needed new constitutions and money to repair infrastructure. This is a very different animal indeed from whatever was supposed to occur in Afghanistan.
I will concede this: nation-building isn't "impossible" in the sense that it's technically infeasible in any and all circumstances. Rather, it's impossible given real world political and economic constraints. I mean, who knows, if the US could have managed to get, I dunno, a million troops and civilian workers stationed there and was willing to spend, I dunno, $400 billion/year on the project, then maybe it would work! Who knows? But that was never in the cards. So, for all intents and purposes nation building — at least the type of radical transformation and modernization this term refers to in the modern sense — isn't something nations can do for other nations. And it's certainly not a task for the army.
You are replying to an argument I did not make my dear fellow.
In fact I agree that the World War II derived "nation building" model that the Americans use to understand everything they do can not work for an undeveloped country. It is an error to apply it. And that is indeed the model the US and NATO allies blindly applied in a fantastic bit of self-deception.
However, there are fine models of recovery in developing nations that do highlight that a rather more modest and tailored goal set can work - but of course if one understands Nation Building to be "do the Marshal Plan and end up with little Japan / Korea / Germany-Europe remakes" [which does indeed seem to be the unexpressed frequent understanding] - one will indeed fail.
So the point was not Nation Building as 'naively try to replicate our grand World War II mythology' is realistic, but a recovery with plans tailored to Afghanistan's level of development and tailored to Afghan culture - not democratic transformation into little America.
That said, no I don't think it would have been politically possible for the Americans and their allies to admit more modest goals and not engage in the messianic civilising missions they engaged as Left and Right pressure intervenes.
Lounsbury wrote “ because it's a job they're not qualified for, and the proof of that is that they, erm failed!).
If the only proper role for the US military is to kill and destroy then I think we can safely disband it. I don’t think we have any business doing that. Luxembourg doesn’t do it. Why do we have to do it?
And then you can just sing Kumbaya and everyone will be friends...
Amusing parody trolling, juxtaposition of USA with Luxembourg
Sorry - that was jasper in Boston who wrote that.
If Luxembourg isn’t a country you wish to emulate then I can’t help you. The point is that you want America to be a superpower. You want to police the world. Is that right? I don’t want any of that. I don’t want to pay for it and I sure as heck don’t want to die for it.
I don’t know what your goals for American foreign policy are, but mine are quite modest. And none of them require the US military to kill anyone.
Emulating dear frothy loon a postage stamp country that is set up as demiliterased dependency between two major European states and today acts rather as an on-shore european off-shore Caymans.... is risibly ridiculous trolling as a suggestion. Really do try to do better.
Biden’s approval ratings weren’t going to drag down themselves. The media needed to show he’s a failure too, so as to balance out their coverage of the Trump admin failures over the last 4 years.
Did the lamestream media really cover El Jefe's failures in his four year dictadurilla?
The media seems to have liked having a distant war that they could either ignore or cover whenever they wanted. There's the poppy blossom season, the hot summer, and then skip until it gets warm again. I guess they just got enamored after beating the drums of war to get us there, that they forgot to stop drumming. Now they're all pissed that Biden took away their next vacation story.
Reporters now know people in Afghanistan, so they all have a personal story to tell.
And follow the money. Afghanistan cost us a trillion dollars--but it's not like that money went (or stayed) there.
Wonderful!
US officials are looking into reports that elderly Afghan men were permitted to evacuate with young girls they claimed as “wives” — with some of the purported child brides brought to an Army base in Wisconsin, according to a report on Friday.
If what you're suggesting is that the young girls in question are victims of sexual abuse or trafficking, it is indeed "wonderful" they've arrived in a country where such things are against the law, and stand a chance of being discovered and stopped (and the perpetrators charged, tried, and imprisoned).
Let us hope so. But its worth remembering that so many Americans died trying to civilize these cretins. That is not wonderful at all.
Allegedly.
From Comet Ping Pong to Epstein Island, & yes, even Matt Gaetz's Bahamian Nites, we know child exploitation.
A lot of this is due to decades of right wing ref working. The media now feel that, in most cases, they cannot report objectively if reality might be kind to Democrats. They inwardly feel doing so constitutes "imbalanced" or "biased" reporting. I think this dynamic is all the more apparent in the aftermath of the the Trump years. They had no choice but to constantly be reporting lasceratingly bad news for four long years. So they're under even more pressure than usual to "equalize" their depictions of Democrats.
Now that Pakistan's ISI has made Afghanistan a safe haven for the worst elements of Pakistan's crazies, it will be interesting to see how it manages Afghanistan. I don't think the Pakistan economy can afford 300 million a year to keep the country running.
It will be interesting when Pakistan's Taliban takes over the Pak's nukes. India will not offer a safe haven for Pakistan's refugees like we did for Afghanistan's. Wish I could live long enough to see how this plays out.
Ooops. Googled.
U.S. taxpayers have been giving Afghan soldiers $750 million a year in payroll. All told, Brown University's Costs of War Project estimates the total spending at $2.26 trillion
China can let the Pakistani refugees serve as a intermediaries in Xinjiang.
Kevin, you should start a lemonade stand. You could give Newman’s Own a run for their money.
Apparently all the veterans are mentally ill and suicidal.
“We should monitor suicides and see if we see an uptick,” Bradsher wrote on Aug. 15. “The news is triggering.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/04/biden-crisis-veterans-afghanistan-509543
The military really is useless and full of broken people. Or perhaps it’s just attracts the psychologically disturbed. Like this freak show…
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/september-october-2021/seal-of-disapproval/
Or just maybe that the jobs the military is asked to do tends to break people?
Parroting Greemwald's recent rants about Chelsea Manning, I see.
There is a country all you caring folks are ignoring. When are you going to start crying about the poor pitiful Lebanese?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/opinion/lebanon-economy.html
The Lebanese situation is quite another matter (and unlike the Afghan one really largely of domestic making)
When the dust settles, and emotions are toned down, I bet historians fault Biden quite a bit for the results in Afghanistan. But I'm not sure what it will be. Criticisms you hear currently are all over the map, the right wing is going nuts on this and the media too, so who knows which criticisms are valid.
So what might Biden have done wrong? Here is a stab -
1) He stuck with a US withdrawal agreement made by Donald Trump. Given Trump's incompetence at pretty much everything except for conning people, it suggests bad judgement on Biden's part to play along.
2) Biden continued with Trump's US-go-it-alone strategy regarding exiting Afghanistan, and he left US allies out of the decision process. This harmed US standing in the world, and seemed to many to continue with Trump's mindset.
3) Trump had cut US troop levels so low that Afghanistan was a house of cards waiting to collapse as soon as the US left. The CIA provided Biden with a worst-case scenario, which is pretty much what happened, but Biden ignored this and did not alter plans to deal with this.
4) Biden did a rapid pullout of 18,000 contractors in Afghanistan. This included technicians who kept aircraft working for the Afghan military. The Afghan military's main advantage over the Taliban was air power, and the US should not have left until it was clear that Afghans could maintain their aircraft.
5) Top military officials wanted to start evacuating vulnerable Afghans as early as May but were not allowed to do so by Biden's team. This could have allowed far more Afghans to have been evacuated.
and so just with a few decades more of Friedman Units and another few trillion dollars wasted to get to the same results.
Biden deserves and will get the historical credit for biting the bullet that neither Obama nor Trump bit.
The utter collapse of the Afghan puppet government is not going to have any longer term effects than that of South Vietnam. The US stayed a bloody long time and wasted trillions.
Abandon the Ukraine and then you have some posible real damage.
None of the points I made ruled out a withdrawal. The question is whether Biden mismanaged it, and if so, to what degree.
It's strange. On much of the left it seems that Biden managed this flawlessly. On the right they believe it was the most mismanaged undertaking in history. I'm not saying you split the difference to find the truth, just that my guess is that Biden made some pretty big mistakes. See items #4 and #5 as examples.
Most criticisms of Biden are baseless, they will parrot any argument that makes him look bad, to the point they now have a real refugee political problem on their hands with the base.
When the dust settles, historians will justly fault primarily George W Bush but also his two immediate successors for the failure in Afghanistan. All Biden will get is credit for bravely pulling off the bandaid.
1. His alternative was pouring in thousands of American troops and extending this debacle another period of months or years at the pointless cost of American (and btw a lot more Afghan) lives.
2. As the only country with deployed troops, the US was fully entitled to decide when and how to withdraw them.
3. The first sentence is absolutely true, which is why getting out was imperative. The immediate collapse of the Afghan government like a house of cards after 20 years of US efforts to build a sustainable government amply demonstrates there was never hope for success as we had defined it. Moreover, for those bemoaning how quickly the Taliban took over, it’s useful to note their preferred alternative seems to be an extended, bloody Afghan civil war ending with a Taliban victory. It must be nice to lack empathy so much you’re willing to sacrifice thousands of non-Americans just to feel better about your strategic choices.
4. Imagine the yowling by the usual suspects if we hadn’t gotten the contractors out. Also, hanging around to see how the Afghans did both prolongs the mission (which Biden was not going to let the military push him to do) and violates the agreement with the Taliban that ended attacks on Americans. So, the only way to even do what you’re suggesting is to redeploy thousands of troops into combat roles.
5. C’mon, an earlier evacuation merely starts the collapse of the Afghan government sooner by signaling to the ANA we don’t think it will be able to hold off the Taliban for even a brief interval.
What transpired in Afghanistan vindicates Biden fully. There was no there there, and the only reason to stay was to pointlessly delay the inevitable. That we were still able to get 120,000 people out in 2 weeks is a remarkable achievement he should be getting credit not criticism for.
1. The Trump withdrawal agreement could have been re-negotiated. This does not mean we had to send thousands of American troops back in. And even if we sent some back for a period, it would not have been in ground combat roles.
2. Per June 30th AP news story: NATO agreed in April to withdraw its roughly 7,000 non-American forces from Afghanistan to match Biden’s decision to pull all American troops from the country, starting May 1.
3. If the US spent more time training Afghans on how to do the things 18,000 contractors were doing for them, such as maintaining their aircraft, the Afghan military may have had a chance. It's hard to see how suddenly removing 18,000 contractors was not going to severely undermine the Afghan military.
4. No, you just keep the contractors there, and you slowly remove them as Afghans are certified to do the jobs. (Maybe an effort like this had been ongoing for years and failed, I really don't know.)
5. I know that evacuating large numbers of Afghans early would send a vote of no confidence, and that had to be avoided. But many vulnerable Afghans, like interpreters, could have been evacuated. The military had some people in mind. Still, it is true that even evacuating even say 10,000 people starting in May would have been sending the wrong signals.
"1) He stuck with a US withdrawal agreement made by Donald Trump. Given Trump's incompetence at pretty much everything except for conning people, it suggests bad judgement on Biden's part to play along."
Rightly or wrongly, this gave Biden political cover to do what he wanted to do anyway. He didn't stick with the May 1 deadline, which is some evidence that the administration knew that they needed more time.
"3)...The CIA provided Biden with a worst-case scenario, which is pretty much what happened, but Biden ignored this and did not alter plans to deal with this."
Or, probably correctly, Biden decided delay wouldn't change the outcome. Afghan forces didn't crumble because the U.S. left, or even because of the timing, they crumbled because their own government was corrupt and not worth dying for.
"4)...the US should not have left until it was clear that Afghans could maintain their aircraft."
Which might have meant not leaving...possibly ever.
"5) Top military officials wanted to start evacuating vulnerable Afghans as early as May but were not allowed to do so by Biden's team. This could have allowed far more Afghans to have been evacuated."
It's unclear what effect this would have had. It could have led to more and earlier terrorist attacks.
I suspect it is delusional to believe that more time would have rendered a "net" better outcome. It's easy for critics to second guess, since none of their absolute assurances and 100% guarantees can be tested.
Pretending that the U.S. has a record of excellence in this area is ridiculous. However, acknowledging that we don't ever seem to learn from our mistakes -- an offshoot of our thoroughly delusional "American exceptionalism" -- might be helpful. That fatal flaw is hardly limited to Joe Biden.
A "better outcome" would mean we got out more vulnerable Afghans. I doubt history will say we did the best we could. Maybe we get lucky and the Taliban won't track them down and abuse or kill them.
Regarding staying until Afghans could maintain their aircraft, you wrote: "Which might have meant not leaving...possibly ever." Maybe we had been trying to do this for years and failed. I really don't know. It seems common sense that this would have been a major goal for the military. But sometimes obvious things get overlooked. I expect this will be investigated thoroughly in the future, but likely findings will barely make the news cycle.
Sorry, Kevin, Biden must be held to the impossible and unattainable standard of getting 100% of Americans and 100% of Afghans out without any confusion or casualties. Even those who don't want to leave or passed up earlier opportunities.
Anything else would be total failure.
Of course, that's the standard the U.S. meets on everything -- perfection.
For further details, see almost any Republican.
Who're you trying to convince -- people in the echo chamber? They're already there.
Post-ABC poll says only 26% of Americans believe you.
Kristi Noem uses slave labor to build a desk, which includes a gun holder,
https://news.yahoo.com/kristi-noem-used-prison-labor-194939575.html
Does she need to put anything else in the ads she runs in the wingnut primary in 2024?
One of the main issues regarding the press coverage, as far as I can tell, is the dramatic and frankly shocking abandonment of the typical “both-sides” narrative.
I remember a highly discussed article from a few years ago (it might’ve been written by Ezra Klein - can’t remember) which pointed out that the deficit is one issue where reporters are allowed to drop all pretense of neutrality. They frame their questions on this topic like right wing talking points and write their “news” pieces like barely veiled (or not veiled at all) editorials. When it comes to national debt, it’s some kind of existential threat and no other view will be taken seriously. And that’s just a bias built into the media ecosystem.
But it’s now clear (if it weren’t clear 20 years ago) that the media also has perhaps an even stronger bias in favor of prolonging wars indefinitely and never admitting when the USA has lost. The amazing feature of this “news” coverage for me has been its one sided, more than just its negative, nature. Anti-Withdrawal advocates are just set free on radio or tv (or in op-Eds as well as “news” articles) to just rant at length against the fact of the withdrawal from Afghanistan (not just the way it was done). No one else is brought in to offer another opinion, no challenging questions are asked. And this phenomenon has played out everywhere. On this particular topic, NPR might as well hand its programming over to OAN, and there might not be much of a discernible difference.
And it’s still going on in this one sided manner. No one is brought in to defend or explain Biden’s frequent comments or speeches on the matter. Only people who attack Biden are given time. As recently as a day or two ago, I heard yet again an NPR radio segment repeating what I thought were the incredibly tired talking points that no allies will ever trust us again after we’ve shown how easily we give up (after sticking it out for 20 years!) and that the whole world has lost faith in America after watching a failed evacuation attempt. No one questioned any of this. No one mentioned the number of people evacuated. No one with a different view was brought into that segment of the show.
In my own life, I just don’t think I’ve ever seen such a powerful and obvious media bias at work before. There may be some things that could be faulted with the withdrawal (not to mention the initial invasion!) but that topic isn’t even under any kind of “discussion.” As with the national debt, this is another area where the media just feels free to blast its own unchallenged and astonishingly one-sides bias.
This is the media's penance for making Donald Trump look bad, the same way they heaped opprobrium on Jimmy Carter at any opportunity to atone for All the President's Men.
The lamestream media are still paying off the debt created by Walter Cronkite's hasty retreat on Vietnam.
& his successor Dan Rather's embrace of the clearly faked George W. Bush TANG story only added to the arrearage.
We got all the service dogs out and about 120,000 people, including about 6,000 US citizens, without incurring a catastrophic casualty event (like a C-17 being hit by a missile trying to take off). In my opinion, as long as the Taliban does not start rounding up and executing the 100 or so Americans that did not reach the airport, I think people will quickly forget about Afghanistan and focus on the next issue to hit the news cycle. The GOP MAGA morons will have of course have a shit hemorrhage worrying about the islamic terrorists hidden among the Afghans we rescued, that the government we will now try to assimilate.
It was not long ago that kevin was asking if everyone criticizing the evacuation competence would apologize if and when we evacuate 150,000. Clearly kevin expected we would get to that number based on what he was seeing and setting that as a sort of standard of doing a good job.
Now after we are done and evacuated 120,000 , which is 30,000 short of that standard , will kevin admit that we did not end up doing as well as he thought and maybe this did not go as well.
No, he now says it went as efficiently " as possible "
.
So, if 120,000 is as efficiently as possible, then what was that 150,000? Obviously it must then have been impossible. So then why did kevin set himself up as a fool by challenging sceptics to apologize if we reach a goal that can never be reached?
Kevin just seems increasingly unserious in his posts on Afghanistan and is in full out spin mode.
Why not just argue that maybe in retrospect mistakes were made and of course it did not go as well as it could and should have, not as efficiently " as possible "? No, it has to have gone as perfectly as possible which is ludicrous.
And not fair to ever judge by a standard of perfection. A complicated operation is always going to have a number of screwups and mistakes.
The judgement should be whether the number of errors made is greater or less than what would normally be expected ( which is very difficult to determine).
And actually everything going perfectly or well as possible " is actually an indication of an error in decision making.
Consider a simple case where there are two distinct possible scenarios- say the Afghan govt falls which you think is a 60% chance and it does not which is a 40% chance. And there are a large number of decisions to make such as do we leave Bagram, how many troops to send, how soon to start evacuating, etc.
For every decision the correct choice is what has the highest expected value given the above expected chance of each scenario. And it is very very unlikely that the best choice will be the same for all as it would be if you 100% knew the correct scenario.
So anything that ends up going perfectly likely means the decision makers made every choice assuming a 100% chance of what they thought was most likely and did not consider the possibility of anything else.
Reports I was seeing said that arrivals were tapering off and the evacuation closed down after they got out everyone who got to the airport and the military flew out last. I doubt Pres. Biden will care that Kevin overestimated the number of people who would show up.
Uh, if the evacuation tapered off and did not get up to the 150,000 kevin was thinking we could based on capacity because " we got out everyone who got to the airport " or " who would show up", then obviously the problem was that
The evacuees could not get to the airport so they could not " show up".
And, if mistakes led to the situation where evacuees could not get to the airport, you cannot claim a success for getting out all who could .
In fact , you are then taking extra credit for your own errors .
It is like taking a test with 100 5 choice questions and you can only answer 10 of them with certainty and the other 90 you think you might get 50% or 45. So if you answer all of the questions you get a grade of 55%. So you only answer the 10 you are certain of and ask the teacher to give you a grade of 100% . No.
So, what would you suggest the US military at the airport do? Start a fire fight with the Taliban? Run out and drag people into the airport? Hold their breath till they turn blue? I'm sure the Taliban would have found that last quite amusing.
If Kevin was making an accurate guess based on detailed knowledge of exactly the capacity of the planes involved (and how would he or you know) that's still a guess. If a plane has to be pulled from service for repairs, capacity might be less. If more people had shown up, they might have scheduled a few more flights. Again, how would you or Kevin know?
Just one quick point. I think Kevin's stance as a Biden apologist is driven by the overwhelming media bias toward the opposite stance. I find his kind of "on the other hand" analysis to be invaluable, though the truth -- and the final historical verdict -- may be less forgiving in the end. What's clear is that it didn't look good.
Tired discourse, you've got it down, and so wrong.
But a California woman defied travel advisories to travel to Kabul in June to "visit family" and "marry her long-time boyfriend", and now she can't get out again! Can you spell BIDEN FAIL????
Yes, to an extent as biden was giving speeches in July saying it was extremely unlikely that the taliban would be able to take over at all.
So you are going to heap all the blame on someone who listened to what the president said which made any travel advisory sound like a warning label that everyone ignores? And biden is faultless for that ?
Be serious. If someone told me it was “unlikely” that a medieval group of thugs and terrorists were about to conquer a country, I’d stay away! Yes, the Americans who traveled there in spring and summer deserve blame!
I did not say that they have no responsibility but biden has some too. And look at the story mentioned. She was going to marry her long time boyfriend. I would guess this is a last chance to do so and get him into the USA as a spouse of a citizen. Otherwise he is left in Afghanistan.
That is not a vacation. That is trying to save a loved one and you take risks for that. And even visiting family. Some had to think this would be the last time they would ever have a chance to see them again.
So they are willing to take some risks for something that is important.
Presidents have to be accountable for the effects that they may cause through their statements. If you cannot accept any responsibility for biden's dangerously incorrect statements on Afghanistan affecting what people thought re risk, then you also I assume blame trump not at all for the consequences of any stupid thing he said that might mislead people in any way.
No. Don't start with the 'Biden's at fault for those kinds of circumstances'. Not fair.
And, to clarify, I am not saying it is a great point to blame biden for Americans going to Afghanistan.
If the question is how much blame does biden deserve for them being there due to his statements, I would say a little but not something that is worth much criticism.
But I do not think it is right to blame all those who went because they had decent reasons to take the risk.
But the big point is that biden has a responsibility as president to try to get Americans out whether or not it was smart for them to go or not.
If biden failed at getting them evacuated, blaming them for being there is a shitty excuse.
For all who are trying to defend biden in this way , unless you are hypocrites I assume you agree that
Bush deserved no blame re any problems with people who stayed in New Orleans after Katrina because they were told they should leave and did not ( and Bush did not make any stupid speech that might have led them to stay)
And
A good defense to a rape charge is that the woman dressed sexy , got drunk and was walking alone which was stupid
Anyway, Ida, Delta and abortion are driving Afghanistan off the headlines. I'm glad we're out, and and I'm glad Americans will mostly be concentrating on other priorities in the months ahead.
Biden's bet then on absorbing pain in a short intense brief rather is likely to pay off. Extending the evacaution merely would extend the window of risk and negative press. Without really changing any fundamentals. After 20 years the American+NATO messianic mission of transforming Afghan culture didn't work and the American client regime had no real Afghan foundations.
As we learn in private equity, project sponsors always will argue that with a bit more money and more time things will turn around. Always. It's virtually always better to pull the plug fast and take the pain in one swoop than to have a lingering resource draining sore.
When I was still in high-tech, I think the common expectation was that of 10 venture investments, 1 might be a great success, 1 or 2 more might be modest successes that do better than break-even, and the rest would fail. And that was (usually) good enough.
A success rate of 1 in 10 would have been a great improvement according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Their latest (and presumably last) report was depressing (the 11th depressing report from SIGAR over 20 years).
A former Marine sharpshooter who served in Afghanistan fatally shot four people, including an infant, in two homes near Lakeland, Fla., early on Sunday morning and exchanged gunfire with sheriff’s deputies before he was taken into custody, the authorities said.
The gunman, who also shot and wounded an 11-year-old girl, surrendered after he was shot at least once during two gunfights with deputies in which dozens, if not hundreds, of rounds were fired in a residential neighborhood in Polk County, Fla., the county sheriff, Grady Judd, told reporters.
“But he says at one point to our detectives, ‘They begged for their lives, and I killed them anyway,’” Sheriff Judd said on Sunday afternoon. “He’s evil in the flesh. He was a rabid animal.”
That’s right… just your typical marine.
JUstin
The marine was on methamphetamine and suffered from PTSD
His GF said he had bee depressed
This does NOT excuse his behavior but it sheds light on his condition
You attitude towards him is reprehensible at best
You’re sympathy for this trained assassin is reprehensible. WTF is wrong with you people?
War is bad. People who wage war are reprehensible. And people who make excuses for war are pretty terrible too.
Michael Moore making a salient point,
https://www.rawstory.com/biden-afghanistan-2654910767/
Democrats just love war. Shame on them.
House Democrats broke ranks with the Biden administration early Thursday morning, approving a defense policy bill that asks hard questions about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan while drastically increasing the Pentagon’s budget.
The vote tallies for the National Defense Authorization Act, passed with significant Democratic support in the House Armed Services Committee, don’t fit the neat partisan narratives drawn up in November 2020 concerning reductions in defense spending. And they show frustration among moderate Democrats over how the war was wound down, signaling trouble ahead for a White House that already has razor-thin margins in the House and Senate.
Afghanistan was a war that went on too long
Did it achieve its purpose? If the purpose was to prevent Al Queda from attacking us again yes it did.
Will they ever attack us again? Interesting question but the answer is based upon how well our intel folks can read the tea leaves. They got Bin Laden so they were right about that
They missed the president of AFghanistan leaving. That was a mistake
They knew the Afghans would be w/o air power when we left. Thats a big Meh as the Taliban doesn't have an air force of their own.
Did we leave too much equipment behind? Yep. Retreats or evacuations are NOT pretty. The British got the men out of Dunkirk but not a single piece of equipment. The fall of Saigon took place 2 years after we left but still equipment was left behind. Cam Ranh Bay was a port that was still intact. Many airfields were left intact - and N Vietnam had an air force.
War sucks. Ending one is full of mixed emotions Ending one without a clear cut victory is an anathema to many Americans especially the military. In Vietnam they were able to give the S Vietnamese a fighting chance. We knew the odds were not great but they did delay the takeover for 2 years
Were we expecting to see the Afghan Army blood shed over the next 2 years? Intrepid U.S., reporters in flak vests reporting from the front lines in the hopes of winning a Pulitzer? Then jet off when the Taliban appears to have won to come back to CA for a glass of chardonnay?
WE haven't fought an international war on our soil since 1812.
History will judge Joe Bidens performance not us
The elite whining over Zionist crusades need whacked. You kill enough, nobody will say anything about Afghanistan again.
You need to get that prescription refilled.
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Is this a good place to point out that the most vocal critics of how this has been handled:
- supported Trump's undermining of the Afghan government by excluding them from talks with the Taliban
- supported White Supremacist Steve Miller's sabotage of the Afghan Visa program?
- directly voted against extending Visa's to Afghans within just the past few months?